Well we all knew how this one was going to end so it was really just a case of how also departing writer and show-runner Steven Moffat would get us there that mattered. In so doing he found a nice juicy part for his sometime collaborator Mark Gatiss with character whose identity I guessed long before the end and a story which saw us encounter the Doctor's first incarnation, plus the reincarnations, or so it seemed of Bill Potts and more briefly Nardini and more welcomely, Jenna Coleman as Clara. There was a mysterious presence going by the name of Testimony, a glass-formed creature which handily gathers and retains the memories of individuals on the verge of death, a meet-up with a reformed Dalek and of course at the climax, the at last welcome regeneration into new doc, Jodie Whittaker.
For once then the doctor wasn't pitted against some galaxy threatening do-badder, although I felt the lack of any sense of danger, coupled with the inevitability of the outcome, rather took some of the edge off the episode. The commemoration of the Christmas 2014 World War 1 Armistice (remembering this episode was this year's Christmas Special), was apt and tastefully rendered. Perhaps more could have been done in the interaction between the two Doctors, although the old doc's antiquated sexist outlook couldn't have been more accidentally topical if it tried.
I'll certainly miss Capaldi's waspish humour and yes, his Scottishness, but with a new writing team as well as the first ever female doctor the next season will be intriguing to say the least.
I wish Ms Whittaker well in the part and will be keenly anticipating the new doctor's new adventures in the coming year.
For once then the doctor wasn't pitted against some galaxy threatening do-badder, although I felt the lack of any sense of danger, coupled with the inevitability of the outcome, rather took some of the edge off the episode. The commemoration of the Christmas 2014 World War 1 Armistice (remembering this episode was this year's Christmas Special), was apt and tastefully rendered. Perhaps more could have been done in the interaction between the two Doctors, although the old doc's antiquated sexist outlook couldn't have been more accidentally topical if it tried.
I'll certainly miss Capaldi's waspish humour and yes, his Scottishness, but with a new writing team as well as the first ever female doctor the next season will be intriguing to say the least.
I wish Ms Whittaker well in the part and will be keenly anticipating the new doctor's new adventures in the coming year.