Sorry about that confusing memory dump, it was half addressed to podrock, a known late-stage Whovian, so there was too much shorthand.

First, though, the damnedest thing: "Castrovalva" didn't ring a bell, not surprising since I've lost track of how many hundreds of episodes there were in the 20th, a tragically large fraction apparently lost. So I started researching it, read a few synopses, wondered where to view it, nowhere free, idly shopped for it, stopped by vudu.com...and found that I own it. Already. It rings no bells. And the vudu player says I've never watched it. But vudu (a subsidiary of Walmart) gives away nothing for free. If they say I bought it, I bought it.

Damn, ER, I'm really looking forward to seeing four new episodes of 20th century Dr. Who I've never seen before (I think). That I own. Unexpectedly. Thank you very much for mentioning just that episode, which I might have lost for not knowing I had it.

Anyway, back to the subject: Sorry I got tangled in the metasubject of how latter-day Dr. Who is produced. Forget that...let me put it a different way. It's still the Dr. Who you enjoyed back in the Tom Baker days (and the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, is something like him [Doctors never repeat, but they sometimes rhyme]). But the BBC woke up and took it seriously this time around, gave it support, top-notch talent at launch, and even money...though they were wise enough to never abandon the tactile physicality of Dr. Who...very little green screen except for the large backdrops of planetary surfaces. Lots of very material Daleks and Cybermen, and a TARDIS interior that's fractally richer. All at high resolution.

Maybe that's the only real difference: It's a higher-resolution Doctor Who.

No, I neglect plot and character development still. Maybe you wanted to know: Yes, the new Who is in line with the modern style of exploring the dark side of a superhero. These new Doctors are wracked with guilt and self-doubt, and a good fraction of the stories pick at the Doctor's scabs and reopen old wounds. The second-to-last episode of this season consisted, in fact, of The Doctor confined to a "bespoke" torture chamber for several billion years. Billion with a "bee".

The store of The Doctor's old wounds is deep and rich, and another thing about 21st century Dr. Who is that it spends a lot of time mining the rich backstory and lore that develops over half a century. It sometimes lends depths, but every once in a while there's an episode that seems like one long inside joke for the fans. So the show in its maturity frequently strays into navel-gazing.

Am I doing any better? I'm not sure it's possible to really explain Doctor Who, or even what it's become to a fan from last century--damn, it's like talking to somebody who's been in a coma! Maybe you'd better just binge-watch the last nine seasons and then make up your own mind.