Frankly, I don't really find most mainstream explanations convincing, based on the quantity and quality of images coming back from Mars et al. And I haven't heard anything from mainstream that even comes close to being predictive enough of Martian processes to be accurate.

And I definitely don't think that electrical interaction has been given enough due. While I don't necessarily go for everything "Thornhill & gang," as I think you put it, I think that many of their insights are actually dead on.

ESPECIALLY where concerning cratering, rilles, craters following dead center the COURSE of rilles (explain that one classically; I'd love to hear it), flat-bottomed craters, bullseye craters (mini craters dead center in larger craters, clustered in non-random fashion), rilles that cross the course of other rilles at right angles, or meander back and forth over each other, or flow up one hill and down the next.

And though I enjoy their insightful articles (a few might hit slightly off center), I prefer to go back to the HiRISE, THEMIS, MOC data and look at the high res stuff, which basically overturns most classical "lava tube" or "fluid erosion" models completely. I mean just point blank shot in the heads of those models. Whereas the electrical interpretation, granted at first blush one wonders a lot, actually matches the data pretty seamlessly when you really LOOK at it.

And I've looked at enough raw images now that I have regular access to broadband. Sorry to say but classical theories of lakes and rivers and lava just fail miserably on Mars. Absolutely miserably. Stuff that we know electrical arcs do from lab experiments is everywhere on mars. Crater chaining, scalloping, electrical blisters, multiple cratering along the same conductive path/non-random clustering. I mean even the "spiders" easily conform to the electrical model. Seriously, look up Lichtenberg figures. It's well known that an electrical discharge will tend to gather or eject dust/materials in very specific patterns, and strangely, those are EXACTLY the forms that most spiders take. Don't believe me? Take a look at the "history" of electrical arc discharges, specicially the Lichtenberg:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/scienceservice/044138.htm

More specifically, positive and negative discharge patterns:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/scienceservice/044138e.htm

Note how the positives tend to radiate from a central point in nicely filamentary rays, quite finely. The central point being much more densely populated, almost blob-like. Note how the negative discharges tend to be a bit smaller, and more of a lobed fan-shape, but still filamented (hard to see from the particular picture above, but I'm sure you can find others easily enough).

Now then, take a look through the vast image archives of the "spiders" Greg Orme has so nicely gathered all together on martianspiders.com (there's a lot of galleries, so you might have to look for a bit to find the "best" examples, but there are plenty so it shouldn't be too hard.).

What do we see? Two "basic" morphologies of "spider." One is a lobed fan-like structure with fine filamentation, usually blackened/darkened in aspect (just like the negative Lichtenberg figures). The other? Not surprisingly, a central blob with finely distinguishable filamentary branching, just like the positive Lichtenberg figures.

This is a very simple testing ground for the electrical theory. And it holds up quite well. There are a number of other forms taken by the spidered regions, some of which are jagged mostly-parallel polygonal terrain with a DISTINCTLY electrical look, entire regions of overlapping spidering (positive and negative varieties; I've found entire regions overlapping many upon many upon many positives and regions with many, many, many negative formations too).

With the other forms taken by electrical discharges (cratering, chaining, furrows, cratering along furrows, scalloped edges, craters within craters, non-craters but just rings of uplifted material in craters, spires in craters, spherule generation) being so prevalent on Mars, seriously... People need to take a second look at the planet from an electrical vantage point and fresh eyes. I mean, you can basically take a list of known electrical scarring formations and run down the list and match them up to known formations on Mars quite easily. It's really not an especially difficult process. The only difficult part is unlearning or at least temporarily pushing aside a bit of dogma that's holding us back. It's kind of like a stereogram. For a long long time the image is really unclear and you have no idea what you're looking at. Then all of a sudden, you look through the right lens and the entire picture pops into view. That's about how science is currently. They're staring at a stereogram and seeing the pretty pattern of dots and squiggles, but not seeing the actual image.

One of these days it'll pop. It might even leave a crater, which might even have dendritic ridges at the crater lip, like Olympus Mons, and so many other features on Mars. But then people will see the fuller picture emerge. It just takes the right understanding and some balls step outside the box for a minute. My 2c. Of course most will see it as a rant. C'est la vie. But maybe one or two will at least take a new perspective and actually look rather than dismissing out of hand what SHOULD be obvious if not for certain unfounded assumptions.

I mean if we can now admit that electricity DOES do something in space (which was unheard of a year or two ago, but is slowly being acknowledged), just imagine what we'll "know" in a year or two once we fully accept and utilize the new knowledge.