They're just setting up obvious jokes about his wooden performance.

Don't we all…

So you've already got this year's pair of underpants?

Not on your life, my nerdy friend!

Oh, absolutely ; the plot is beautifully structured. I didn't mean to cast aspersions on this particular story,

And in his case, they'd be inaccurate.

Well, the ending of 'Last of the Timelords' is set up by the paradox intrinsic in the plot. As much as I like Moffat, his happy endings depend more on fiat.

The resolutions to the cliff-hangers in two-part episodes are often fairly feeble. This one gets away with it by making a joke of it.

When Steven Moffat wrote the line where Rose objects to the Doctor's lack of a name by asking "Doctor Who? ", did he suspect that he'd be building entire episodes around that theme eight years later?

Yea, I can see your point. I still feel, though, that Jack's actions in, say, 'Children of Earth' come from a different place to his charming manipulation here, when he's still essentially a con-man. It was probably unfair of me to say "shallow" - what I meant was that he's depicted as self-interested, if essentially…

I don't know about that. He's played as roguish and untrustworthy here, but he's still sort of shallow. The intended darkness of his presentation in 'Torchwood' has more to do, I think, with his immortality, and the long life he has led between this episode and the start of the spin-off series.

Well, Rory is the one who has been shown to be a devoted, reliable husband, and Jack is presented as pretty much a sex machine, so your choices make sense. Of course, for the sake of tradition, you could always kill Rory - and then marry him, since he'd come back to life somehow.

The War Doctor articulates the moral position that the episode endorses - it's better to fail at doing the right thing than succeed in doing the wrong thing.

Well, most of them have a particular psychological hook, which,as dygitalninja points out, plays on something primal (fear of the dark, a sense that something has moved when you weren't looking…), but that is what makes them memorable, more than a scary mask. It's these hooks that make his monsters more interesting…

"Bigger on the inside!"

I haven't rewatched series 7, so my opinion might change with time, but I found 'A Town Called Mercy' to be one of the best episodes of that half-series. It was thoughtful and involving, and showcased some great work by Smith.

It was sixty minutes on the (commercial-break-free) BBC.

Well, I'd expect some continuity, with the same showrunner in charge, but I think we'll be entering a distinctly new epoch, with a different set of concerns and storylines.

We'll get a series of stories about him cowering in the TARDIS, not daring to step outside…

The montage of flashbacks to previous appearances of the crack, when the Doctor first sees it on Trenzalore, includes a shot of him opening the hotel room door, and seeing the crack inside.