For most of Doctor Who's history, time travel has been a MacGuffin to merely get the characters to their latest destination. Time was mainly represented in terms of how a contemporary human might react to life in another era.

In recent years, however, there seems to be an obsession with using non-linear storytelling as a 'twist' to shock the viewers. I'll put this in spoiler tags, just in case it's true...

Before anyone says "But it's a show about time!" No, it may be that now, but it always used to be a show which used time travel sparingly. Will this phase of non-linear cop-outs pass soon?

It was always odd and annoying to me that a show where the main character possessed the means to travel through time actually focused so little on the implications of this. Otherwise it might just as well be a spaceship. I think its done much to redress the balance in recent years though and so could probably lay off it being such a constant element to make it more exciting when they do. But then I'm a child of Back to the Future. I love that stuff however convoluted and confusing and nonsensical it can become. I realise for others it can jut be annoying.

It isn't 'gimmicky' or a 'cop out'. It would be a cop out not to feature it prominently. And I don't think its been used to shock. It's just another way to tell a story and one that many people find interesting. It throws up a great deal of story telling possibility which would be mad to ignore.

I'm afraid it sounds more like you basically mean 'I dont like stories that get bogged down in the time travel element...when will they stop?'. The answer to that will be hopefully never.

You've not left much room for debate,. You think its gimmicky. You shut down anyone who thinks the show is and should be about time travel with a swift 'no'. And youre partly basing this on assumptions about the series finale which...

Right. The idea of 'time' is something very few properties out there get to mess around with so I'm all for it being used as a storytelling device.

I love the time-twisting elements of Moffat's direction with Doctor Who for the same reason Back to the Future II was my favourite of the trilogy. It's fun. Needlessly complicated, but that's part of what makes it fun, as well as trying to wrap your head around the implications and possibilities.

Series 5's The Big Bang was great for this. A nice change from the doom-laden and over dramatic finales before it, instead it was an exciting and silly romp without becoming unwatchable and laughable.

I think that was quite a significant movie for many many people of a certain age. i remember coming out of the cinema utterly baffled and with an aching head but loved every minute and we spent hours discussing it at school. It was the first time me and my friends experienced that shared thing of picking a film/TV show apart and arguing over what it all meant. You can see the influence it has had on writers and directors born in that era to.

I love anything to do with time-travel, but I have to agree with 'Pacific' in that DW has abused the time-travel bit a bit too much! Specifically in the Matt era!! He was going back and forth like a frigging yo-yo!! And it was used as a cop-out!!
William Hartnell could never do that!!
I prefer when it is used as a transport to another time, simple as that! Anyway - I thought he wasn't meant to interfere with timelines anyway! Prime Directive and all that (Whoops - that's Star Trek! Same difference anyway!).

Some of the resolutions come across more like the Bill & Ted films than Back to the Future. The "Ah, I went back and set it up in the past." trope is a bit too convenient.

One of my favourite things about buying and reading the Doctor Weekly during 1979/80 were the reprints of the 'Time Tales'. They got me so excited yet horrified by the time I got to the twist in the last couple of frames. I thought they were very clever short stories indeed.
I remember one that did make me laugh though, it was about a group of scientists that had invented a time machine but still in it's experimental stages and still needing funding for it. To gain more funding they called for one of the leading scientists that was holding the purse strings to see a demonstration in hope that they'd grant them more money.
For the demo they placed a golfball-sized sphere in the machine, powered it up and it disappeared with the inventor saying, 'It is now travelling hundreds of millions of years into the past!'
The next frame took us to prehistoric times where we saw a fish in water scrambling to get out of the water onto dry land using its fins, the very first tetrapod in history... only to be knocked back into the water by the sphere! The sphere disappeared once again as quickly as it came.
The next frame we see a close-up of the sphere reappearing seconds later within the time machine and an unimpressed head-scientist (out of frame) giving a firm 'No' as he believed it was nothing more than a conjuring trick and that his invention will have no impact on society. The frame switches to a wide and the scientist are no longer human but reptilian or tetrapod-like.

I do love a time travel mess.

Wasn't there one in which a time-traveller tries to impress a medieval court with his transistor radio, only to find there are no signals to pick up in ye olde times?

Yes, rings a bell that one.
Another mediaeval one was an inventor from the 25th century that was so fed up of the smog from centuries of pollution and mankind's uncaring nature of the world around him that he travelled back to mediaeval times and became sick, eventually chocking from the clean air, being too pure for his lungs.