The curtain comes down and descends. Collecting together loose ends. Though it takes quite a while. To transcend and resile. As the life of a Time Lord extends.

Here ends the saga of the Eleventh Doctor. It has been an erratic journey, with many failures in story telling, buttressed by a fine performance by Matthew Smith as the most alien of the Doctors, the old man in the young body. In fact, that may be a major cause of the trouble: so much of the past three series has been involved with the weird shtick that Matt Smith performs so engagingly that story logic has given given scant shrift.

And so we come to the Christmas Special set in a town called Christmas: the death of the sun and the quickening of the new one; a Doctor that is wounded in one leg like the Fisher King; a Doctor out of regenerations, fighting the end of his old world.

However, nothing can be born until something dies, and anyone who goes to watch this episode knows that there will be another Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. First, though, all the forces of the old times must be faced: Daleks, the Silence, the Cybermen, Weeping Angels, the Cracks in Space and Time, the Time Lords of Gallifrey and, most terrifying of all, naked death.

The story of this special is a story told in mythic terms. There has been a lot of bafflegab and fast-talking nonsense to get through a lot of stories in the past, but this episode, by using the mythic idea of the True Name, series runner Steven Moffatt has produced an episode that will annoy most fans.

Most fans think they know how the world works, how Doctor Who works. However, the essence of mythic story telling is mystery, death and rebirth. It's directly contrary to the way most people think of Doctor Who, which is supposed to be Science Fiction. Stop looking in your physics textbooks for the answers. Don't concern yourself with what's written in astronomy texts. Look instead in Joseph Campbell's work. For starters, take a look at THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. We've seen a baker's dozen now. here are plenty of faces to go.

Clara invites the Doctor to Christmas dinner, all goes wrong and they end up travelling to the Papal Mainframe, a massive floating Church. The Doctor tries landing on the planet underneath to find out what the strange message is that they are receiving, but the Church blocks everyone's attempts at landing there, including the Doctor's. Head of the Church Tasha Lem allows them to teleport down, where they land on the truthful town of Christmas. Once again the crack in the wall appears. Tasha Lem informs the Doctor that the planet he has landed on is Trenzalore. The Doctor protects his new home from all manner of invasions and attacks. The Daleks attack the Papal Mainframe, and it falls on the Doctor working with the Silence against the Daleks.

Now I love me some handles, Kayvan Novak, why would you have Mr Novak in a show and not get to see him though!! What a visual waste.

They try to cram it all in, the Cybermen, the Daleks, The Silence, The Weeping Angels, Sontarans, they try almost too hard to force too much into it.

I did love the wooden Cybermen. What an awesome creation.

It does tie up lots of loose ends, 'Silence will fall,' who the monsters are, why Madame Kovarian broke away etc.

Matt Smith is again spellbinding, he cannot be faulted in any way shape or form, it's a brilliant performance from him. I would have liked one more series from him. I liked that Amy made an appearance.

The episode itself, huge ideas, masses going on, yes it's very messy but I quite like it, I don't think Matt was totally given the send off that he deserved but it is still a very sweet episode, with lots of features from his time, fish fingers and custard etc. It seems a little bit like we've been here before, elements of Time of the Doctor? possibly. 7/10