Doctor Who Christmas specials are often disappointing; Kylie Minogue aboard an interstellar Titanic was a case in point. They tend to suffer from overstuffing, with the writers scrambling to please everyone by including everything. 'The Time of the Doctor' certainly began this way; giving us Cybermen, Daleks, Weeping Angels and the Silence all in under ten minutes felt too much like a box-ticking exercise. Similarly, the subplot which saw the typically underused Clara invite the Doctor for Christmas dinner seemed like it existed only to crowbar in a Christmas dinner scene. That said, TTOTD wasn’t entirely without new ideas; the vast Papal Mainframe ("why does it have to be Papal?", cries the lapsed Catholic in me) is an intriguing addition to the Whoniverse, and Orla Brady shone in her cameo as church-leader Tasha Lem.

Let’s count the blessings. For once the festive theme didn’t feel too forced, and the snowbound town of Christmas, Trenzalore, was a pleasant enough place to spend an hour after Christmas dinner. Left Tardis-less on Trenzalore for reasons of plot, the Doctor defends Christmas against various invaders for half a millennium and becomes a pillar of the local community, aging slowly all the while. Cynics might say that Who is recycling old tricks here; leaving a main character tragically stranded for years is a device we’ve seen before (cf. Rory in 'The Pandorica Opens', Amelia in 'The Girl Who Waited', both Rory and Amelia in 'The Angels Take Manhattan'). Speaking of old tricks, the episode’s basic premise (“The Doctor’s going to die! For real this time!”) has been milked to death throughout the Smith era, robbing his actual departure of some of its impact. Nonetheless, the small-town setting was an oddly appropriate send-off for the Eleventh Doctor, offering him the kind of gentle retirement he contemplated in 'The Day of the Doctor', intermittent Dalek-attacks notwithstanding.

Showing the Doctor growing old wasn’t necessarily the best idea. His physical deterioration felt unnecessary; ignoring Tom Baker’s 'Day of the Doctor' cameo for a moment, Doctors generally don’t age visibly. After several series of being convincingly old and crotchety, it would have been kind of the producers to have let Smith demonstrate this deterioration through his performance, rather than burying him under several layers of latex. Still, it was touching to watch his Doctor reduced to senile passivity, shuffling around and calling people by the wrong name. When the invaders finally break through and the good people of Christmas begin to die in the streets, the Doctor reassures a young boy, “It’s okay, I have a plan”, before sadly confiding to Clara, “I don’t. But they like it when I say that.” It was a moving moment. Soon afterwards, The Doctor and the remaining Christmas-ers are saved by an illogical plot-twist (as we all knew they would be), but the earlier melancholy still hung in the air.

It certainly wasn’t a classic, but it had its high points. Smith’s regeneration was wonderfully abrupt. There were no tears, and no Tennant-style farewell tour. A shudder, a stumble, and a second later Capaldi had arrived, eyes bulging with fear, incapable of flying the Tardis. If this first appearance is anything to go on, next year will be fun.