Gatiss said he was working on the "Sleep No More" sequel until it became clear Moffat and Capaldi and co. were leaving after this season and he decided to do this one instead — apparently it was a concept he'd had on "ice", as it were, and its more elaborate nature seemed more fitting as a last hurrah for this era of…

Yeah, but at least her even being heard from the Vault was a surprise to me. I missed that commercial break — why are they even doing that? They used to just have making-of bits instead.

This might have been a great two-parter, come to think of it. But leave 'em wanting more I suppose…

Yeah, I still don't know why he couldn't cure his blindness if he could do THAT. I really do wonder if they just worked that into "Lie of the Land" just so they could use it as a red herring for the season-spanning trailers and hide bigger developments down the line, because everybody was wondering what was going to…

Could be. I sense, from what's been officially released about the finale so far, that there will be an inversion of sorts from the Series 9 finale. Where the Doctor went bad in "Hell Bent" for the sake of a good person he loved, this time he might go out doing what's right for the sake of a bad person…

Yeah, they don't seem to count that towards his total age because TECHNICALLY only the last few days of the last copy counted. But that brings up another potential reason for stress: Maybe he's not sure he can properly regenerate again thanks to really being a copy of himself?

In "Before the Flood", he turned out to be the chap in the Fisher King's coffin, so he slept for over 100 years to get back to Clara and company. (Which, as someone pointed out at TVTropes, was basically foreshadowing the confession dial ordeal — billions of years to get back to Clara.)

A lot of fans I chat with elsewhere are too. To me, I think he's aware that his end is near — he's been around a few centuries at this point. Because his body is not fit and young-looking, he has always been aware of his "total" age in a way his immediate predecessors were not. He knows he can't deny he's an old…

Also — kudos to the Beeb's marketing department because Missy being part of this episode was not spoiled by any advance marketing, a nice surprise given how much they've spoiled last seasons — they pretty much blew everything about the Series 9 finale except how Clara turned up in that diner.

And it's moments like that that encapsulate why Peter Capaldi's Doctor, despite struggling with the same script unevenness every Doctor does, is a cut above the rest.

Yeah, I think something like this was a pretty good transition from the near-miss of the Monks Trilogy back into some relative breather stories before the sure-to-be-heartbreaking season finale. Not too heavy, not too light. (That said, I think "Lie of the Land" is better than its reputation seems to be, though it's…

I liked this one, though yeah, it could have pushed the eccentric concept a lot further than it did. But perhaps Gatiss didn't want to risk the Ice Warriors being played for comedy? And yeah, "Robot of Sherwood" doesn't get enough credit. That was the story a few other fans recommended to me when I asked which…

Never followed this series, but what an excellent take on the kind of things that are hamstringing big-budget Hollywood productions today.

This does bring up a major problem with the whole concept behind this film — Mary Poppins has been parodied and twisted so often ("The Simpsons" spoof quoted here, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" Vol. 3, "Doctor Who" villainess Missy, etc.) will audiences accept a played-straight version again?

My understanding is that "Oxygen" originally ended with his blindness being fixed but Moffat liked the idea of him having to deal with a long-term consequence. And that could have worked out in this trilogy, especially if they'd gone with him being brainwashed here and unable to truly "see" in any sense. But yeah,…

It's been pointed out that a major plot hole of this episode is that the Doctor's propaganda work was partially responsible for many people being arrested, imprisoned, and even executed over six months, but nobody brings that up. Was that for the greater good under the circumstances?

I mentioned this before, but this run of episodes should have been 3 standalone stories instead of a 3-parter. "Pyramid at the End of the World" would have played a lot better as a standalone with a happy ending.

If the power of love is so powerful, though, how come it didn't give the Twelfth Doctor a happy ending in "Hell Bent"? Guess it doesn't apply to old guys with angry eyebrows…

Yeah, I really thought they'd go with the Doctor just being brainwashed. In fact, wouldn't it have been awesome for the Monks to give him not a false history of humanity, but a false FUTURE? He'd honestly believe the Monks were needed because he'd have forgotten all of his experiences with future humanity.

I've read up from "Doctor Who Magazine" on what's being planned for the finale, and I hope they don't whiff it — it could be very, very interesting indeed. But no spoilers.