It was mostly a mess but pulled it around with a stunningly emotional final act. As Hebrides said, the Brig salute was a really powerful and respectful. I feel this series has gone to great lengths to pay tribute and refrence the classsic era like it was all part of one continuity. I guess this is down to being post-50th and the new older Doctor. The previous 7 new series have often felt like they've ignored the past a bit. Afer all, them paying a tribute to the Brig is the creators assuming that the audience know who that character is and are going to have an emotional conection to him. Previously I think the philosophy has been to assume that the new show's new audience have never watched it before. It feels like the show being more confident
.
The plot made very little sense, Moffat shouldn't be allowed to write on his own. Don't get me wrong he's a great Producer. In the classic era Producers writing for the show was all but forbidden (There were a few exceptions) which was probably a wise choice. The whole "Doctor is the President" thing was just thrown out there and nothing interesting done with it. Capaldi was wasted as he spent the most of the episode just starring in disbelief and not doing all that much.
Gomez was fantastic as The Mas..Miss..M..M erm that woman in black ;-). Nothing like the cerebral intelligence of Delgado, or Ainley but in keeping with the manic insanity of Simm.
Overall a B-. The seres started strong and got better and better (Except 'Kill The Moon') but this felt like a dip in quality just at the finale.
In Sci-Fi nobody ever really dies, so I hope it's not the last we've seen of Clara and Danny. I never thought I'd say that as I was extremely bored of Coleman's performance by the end of Series 7. The great writing and added character depth for her in this series has been fantastic.
Really looking forward to the Christmas special as it looks like straight-forward silly fun!