Michael Lysaght So, where to begin? Moffat collects the table scraps from previous script meetings and scrambles them together to try to form any semblance of a feature length episode. That's about as accurate of a synopsis I can give.Basically, a clone of River Song (yes, I know she's a different character but she's written exactly the same way) warns the Doctor about his upcoming fate on Trenzalore.Meanwhile, Clara tries to masquerade the Doctor off as her boyfriend to her family, who are quite possibly the most pointless characters. They just sit at the dinner table looking bewildered, with no familial character development being established at all.Basically, the Doctor spends centuries safeguarding this Christmas themed planet from alien threats. (Oh wait, 'threat' would imply that they were actually threatening!) The Doctor has reached his final regeneration in his life cycle so he essentially lives out his life repelling aliens.As he ages thanks to the use of ridiculous looking prosthetics, the Daleks have him cornered, making him surrender.Then a literal Deus Ex Machina happens where the Time Lords fracture the skin of the universe just to give him a new regeneration cycle. He regenerates twice for some reason because Moffat is convinced to drain as many tears from the fangirls as possible. In a supposedly heartfelt farewell speech to Clara, all of a sudden, BOOM! CAPALDI! The tonal inconsistency is terrible and there's no reason for it to be so sudden. They clearly blew their CGI budget already.Overall, this episode was a mess. Matt Smith's tenure was in no way honoured here.

GameAndWatch As the credits rolled. I turned to a fellow 11th fan and we both shrugged. We felt disappointed and cheated. This episode failed to engage or captivate the pair of us.(I've since re-watched the episode, and it's certainly better for a second viewing.)There is a story here in waiting albeit jumbled and incoherent. Luckily it is saved by a few prosaic lines from the Doctor. Some mysteries are answered. The burning question about the finite limit of the Doctor's regenerations has speculation put to rest. There were some gentle pokes at the fans. One example is the Doctor referencing 'the Rules' when shouting at Daleks.Why was the town called Christmas, is there any deeper meaning here? Is it just the bleakness of winter with Trenzalore and Christmas being shrouded in darkness? (Rickets must have been pervasive, perhaps that's why the Doctor required a walking stick.) Or was the stick a Dickensian Scrooge reference? We kind of get a crotchety curmudgeon of a Doctor.There were a couple of plot devices that felt half baked. Such as Handles and the truth field.Is Handles just there to identify Gallifrey and decipher the broadcast? What was the purpose of the truth field? I assumed the stand off would get broken by simply asking the Doctor his name outright (a difficult question to side step there). The Doctor states that he has a plan, and then jokes that he doesn't, another false truth?Technology is outlawed in Christmas and yet we see electric lights, and later Handles and even the Tardis. The Doctor doesn't appear buff upon re- entry to the planet either (is this just skirted over?). If technology is forbidden surely the holographic units should be stripped from them. The pair weren't naked on Trenzalore.The same old foes are dusted off for this Christmas outing: the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Weeping Angels etc. Most of which didn't really add anything and just increased the noise. Please, please put the Daleks to sleep.The featured regeneration was a whopper. But it was two staged, partly to tease us viewers. In some ways I'd have preferred to have this at the outset of the episode to quell expectations. Begin with the end, then let the 11th have his hour.I'll gloss over this story and its imperfections to make way for the next incarnation. I can only hope that the BBC start afresh next time round. I liked the 11th Doctor, but he still feels alien to me, we didn't get enough of him. There weren't many stand out stories, the 11th didn't really get the chance to shine.As a sci-fi fan I would like: less Earth, more Doctor, a new intelligent side kick and some more captivating thought provoking human alien stories. I'm not even that fussed about the time travel! You can throw away the mediocre series spanning story arcs and the dullard companions.So long chinny...

rubenvanbergen As others have pointed out, the main problem with The Time of the Doctor is that it is too short. Or perhaps Moffat had too much to put in it. Either way, it leads to an episode with a few frayed ends where it has been stretched too thin. The whole family Christmas dinner, for starters, is basically pointless. What should have been no more than an establishing shot, a starting point for the story, is allotted too much screen time, the loss of which is only compounded in other places. For example, Mother Superious (Tasha) being Dalekified and then un-Dalekified in the space of a minute. That's no way to put us on the edge of our seats, Moffat, you have to build up the tension, then release it, not pop the balloon while you're still blowing it up.Anyway, that can all be forgiven, which I can't say of my main objection: the Time Lords suddenly going all weak in the knees, giving the Doctor a new regeneration cycle and (apparently) just giving up the entire plan of trying to bring back Gallifrey. If that wasn't important, then why go to all the trouble? And hasn't it been established (in The End of Time) that the Time Lords are basically evil now and would rather destroy the universe than remain stuck in the Time Lock? So now we are to believe that all it took was a pretty girl saying "please" and that's that? Suddenly they all love the Doctor, and are okay with not doing the whole "getting back into the universe"-thing if it means helping him out with his bad back? Sorry, but no. I don't buy it.That is, I don't buy the motivation. I accept that it happened. I accept that the Doctor was granted a new regeneration cycle and used it to defeat the Daleks and that it set up an excellent regeneration scene. I also feel that given the number of loose ends that needed to be tied up, we can take this in our stride and just be happy that it isn't Damon Lindelof who's running the show. At least we were given some fairly decent answers and everything mostly came together. I'm sure that had this story been given half an hour more to reach it full potential, it would have done so, and so I'm just going to imagine that it did. The canon stands, and I'm happy to fill in the gaps myself. But please, BBC & Steven Moffat, next time, take your time.

ragingrei Technically, that was a spoiler, because that's what happened in this episode.It was an over-saturated mess in which everything happened and nothing mattered. People popped in and out without purpose, old props made cameos without consequence. Plot twists clearly marked RECYCLE get tossed in the trash bin after very, very brief use.Pacing was non-existent. Nothing the characters do or have happen to them (and believe me, a lot of things happen to a lot of characters) means anything at all. You can tell Moffat was trying to make it seem tragic, but he glosses over everything so haphazardly that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- sticks.It was like watching an hour-long movie trailer. I'd like to believe the episode was written by the marketing department.