I also very much liked this. I was concerned, after the mess (quite frankly) that “The Wedding of River Song” was. But this leaves me very satisfied that the 50th is in good hands indeed. I imagine Colin Baker was cringing a bit that his coat made so many appearances; he hated that coat, but joked that it was better for him than anybody else since he was the only one who didn’t actually have to look at the thing. (I liked it because although the colors are insane, the tailoring is fantastic. But dang, trying to make something garish by 80s standards is quite a challenge. The costumer actually managed it.)

The archive footage was fun, though I will have to rewatch it as I don’t remember seeing any of Paul McGann. :-( That may have been due to legal reasons what with Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox having some rights to the footage, but it was disappointing. I hope I just blinked and missed it, and that I’ll see it when I go back and watch it again. ;-)

The one weakness to the archive footage is that although they made a real effort to edit it in well (and honestly did a good job), the difference in video standards and resolution and media and all that really was insurmountable. In a way, that actually added to the nostalgia, as it reminded me of the old practice of shooting on video in the studio and on film on location, which caused that sort of jarring discontinuity constantly on the old series (up until the late 80s when they finally got to bring video onto location consistently — the only exceptions prior to that had been bits of “Invasion of Time”, which had been filmed in a studio that wasn’t equipped for video requiring some interiors to be filmed instead of recorded, and “Stones of Blood”, whose director had somehow successfully campaigned to get a video production van out on location).

I loved all the different costumes and hairstyles they put on Clara as she appeared through the ages. And the attempts to duplicate the archive footage quality for shots where she’d have to be superimposed on archive footage (rather than the other way around).

Maybe “the fall of the eleventh at trenzalore” refers to Smith’s ‘eleventh’ incarnation being revealed as really the twelfth? If true, then it would lend creedence to the ‘McGann > Hurt > Ecclestone’ theory….

It was a great episode (8/10) for number of reasons — all of written above and a few more, that will show up later.

So here I’d like to point out two thoughts for the future, based on this season 7 finale.

First — the finale should always be made in form of a two-parter. Or at least, of a 60-minute episode. 45 mins is just too little space for a story with all rich twists, ideas, and gem-sparkling scenes we know and love in ‘Doctor Who’.

Second — a writer should never again let one character to steal a thunder of a second character. This was supposed to be Clara’s top of the tops, her ultimate secret revealed. Putting in this episode the final heart-breaking farewell of River Song, a character with bigger emotional history with the Doctor, stole the thunder from Clara’s identity and her sacrifice. Amy didn’t steal the Clara’s thunder in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’. River didn’t steal the thunder of Amy and Rory in ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’. Why it happened here?