What I find interesting is that Series 11 deals so much with the feeling of being outside the scope of history, being on the sidelines, being unimportant as a time traveller and just having to deal with that tension, and with being that additionally to the integrity of time, time making no space for you. The fixed.
And it's in direct contrast with Moffat (and RTD) eras where more often than not the snake comes around and eats itself. Where it turns out that actually you were the important factor, there was a gap that had always been there and you fill it, filled it - you were always part of history - and so you can act - you MUST act, you have already acted, because that is who you are. There is space made for you in time. The flux.
The first perspective, at first glance, feels so barren, so restrictive, but actually it elevates the agency of the actors in their own time and yours - because time COULD change by your interference. The flux of personal decisions. The second perspective gives the impression of choice, but if time flows so closely around you then - and this is shown - what free will remains if you always were going to act in this way, and oftentimes you simply MUST to prevent a paradox? The fixed of personal decisions.
On the other hand, the difference is mostly perhaps, that series 11 dealt with the systemic - that which cannot be turned around by a single action. Cannot be made better by just one person (and her fam) passing through. One person may be saved - or not. One person may be helped - or not. War and racism cannot be healed by a traveller.
After all, Series 11 also did have the second perspective - because they WERE necessary to history - to help create/maintain the circumstances that prompt Rosa Parks to do what she was known for in the future, to marry a man and a woman who were married in the future as well - but the emphasis is somewhere else. They had always played these roles - or they never would have known: the snake biting its own tail, but they are not the important factor - they are not the point on which time turns.
