I got pretty much everything I wanted out of it.
I went the cinema to see it in 3D -- I was sat next to a 5/6 year old and his dad. The kids father was really concerned about all of the noise his kid was making, but I didn't really mind - it was quite cute really. He kept asking things like 'where has the queen gone?', 'where are they now?' - and when the two TARDIS' appeared he let out a big "WOOWWWWW!"
The cinema showing had a turn-your-phones-off introduction with Strax the Sontaran... He had various humans tied up being water-boarded or something, and he was saying things like "THIS PUNY HUMAN DIDN'T TURN OFF HER COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE". He said that he enjoyed eating popcorn because he enjoyed hearing the screams of the corn - and they showed this close up of his mouth chewing some screaming corn. It got a good few laughs.
Then Matt Smith and David Tennant did an introduction about putting on your 3D glasses, which also prefaced some jokes in the actual episode -- stuff like Tennant calling Smith 'chinny' and saying his chin might scare the audience in 3D etc. I loved all that extra stuff, I hope its in the DVD / Blu Ray.
As for the episode:
- RTD had a bad habit of making irreversible decisions that were always going to need reversing, or else forever altering the show. Daleks being dead and gone three or four times, huge events taking place in the middle of London and seemingly forgotten later, entire worlds being moved or killed off, completely eradicating the Time Lords and Gallifrey and hamstringing future writers on the show.... this episode fixed that. It actually did it in a kind of clever way too, Moffat's best writing for a long time.
- There were a heap of references for fans old and new.
- the policeman walking past the scrap-merchants sign: a direct lift from the first episode of the show, referencing the yard where the Doctor's TARDIS was first discovered on Earth
- Clara's school is named after the same one the Doctor's companion Susan attended, and the sign indicated the school governor chair is Ian Chesterton - another of his old companions - and the headmaster is W Coburn, a reference to the writer of the first episode.
- the Brigadier's daughter, and the references to the 70s/80s when she asks her colleague to look up the Zygon incident file
- the fourth Doctor's scarf
- Tennant's story with the Queen was referred to in his run, where he affectionately recalled running away from Bess etc.
- Tennants speech to the Rabbit has a piece of his rant from Voyage of the Damned
- Bad Wolf
- The round things in the TARDIS
- "Oh you've redecorated! I don't like it" - a line from Patrick Troughton
- "I don't want to go"
- The curator. Who... nose... Who Knows. Gallifrey Falls No More
It was just great.
