You're missing the point.
Clockwork robots, ridiculous guff about replacing technology with human organs, a big horse stunt and the court of Louis XV is absolute nonsense. Utter bull.
And The Girl In The Fireplace still has an emotional heft that had me welling up on a recent rewatch.
NuWHO is replete with media articles fawning over often the same question, "Which episode makes you cry the most."
And, yeah, no question that the fireplace episode was more designed for a Pavlovian-approved emotional response in hopes one wouldn't think of the reverse-Cybermen process, something Classic WHO knew enough not to do. It's more or less the Doctor Who equivalent of "Spock's Brain". Both stories are superficially enjoyable for their own reasons, but that doesn't make them good just because they emit "teh feelz". Or rather, only the NuWHO story had managed to overcome the absurd-and-in-a-stupid-way ideas.
And that's where you lose me. Considering the franchise's previous attempts at being "adult" such as the Virgin New Adventure novels or Torchwood ended up being laughably embarrassing with their attempts at being edgy for the sake of being edgy, "adult" is the last thing Doctor Who should try to be.
The NAs started okay but quickly lost me as the "adult" tone was superficial - or, rather, what makes something "adult" isn't necessarily writing about naked people running around having coitus with anything that moved (not an uncommon complaint at the time as well and some publications did cite "copulating" as a descriptive adjective as well...), but the depth and complexity of the stories themselves. Now "edgy" qualifies, but it's not the same thing.
But the show managed to do well enough with adult concepts, with even Verity Lambert on DVD commentary saying she made things the way she wanted and for themselves but that didn't stop a lot of people from liking the whole of the presentation. (Per numerous documentaries and commentaries on the DVDs she was involved in, she also convinced TPTB that the Daleks were not bug eye monsters but were an intelligent race with their own backstory... especially as it was the Thals who started the neutronic war, and now - thousands of years later - it's Ian who has to tell the Thals how to fight... kids loved the Daleks' pew pew stuff, but there's enough meat to the story's bone that had adults glued to the set as well and the story treated none of the audience poorly. It's a true family show, well made.)
"Torchwood" started out in the most embarrassing way possible. Among other things, Jack basically takes pride in saying how his lot have no clue how the alien artifacts they use work. So what's the point in knowing how to use them when they're bound to break at some point, thus rendering their special group useless? I spent too much time laughing, then realized this show wasn't meant to be funny and then tuned into something else. I tried a couple other episodes from series 1 but the embarrassing aspects didn't let up, and the making-of specials had to tell the theme of what the stories themselves didn't and/or couldn't and/or couldn't be bothered to do, which only proves the atrocious nature of the storytelling involved. Maybe later seasons actually explore that idea. But I doubt it.
What you have had, and should have, is changes in tone between stories. DW's great strength has always been that you can have a different genre in every story - so what you need in a Doctor is enough range to work well in both lighter and darker tones.
^^this
Every Doctor has had examples of both light and dark and where both worked.
