*nods* Yeah, I'm a character-focused viewer as well; the plots on the previous seasons were sometimes terribly frustrating, and Moffat frequently did the best eps out of the bunch, so I was fairly eager to see what he would do with the new series. But it feels like character creation might be his weakness, which could be a big problem for me if that's the case. Like I said in response to one of the other comments, I've sometimes encountered fanfic writers who wrote great fic but whose original fic was flat - they could write other people's characters wonderfully, but were not nearly as good at creating and developing their own characters and worlds. Hopefully Moffat doesn't turn out to be like that. (Of course, it may simply be a personal-taste thing - not that these characters are flawed, per se, but just that I haven't connected to them. Perhaps Moffat's general character style is not as much to my taste as RTD's was. I can't rule that out.)

as you say, man, even though Rose had to find her journey, she definitely had found herself a long time ago. And both Martha and Donna were 110% themselves. God, I miss Martha. :(

Me too! It's definitely true that "character has to find out who they are" is a very different arc, with a very different feel, from "fully realized character has adventures". I just wish that I had a better sense of who these characters are now, even if they still have a journey to become who they're going to be.