but they do seem to have embraced money saving where they can (filming mutilple epiosdes when they went to Spain/Croatia).
No, that's not embracing money saving. Moving your production to another country is the complete opposite of money saving. Embracing money saving would have been
NOT going to Spain/Croatia to film some episodes.
Moffat needs to realize that Doctor Who doesn't have the budget of Game of Thrones. He needs to run the show like the low budget series it is. Babylon 5, the Stargates, and Farscape managed to do epic well with extremely limited budgets. Doctor Who can do it to.