You're absolutely right in what you say about SM's episodes for RTD. I confess, I actually prefer his version of Rose in GitF, but at the same time, I recognise that she's pretty OOC. Donna got sidelined in favour of River and Martha, for the few minutes she's on screen in Blink was rather nondescript.

Like I said in my original comment, DW has always been a serial but at least, IIRC, the serials were written by the same writer(s) who were able to let things unfold at their own pace. The one-story-per-week format is different and isn't going to lend itself as easily to that sort of story-telling.