(Posted this elsewhere last year, but reposting it, now that this particular episode has it's own thread.....)
I have to say, on the subject of the gender change, I think this following scene is truly dreadful - and is a really hamfisted and heavyhanded way of hammering home the point that Time Lords can now (casually) change gender.
For a start, to get there, the Doctor has to turn into a violent idiot and commit the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed person standing in front of him, because, hey, it's not "cheating death" now. It's just man flu.
And he couldn't save Adric, but will murder and defy the laws of time to save Clara. Because she is more important to him than Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Adric (and Peri?).
The "selfie" quip is groan worthy too and shows that Moffat's talent for humorous dialogue pales next to Robert Holmes and many others of the past.
The misandry that the now female General immediately stands up and comes out with about "all that ego" is another jaw-dropping moment. One matched only by Clara saying to the Doctor in another episode that she would "slap you so hard, you'll regenerate."
If equivalent dialogue was directed from male to female characters, there would be uproar. It is simply not equality and the sign of a somewhat clueless writer at work, in my opinion.
This scene was clearly part of a clumsily planned agenda, presumably in cahoots with Chibnall to layer the gender changing into the WHO mythos.
If that layering had been done dramatically and well, that would be fine.
People often don't think they will like something until they have seen it done well by good writers/actors etc.
Many fans did not want to see Spock die, but as Nick Meyer explained: "The point is not that we kill Spock, but that we kill him well."
They did, of course and we got a great ending to a great film.
But this and other ways of introducing an astonishing new tweak to the mythos was not done dramatically and well, imo. It was done glibly and cynically, little by little. In a silly way. Not in a remotely dramatic way. Story by story. In fact, I think this particular scene was fatally written in the spirit of aggressively defying critics and
not to entertain and enthral an audience, which I feel is entirely the wrong approach to take and so wrong headed it's astonishing.
I felt similar arrogance was displayed in the opening credits of one episode where Clara declared she was the Doctor and her face then appeared in the credits, with Jenna Coleman's name before Capaldi's. Cocking a snook at fans who had felt Clara was becoming too dominant as a character in the show.
That is losing your way as a dramatist, I think.
And overall, I think this following scene was the clearest indicator that Moffat was "Who-ed out" and should already have left by this point, even assuming he should ever have been given the job of showrunner in the first place...
Phew! I've finally got all of that off my chest!
But what do others think?
Here's the scene in question.....
