Fair enough. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I liked bits of the episode a lot. I thought it was pretty fun. It was pretty much what I expected it to be.
They want to prevent the question being asked... the question being "Doctor who?". And it was asked in this episode.
Yeah, if you think of this episode as pure setup for the 50th anniversary special, then it might actually wind up looking good... It really really depends how powerful that story is. It's going to have to pack a hell of a punch at this point.
I don't see why that would get in the way of a good story... a good story is when you make things difficult for the characters, not easy for them.
In one of the DVD special features, there's a scene where the Doctor meets himself briefly and he's just about to give River the sonic screwdriver.
Yeah, except that lots of other events in the Doctor's past already included the Great Intelligence and Clara interfering — like the Dalek Asylum episode, for example. Why is this different?
I'm sure that was just budgetary reasons. They already had the set.
I really, really hope they turn the Doctor's limited number of lives into the basis of a story. Because watching a hero struggle against his final death is more interesting than having him snap his fingers and say, "Oh, the 12-regeneration limit was sorted ages ago." What's the point in sweeping a potential great story…