[Den-O]

I'd like to chime in having finally been able to catch up through the finale about 5 minutes ago.

This series as a whole is just all over the place. Capaldi is spot on as the Doctor. I enjoy his fiery almost manipulative portrayal very much. But most everything else this go around was just phoned in. Clara was serviceable as always and Missy wound up being FAR more enjoyable in the final two episode than her lesser appearances through out the series. But the bits with her tacked on for some weeks felt just like that. Tacked on, randomly even. I didn't feel there was true significance to them. And that they didn't really constitute some sort of overarching plot.

The handful of actually enjoyable episodes were (for me) Deep Breath, Listen, & Dark Water. But what I found enjoyable with these was almost drown out with the pointless drivel of a majority of the others. Pointless half companions who didn't amount to anything useful like Courtney just drove me mad. Danny was utterly useless and devoid of character development until the last 10 minutes of the finale. The Doctor as the President of Earth? I mean the list goes on with ill conceived and poorly executed ideas this year.

But I'm firmly in the camp of thank god Osgood died. She was just plain awful. If I'd had to hear "bowties are cool" one more time I'd have tried to do her in myself. So bravo Missy for that. While I feel that Cybrigadier teeters on the edge of smack in the face insult and meaningful albeit misguided tribute, I was happy to see Kate live. So I can forgive it. And the Santa bit at the end with Nick Frost brought a smile right to my face so I'm actually looking forward to the Christmas Special quite a bit.