Ok, I want to start off by saying that I don't necessarily mean to necro this thread, but there is something really important (to me at least) that nobody has touched upon yet. I just saw the special a few days ago then my internet went out, so I couldn't exactly comment on it while this thread was still live.
Everyone has missed a very simple thing: the last two specials have taken depth away from the series. The Time War taught us a pretty good lesson. Sometimes, no matter who you are or how hard you try, things just can't work out the way you want. Sometimes you just have to go with the lesser evil to prevent a worse evil. That is something that is really hard to teach in an effective way. Not only that but it humbled the Doctor. Every episode we see him save the world/city/galaxy/universe/etc and never see him fail. How big of a complex would a person have if they could just go into a situation, snap their fingers, and it worked out for the best? It showed the Doctor wasn't perfect. The 50th anniversary would have been so much more powerful if they destroyed Galifrey. I honestly thought that was what was going to happen the entire time I was watching it (Hell, I thought it was the point of the episode). I thought The Moment was showing Hurt his future incarnations to show that even though he is about to do the most horrible, unspeakable thing, he can still find redemption. Again, another incredibly complex, deep lesson that is hard to teach. For lack of a better word it humanized the Doctor to show that he can still learn (even if it is from himself) and even he gets lost sometimes. Every other time he may as well be God snapping his fingers[footnote]Admit it. If the show was told from the perspective of everyone the Doctor saves, the Doctor would be viewed as a Deus Ex Machina[/footnote]. Well now the Doctor saved Galifrey because to hell with any sort of deeper meaning to an episode. Moffat just wants to see the Doctor win. It doesn't matter what the Doctor thinks happened. That was just a really terrible way of Moffat covering his tracks [footnote]and not totally invalidating Eccleston which, let's be honest, happened anyway[/footnote].
(Ok, I know this thread is about to the Christmas special, but that paragraph helps drive my point home)
The exact same thing happened with Trenzalore. Moffat actually made the Doctor more relatable with the visiting of Trenzalore by showing how he deals with visiting his grave. We can see him dealing with his mortality. We have essentially an immortal being dealing with mortality. That is pretty heavy stuff which humanizes him making him more relatable. He doesn't necessarily know his eventual death is close, but it is something he doesn't want to think about. We have actually seen him do this twice now that I think about it, but still it is a good quality of your virtually immortal main character to have. This is a plot point that never needs to be brought up again. Just the fact that we see him dealing with his mortality is enough to improve the character. What happens to it? It gets thrown out the window because magic. Ok, not only was that special bad writing, but he suddenly turned one of the best things he wrote into one of the worst. He literally wrote Trenzalore just to take it away. Seriously, Trenzalore was in the last episode of the season only to be thrown away two episodes later. It was drama for the sake of having drama, and that is horrendous writing. If you skipped those two episodes (the season finale and Christmas special), what would you have missed? The explanation of Clara and the regeneration into the next Doctor which is 5 minutes of screen time at best. Fantastic plot advancement Moffat.
Remus said:
And how else was the Doctor going to get a new set of regenerations?
Easy. It is something that has been hinted at and hammered in to us so much that I (and my circle of friends) honestly thought they were going this route: The Doctor lies. It would have been so easy. None of this b.s. Deus Ex Machina that was thrown at us. Now I don't mean that the Doctor straight up lied to us, but it could have been solved by a simple "Time Lords have an
average of 12 regenerations. Some have more, some have less. Time Lords never know how many they have until their number is up just like humans don't know how many years they are going to live until they die. Every once in a while, and this is very, very rare, a time lord will have infinite lives." Done! You gave yourself as many regenerations as you want.
I get your point though, seeing some of the measures taken against his enemies makes you wonder how those enemies still exist in the first place.