I enjoyed it in the moment. I went to a
Doctor Who viewing party in Baltimore, and there were about 100 people there in a make-shift theater. Moffat's
Who is tailor-made to be watched with a crowd. It makes for a good communal activity.
When I stopped to think about it, it falls apart.
There are some interesting implications to the story. It cleverly rewrites the RTD era by rewriting the assumptions of the era but leaving the text itself intact.
But on a narrative level, it was setpieces in search of a plot. The Zygon plot existed long enough to function as a MacGuffin and was then dismissed for the real meat of the story -- the Doctor's culpability for the Time War. (That's not unusual for Moffat; the Daleks were important in "Asylum of the Daleks" to the extent that they let Amy and Rory's relationship problems play out.) The tenth Doctor had no significant narrative function that I could discern except to be part of the MacGuffin.
I guess the "present" in the 2020s, which means that Clara is from the 2020s. Either that, or she's older.
Hurt's Doctor could have been Eccleston
or McGann. I defended the casting of Hurt as an unknown incarnation of the Doctor, but in execution this felt like an excuse to cast a name actor as the Doctor. And I was disappointed by the regeneration at the end, though dialogue suggests there's about 100 years between that event and "Rose," and I'm fine with that.
The real crime was how the story absolved the Doctor of the guilt for using the Moment, but then making him forget that he didn't so he carried that guilt for 400 years. Hurt's Doctor got to be acknowledged as the Doctor, yet he promptly forgets this fact and his subsequent incarnations see him as anathema. Moffat gives us a warm-fuzzy ending then yanks it away. The story doesn't have the courage of its own convictions.
In the final analysis, except for a few throwaway moments, this was largely a culmination of
Doctor Who post-2005, as it resolved a number of outstanding issues from the past eight and half years.
Moffat did what he does best -- he delivered popcorn entertainment. And when consumed as popcorn, like Brannon Braga's best
Star Trek work, it went down fine. It's when you stop and think about what you've eaten that you start to wonder what it is you've eaten and you have second thoughts.
