the way the doctor cheats death seemed kind of like a cop-out to me, even if its really the only good explanation

the doctor believing he's better off dead and everyone he loves desperately trying to save him

gigantic blob of silence on the ceiling.

The fact that the entire season was meant to explain the origin of River Song and the person she murdered (who was obviously the Doctor from the moment they mentioned her being imprisoned for murder) KIND OF diminished the epicness factor in favor of something a little more emotionally driven, but I didn't think that was a bad thing really. It was a more emotional plot line in general, what with the Doctor trying to accept death and all. Beyond that I feel like the season finale was just trying to set up something much bigger, evident by it's ending. As for the pacing feeling off, they seemed like they had to cram a whole lot of information into a single episode. However, I don't feel like they had enough story to keep it going for two whole episodes, ALTHOUGH I kind of wished I could see more of the upside-down everything happening at once world.

Overall I liked it. The whole concept of all of time happening at once in a single moment took me totally by surprise, considering it started with all this bizarre imagery without explaining why at first. I kind of double-taked when River didn't shoot him, and I was all like "Har har!" when the eyepatch lady got her come-upons. And let's be fair about the resolution of how he cheated death in the end, at least it's not totally out of left field like last season's finale where his future self just SOMEHOW jumps back in time to put into motion events that frees his past self, though logically his past self would've had to have been freed ALREADY for his future self to even exist.