Yes, the New Who is definitely different, but is for a different age.
When Dr Who first started I was still going to Saturday morning cinema. The serials there had cliffhangers which were resolved the following week by showing you bits you'd missed the week before. (someone escaping from the far side of a car just before it went over a cliff) but you couldn't be sure that you hadn't just missed spotting it the week before, so took it on trust.
Black & white tv followed the same system as the only people who could check what had actually been shown were the owners of the film reels themselves.
With the advent of VCRs the show had to be consistent in what was shown at the end of one week & the beginning of the next.

Also, by the time of the 'great revival', children seemed to have shorter attention spans, so less stories were spread over several weeks. (make the shows longer to encompass a whole self-contained story). Of course, this whole argument is somewhat confounded by the whole-series 'story arcs' they seem to use.


The discussion - like the programme itself - continues.