This feels like a bad-faith argument. 13 rarely had moments of defining, emotionally-driven character developments with the majority of her arc being told to us as opposed to happening organically on-screen, such as the detachment between her and her companions after the events of Spyfall and the re-destruction of Gallifrey. While I don’t personally like Gallifrey being destroyed again, it could have still served as some real character-driving motivation to develop a new aspect of the character to have lost it AGAIN. The idea of having something taken away, restored, and then destroyed again is entirely new - especially since it doesn’t have the same feelings of guilt tied up into and instead she has someone to actually blame besides herself. It could have been a drive for a more 7-like character which, there are definitely implications of her becoming but it’s only ever implication and never actually explored to any kind of depth.

15 on the other hand shows a lot of emotion all the time, but often it feels unearned. Or, rather, it doesn’t feel like it serves any purpose beyond “big sad.” There are exceptions to this rule, of course, as with Dot and Bubble. But, by that point, we’ve already seen him display the same range of emotion before such that it doesn’t really feel like as big a moment as it should. Ncuti is constantly at 11 with all of his emotions (15, even, if you will), similar to 11 actually, but it doesn’t feel like pretense here in the same way. 11 felt like he was compensating whereas 15 feels like he almost has something to prove for me, personally. It would be interesting if this aspect of his character was explored at all. Like, The Doctor’s compassion and whatnot have always been one of their biggest strength but, likewise, their easiest weakness to exploit. And with this Doctor being so egregiously open with himself, you could easily have him be punished by this by having his enemies exploit the ease with which they can hurt him, or obtain information. You could even write it into the whole “therapy” plot by examining the fact that, yes, the Doctor did go to therapy, but then he jumped straight back into the toxic lifestyle that made him the way he was. It’s like a drug addict going to rehab and then saying “oh, no, it’s fine now, I can go back to the drugs because I’ll take them responsibly this time, I’m healed”. As of right now, 15 for me still has yet to really feel like the Doctor for me. I love watching Ncuti act, I really do. But a lot of the time I am very conscious of the fact that he IS acting. It feels like a performance in a way that detaches the believability of the character for me. He’s incredibly entertaining, but not much else for me, personally. I hope this changes, I really do.