Given the sheer number of hanging threads Moffat had set up for himself with Eleven's story, this one episode did an admirable job of tying them off. Some of the explanations are a little wobbly (for example, the confirmation of who blew up the TARDIS at the end of season five begs the question of just why the hell they thought that was preferable to the alternative; perhaps they didn't know that it would destroy the universe, but then why destroy the TARDIS when the Doctor specifically wasn't on it? Clearly they didn't just want to blow him up. Maybe they were only trying to prevent him from time traveling and the universe destruction was an unintended side effect) ... I think I lost my sentence somewhere back there. Anyway.

Right, a few rushed and wobbly explanations, but we got who blew up the TARDIS, who the Silence really are and what their origin/goal is, what the long-face Silence aliens are, what the Doctor saw behind the door in The God Complex ... that's quite a bit for one episode. And in the end, this version of the Doctor lived a longer life than any other, I think, even the first. He was already over 200 years old when the episode started, and another 300 years went by before we saw the mildly old version of him, so by the time he died of old age he must have been at least six or seven hundred years old in this incarnation alone, making the Doctor as a whole at least 1500 years old now, at a guess. That's something I enjoy about what Moffat has done. There's a real sense that this Doctor does a lot of things that we just don't get to see him do, like we only get brief glimpses into his madcap, centuries-long life, contrasted with Tennant where it felt as though we saw nearly every moment of the three or four years of that version of the Doctor's life.

I was surprised that they suddenly decided to deal with the regeneration issue out of the blue, assigning two new official versions of the Doctor in two episodes (the war Doctor and the second Ten) to allow them to push up against the limit without warning. The limit wasn't even brought up when the Doctor was about to die in Let's Kill Hitler (in fact River used a poison specifically to keep him from regenerating). Any fan who didn't know about the limit from the older show probably felt a bit lost. But I guess that's that. Issue dealt with, fresh set of twelve regenerations granted by the Time Lords from another universe, bing bang boom. Now if only they'd deal with the Valeyard.

I enjoyed Matt Smith's Doctor a lot. He felt like one of the most human, while at the same time being clearly alien. His rapport with children, the daft exterior he used when he could to cover up his very serious thoughts, and his capacity to care for anyone at any time for any reason all endeared him to me. He felt very much like a man who had gained enough wisdom from a thousand years of life to know that you can't take yourself too seriously. This episode displayed that quality to great effect.

It also placed the Doctor in a situation where he truly got to prove that he would sacrifice himself for even the smallest of people. He would always put himself at risk for people before, but due to the nature of the show he was never had to face the reality of giving up his life -- hundreds of years and eventually his actual and final life -- for a handful of people he didn't even know at first. There's an argument to be made that giving himself up for such a small cause is selfish given how many others he could save if he had simply run away and let the planet die, but that could be said every time he risks himself for anything less than the end of the universe. The nature of his character is that he'll choose to give his all to small cause and big cause alike, every time. And here he really had to give his all. It was a lot of fun to watch.

This also has to have been the least Christmassy Christmas special ever.