I only watched the second season of JY, and whilst I liked it, I was disappointed that they didn't use the time jump to age up the character relationships and problems to more of an 'older teen' level. I don't mean Twilight-esque teen romance (generally aimed at middle-aged women, teenage girls and creepy old men in equal portions, from what I can tell), but something around the mark of the 1st three seasons (i.e. the high school seasons) of Buffy.
I've a theory that even young kids enjoy 'older teen' stories (I mean the perspective, not just the age of the characters) far more than 'young teen' stories, because even when they're watching audience surrogate characters, they want to fantasize about being the hero, not the hero's kiddie sidekick. Plus setting the character perspectives too young breaks any illusion of threat, as even a child audience implicitly trusts that nothing bad will happen that can't be undone by the end of the episode (don't just mean killing, I mean lasting damage/challenges to character relationships, falling out with friends, trouble with family, etc).
Then again, for a whole generation of us who grew up with the 'classic' era Doctor Who series, Adric's pointless death, alone, terrified and crying in fear as he clutches his brother's bracelet, while the Doctor looks on aghast (and the entire BBC audience goes 'you just did WHAT to the Wesley Crusher-esque child audience surrogate character???!!!') taught us never to trust sci-fantasy television writers
(edit: Of course, given how annoying Adric was, I always imagined there was some cut scene after the credits of Earthshock, where Tegan and Nyssa are saying 'But Doctor, you're a TIME TRAVELLER! Surely we can just go back in the Tardis and rescue him? I mean, we weren't even on the Cyberman ship when it crashed, we just watched it on the Tardis screen - surely we can rig up some fake broadcast to keep the timeline in check while you go back and save the kid.', while the Doctor is just shaking his head resolutely and saying 'Nope. Nope. Not doing it, because of...time....stuff. Can't risk creating a time paradox for a supremely annoying character. If he was a little older, or a little younger then maybe, maybe I could find a way..but...Adric...just...too...annoying...would risk rupturing the space-time continuum and inserting supremely annoying child audience surrogates across all of sci-fi television...one of them may have already tore its way into Star Trek the Next Generation OH MY GOD IF THAT'S TRUE THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE HIDEOUS...just can't take that chance'.)
