Doctor Who season finale (2014/11/08)

[Cobalt Greywalker]

All I can say (because I'm laughing so hard) is:

YES!!!! (NB: trying to set size to xx-large here)

(NOTE: Watch through the credits)

[Dragonflight]

Which credits? The opening or closing? I thought the little nod to the idea of a female Doctor in the opening credits was wonderful.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Matrix Dragon]

Both, actually

[DeputyJones]

If there does end up being a female Doctor, you just KNOW she's going to drop a line along the spirit of "Right then, Rule One for this incarnation: Jack doesn't find out about this."

[Labster]

OK, the last scene really was great.  And Clara had that one great "CMoA" scene.
I think I'm just happy we reached the end of this season, though.  The plots of this season were actually pretty good, but the characters seemed to alternate between annoying and bland.  Capaldi is a fine actor, but doesn't have the natural comic timing for the role, which they've written as either a grump or a brat.  Clara's character has been getting less and less interesting -- I think she was at her most interesting as souffle girl Oswin, and has fizzled dramatically since Trensilore. Mr Pink is pretty cool, though.  With the exception of the Missy teasers which always seemed tacked-on rather than mysterious a la "bad wolf", the plots have been, by and large, really interesting this year.  Which is what makes it frustrating as I think I care about the characters less than any other show that I'm currently watching.
I'm getting more tempted to dust off that fanfic idea I had, substituting Clara for one Aino Minako.  Because Sailor V has got personality in spades.  And the whole dying in a futile effort to save your homeworld?  She remembers.
Incidentally, this season seemed to provide a good fic-splantion for why the Moon is so powerful -- and why Chibimoon exists independently. (/hijack)
-- ∇×V

[Matrix Dragon]

This season has really struggled. The better episodes are already some of my favourites, but the worse eps, they're pretty far down the list. I saw it best in a comment by James Roberts. They were writing for Tennant or Smith, when they needed to be writing for John Hurt.

The Doctor, with the exception of one element of his character, I've enjoyed. He's still undeniably the Doctor, although the grumpiness is a little more dominant. Showing his age a bit more this time around has actually been good for him, I think.

Clara... her seeing the Doctors darker side, and the kinds of choices he has to make, had potential. It was let down by the fact that episodes like Kill The Moon made me want to throw a sonic screwdriver through the tv.

Danny... Also had potential. A Mickey Smith style character that had experience in the hard life of a soldier. Brilliant idea. No interest in travelling with the Doctor, hell, they're just the sort of people that know they'd never be friends. Another nifty idea. This was quickly and completely ruined by a simple fact. They wrote him as a pretentious, opinionated, smug JACKASS. Every chance he got, he was taking potshots at the Doctor, with snide comments and insults. My ability to tolerate his bullshit came to a violent end the instant he threw a salute at the Doctor in the TARDIS. And yes, the Doctor started it with his PE teacher comments, I know. But you know what? There's a mile of difference between the snarky comments from the Doctor and the outright abuse Danny was throwing around. In the final ep, when he continued that 'General' bullshit and tried to point out the Doctors apparent hypocrisy with his 'see all those big speeches vanish in the face of a tactical advantage' line? I wanted to see him get unplugged. I wanted him to get blown up with all the other Cybermen and good riddance.

That does bring me back around to my one problem with the Doctor this season. He's never been a fan of the military option, or guns in general. It's not his style. But this season, the contempt the Doctor showed for anyone in a uniform, not just Jackass Pink, but anyone? I found it honestly offensive.

[Labster]

I saw the anti-soldier attitudes from The Doctor as a form of self-hatred.  As in really hating the War Doctor, and in what Matt Smith became at the end of his life.  So I had no issue with the attitude, except he had to be such a damn prig about that it just made him unlikeable.  I'll grant that Danny was too childish in return, and especially so in the last episode because it didn't seem to be based on anything that had happened to that character.  It was more like a meta-level indictment of the Doctor's character which could have come from another character with a long history, but instead we got Danny Pink. 
But as we know, doctors do go to war, right or wrong.  Doctors must choose to kill a parasite to save a patient.  To quote EPU, that's what it means to be a Chooser of the Slain.  And this Doctor isn't showing his age, he's showing his childishness in not coming to terms with himself.
If it were me, after The Day of the Doctor, I would have made this season be about trying to find his way back to Gallifrey.  The journey home is such an obvious plot, and a quest like that is still such a good uplifting story.  It could take years to find it; I recall Odysseus having a hard time on a similar journey.  But they wasted the best news for the Doctor and turned him into a childish grump, navel-gazing over whether he is a "good" man, and that was truly a waste.
-- ∇×V