On Doctor Who ...

[Hopeless]

It's nice to have at least one show that is a) sci-fi, when all proper sci-fi has more or less disappeared and replaced by crime dramas or supernatural dramas (or supernatural crime dramas...) and b) light-hearted for the most part (while maintaining the ability to get serious at the appropriate point).

How would that make it better? Aside from taking away a lot of the fun aspects (space ships, aliens) - and the very best part of Doctor Who, the Daleks - and thus reducing what you could do or where you could go narratively, I think it would be rather too much like the recent crop of pseudo-magical dramas (Warehouse 13 or Sanctuary and it's ilk or whatever is going these days; I don't watch any of them regularly enough to know which - if any - are still being made).

Sorry for the cut and paste jobs...

Sanctuary ended with the fourth season just as they were about to deal with humanity having to confront the missing links of evolution (forgotten what they're called!) don't know about Warehouse 13 but it had crossover episodes with A Town Called Eureka so thats worth mentioning especially as it had an arc dealing with time travel including a trip back during the second world war but I haven't been keeping tabs on most of those!

I think it's doing a stellar job, and aside from getting rid of the Ponds as a very low point, I think Moffat's run of Doctor Who is the best it's ever been.

Agreed about the departure of the Ponds that might have been better if their return to the present meant they couldn't travel with the Doctor anymore due to how much temporal radiation they absorbed from the paradox but thats just me!

The BBC are highly unlikely to attempt to make such a change, because the license-paying public would play merry hell with them (Doctor Who has always been family-orientated viewing - and prime-time Saturday BBC One viewing at that), and unlike the big US networks which are private companies, the BBC is basically a public service we literally pay taxes for, so it is a bit more culpable.

The BBC did kind of try doing something not a million miles from the direction you suggest, with the spin-off Torchwood (perhaps worth a look for you, it never appealed to me at all), which was more serious and was mostly Earth-based, closer to your "urban fantasy." Wasn't overly popular, though, enough that it only made three seasons and was regulated to subsidary channels. (I think Sarah Jane Adventures nearly lasted longer, and they only stopped making that when Elizabeth Sladen sadly suddenly died.)

The Sarah Jane Adventures were quite good but had their limits whilst Torchwood... well was Torchwood which sounds better than yelling "Barrowman!" ever few minutes!

So have you sampled episodes from the other Doctors'?