Okay, so I guess, I'll start with what I liked. I liked the idea of the time hotel and I absolutely adored the set and how they made it look (even though I think it would have been cute to hand out dos and don'ts to the guests on how to avoid paradoxes or how to avoid changing history?). Hobbit Door! Thank you Disney for the budget, also for the cool dinosaur. I liked Anita and I liked Trev. I liked what I guess was the idea behind the story.

Now to the things I didn't like and boy, there were quite a few, so I will only go into my main issues here. I think this was one of the weakest, if not the weakest episode Moffat has ever written. The whole story felt kinda incomplete and all over the place. As if they tried to cram 2hrs of story into barely an hour of screen time and some things just didn't make any sense. The whole scene with the Doctor coming down at Joy to jerk her out of the trance was..... painful to watch. Too close to the reality of many people who are getting abused, mistreated and discriminated by family, friends and strangers, just to be said "oh I was just joking" especially as half the arguments the Doctor used were simply lies (Joy didn't pick the room and barely spent five minutes in it before the manager stepped through the door).

The Doctor suddenly and out of nowhere screaming at his future self about how he is hated, he is alone and nobody likes him. While it would have made sense for 10, 11 and 12 - 15 was supposed to be the Doctor who let his emotional baggage behind with 14, started a new life, fresh and light - so where was that sudden outburst of self hate coming from? It was so badly out of character that it completely threw me out of the story.

Joy - while I liked her, we didn't get to know her. We got to know her pain about losing her mother, but nothing else. And the fact that she sacrificed herself in the end with words that were more fitting to the teachings of a sect than the words of a woman who looked as if she definitely had a life outside of her pain on Christmas including friends and a job. It loses even more of its impact knowing the original idea was that the Doctor would throw the star out of the Tardis. But I guess it isn't Moffat if he somehow can't make a woman suffer or sacrifice herself for the greater good.

We lost Trev and the manager too quickly. Would have loved if we'd get to know him better so their deaths would have actually left an emotional impact.

And last - the religion stuff. Did they really just confirm the whole Jesus birth story as fact in the Whoniverse?? JFC. I absolutely utterly HATE that. Yes, it's a Christmas story, but this is taking a side and it's a terrible one. They better confirm all the other religions as real now.

All in all, the Christmas special I liked least. I watched it twice and I will definitely never watch it again.

I'm not a fan of audio books cos my brain is wired wrong for them, but I gave this one a go because the idea of Nine meeting River was a fascinating idea. I'll never get used to listening to audio books, but I found the story enjoyable, even though River's and Nine's interactions weren't quite as I hoped. What got me most in this story was the amazing and unexpected representation for the Ace and Aro orientation!