I enjoyed the first and last scenes of Midnight with Donna in them, but as for the rest of it...
Bleah.
I realise that it was supposed to be a deep psychological study of how basically good people can, in a heartbeat, turn into a baying mob, able and willing to do the unthinkable, when their survival is threatened but, well, been there, done that. It's a plot theme I've seen done a thousand times before on other shows and most of them did it better. So I found it a pretty unoriginal plot.
The problem I often have with RTD's scripts is that I detect a thread of 'Look at me, aren't I clever?" in them which irks me. And I found that in Midnight, which was the other reason I hated it. Yes, I guess all that repeating doubletalk was cleverly done, but the trouble was it was also mindnumbingly boring to watch. After a couple of minutes, I was muttering at the TV, "Yeah, yeah, we get the point, move on!". So it was a shame it went on...and on...and on...for another 20 minutes. Or, at least, it sure felt like 20 minutes.
The final reason I was bored by it was beyond RTD's control, so can't really be fairly levelled as a criticism and that was that it removed the one element which made the rest of the season so enjoyable for me. Donna! <G> I know that for production reasons couldn't be helped, but nevertheless it was a factor in making this the dud of the season for me.
Moffat's two parter, on the other hand, had some very intriguing, original ideas, which has become something of his hallmark for me. I think that's mainly where RTD falls down for me - I find the ideas and plot themes in his scripts to be mostly very unoriginal.
Glad to hear that the ring has no significance for Donna being the Master. Even if it had looked like the Master's ring, I couldn't quite work out where the connection would be.
LabRat
