why gatiss tho
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Why hasn't Paul Cornell's Who career had better progression?
If you wonder where a writer from the RTD era is in the Moffat era, it's probably down to them not really being TV writers. Cornell only has a few TV credits to his name, for instance, and apart from Doctor Who they're all low rent cheaply shot dramas like Casualty and Doctors. He's a fantastic novelist, he does amazing work for comics, but he's not a TV writer, not really.
It then comes down to a difference in approach: Davies used to rewrite every single episode that came across his desk, except for a brief stretch during Series 3 where he became very ill and couldn't keep up the pace because he was running Torchwood and launching Sarah Jane Adventures simultaneously.
In some instances (such as The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit) the entire episode would be unrecognisable from the final draft submitted by the writer. The writer of those two episodes, for instance, contributed to Doctor Who magazine and had done some Who novels. He fashioned out a decent story based on RTD's ideas, but the script was a mess. RTD re-wrote it completely (at the cost of Fear Her, which he barely touched as a result), including adding the Ood (this is why in subsequent Moffat-era appearances, the credits always say the Ood were created by RTD, not the credited writer of TIP/TSP). RTD said the only people whose scripts didn't go through the rigorous edit process were those who he basically considered his equals TV-wise: Moffat, Chris Chibnall, Mark Gatiss - and even Gatiss was edited the first time. It's worth noting of the Who writers, these are the three who have gone on to have hugely successful shows of their own in Sherlock and Broadchurch and all that. (Plus Chibnall 'ran' Torchwood S2.)
Anyway, that's why. Cornell contributed some of the best stories in Doctor Who history imo, but he's also on the record saying he believes about 50% of those scripts are down to Davies, from little things like the way the Family of Blood talk (the brother of mine/mother of mine tic was RTD's) through to actually how the stories played out broadly (the Doctor never 'died' in the church initially) done by him after Cornell had submitted his work.
This is also why RTD felt comfortable doing mental things like giving green writers a shot on the show like Helen Raynor (she script edited Moffat's episodes on S1/2, then was given the Dalek two-parter in S3, which was rushed because Moffat bailed out from doing that script at the last minute as he lacked the time to do a two-parter - but then she proved she could deliver a great story the next year with the Sontarans) or crazy things like asking JK Rowling to write an episode despite her having no screen writing experience at all. If JK had said yes - but she was too busy with other stuff - she would've obviously basically written the first draft and RTD would've done the rest, made it into an actual TV ready script.
Moffat doesn't do that; he decided early on only to hire people who he felt could deliver a complete and finished product in their final draft after taking notes, rather than doing active rewrites himself. Mainly, I think, because he saw how it nearly killed Davies. Moffat has started to do rewrites recently, though, which is why you've seen him co-credited on a few stories (something RTD never did because given the volume he was doing he thought it'd be ridiculous to be credited almost every week). That's why people like Cornell fell away; Cornell and Moffat are friends, even, they're part of that whole Virgin New Adventures wilderness years set of writers together, after all - but Cornell just doesn't have the chops to write for the show with Moffat's approach to selecting writers... leave alone run it!
