Was The Doctor Falls a good send off for the Twelfth Doctor?

I'm going to beg to differ: I thought that the "... just be kind" speech was a perfect summation of what Capaldi's Doctor has been striving for all through his run and would have been a perfect sendoff for him. The repeat of "I don't want to go" seemed a little too like padding for me and marred what had been a brilliant episode up until that point. I'm really looking forward to TUAT, but I would have no problem with it being an introductory story for 13. Actually it would be a brilliant introduction for 13: an incarnation of the Doctor unlike any other so far meeting themselves before they had even changed their face the once.

I'm not sure that we can assume that's how exactly how the story of The Doctor Falls would have gone if it were to have been Capaldi's last. In fact, we can pretty much say it's not, at least everything past the explosion. The last 5 minutes would clearly have been vastly different if it were the moment of death. 

The bleakness of refusing to regenerate and wanting to finally die only works because of the reveal a few moments later of the First Doctor and the excitement of finding out that we're getting a multi-Doctor story and that the story isn't over yet. If The Doctor Falls was the regen episode, there would have been something else in story to convince the Doctor to go on - possibly finding out Bill is "alive" or something like that. He wouldn't have died in despair and misery, there would have been some redeeming moment before the end. Since Moffat knew he and Capaldi still had an hour to finish the story, he was able to write a more downbeat characterisation for Capaldi because there's going to be a revelatory It's A Wonderful Life story in 2 days.  

It's quite exciting - we've already seen what kills him. He's dead and gone, we've never had this before where there's a whole episode of The Doctor essentially dead but living in purgatory before deciding to keep living. It'll allow for a much more intimate regen episode than we've had in New Who. 

I loved The Doctor Falls. Very bombastic, spectacular, very spooky and showcased lots of great Capaldi moments. So, bearing in mind bits would have been tweaked (or perhaps un-tweaked) to allow for an end-of-episode regeneration, the two-parter would have been a hugely memorable send-off for my favourite 'Nu Who' Doctor. But it wasn't to be.

As @davygallagher said earlier, we've never had a situation like this before. A story set after the regeneration has started. I'm encouraged by Peter Capaldi's words concerning the episode (see spoiler), because I wouldn't want the process to be any more painful than a protracted regeneration has to be.

Dying to give some humans a little more time. I suppose it fits the mold of some regeneration stories. (But there isn't that much of a 'mold', just a general theme of altruism.....but then that's one of the show's themes, not just regeneration-story theme).

I could really have done without the "I don't want to change anymore" nonsense. Blech!

I would also have preferred if they either did not kill Bill or leave her actually dead. Sure, from Bill's point of view, she really did go through the whole cyberdization thing. But it seems to cheapen it to magically rescue her, and let's be fair, Space Girl is more or less magical even for this show.




I wasn't particularly happy with the various logical holes in the story (ie, from the perspective of people on the bridge, the repair crew would've entered the elevator, the doors closed, then almost immediateley re-opened with the repair crew...job done. They'd have had to chosen to stay at the engines knowing time was virtually frozen on the bridge for the key aspect of the episode to happen; nevermind that the notion that cyberdization is inevitable seemed absurd to me. People would just take elevators up and/or punch through floors to start another level, not turn themselves into machines to stay in a ruined smoggy level. Etc).

It's just one of those ones I can enjoy when I'm actually watching it, but which seems poor in many respects if I stop to analyze it.