Davies’ insistence on trying to make the Doctor into Space Jesus is probably my second least favorite aspect of his writing after his complete inability to understand how either British or American politics work.
I enjoyed watching the original run of Doctor Who back in the day on PBS. And I watched the new run pretty religiously until part of the way through Peter Capaldi’s run, when I was forced by circumstances to give up cable television. Even after I resumed getting cable a few years later, I just never bothered to jump back on the train. I don’t know why.
It’s a matter of how the show treats it. There are lots of adventure films that we think of as “fun”–Star Wars, the James Bond films, some of the Marvel superhero stuff, even classic swashbucklers like Robin Hood or pirate movies–that would probably be terribly frightening if you were really experiencing them. Doctor Who, at its best, was the same way.