At the beginning of the episode when the Doctor is stealing the TARDIS, who is he escorting into the room, right before Clara says "You're making a big mistake"? Is it supposed to be Clara? Also, I'm assuming that they took footage from another episode. Is there footage online somewhere?

OK, so, The Name of the Doctor:

I knew that they weren't going to give him an actual proper name. That would have been just wrong.

The resolution to Clara's arc made sense about as much as anything in Doctor Who makes sense. I did struggle a bit with the GI's motivations for what it did, but I resolved that it was a combination of revenge and a longing for release from what apparently was an agonizingly empty immortality. It apparently already knew all there was to know about the Doctor, and that wasn't enough. It had to destroy him and thus destroy itself.

Part of me wishes that the Paternoster gang could have its own spinoff, but I suspect that the charm of that group would get old very fast independent of the parent show. Nonetheless, Strax is the first Sontaran I've actually liked in the history of the show. The kind of Sontaran you'd want to go out on a bender with, you know? (Except he'd probably just go around bending things)

Now to the biggie: The nameless incarnation of the Doctor.

I gotta admit I did NOT see this one coming. I knew John Hurt was going to be in the 50th Anniversary special but had no idea who he was playing. The internet is rife with all kinds of theories about who or what he is. Here are some ideas of mine:

I think, first of all, that any notions of him being the Valeyard are unlikely in the extreme. That would just seem too prosaic for Steven Moffat's style, even if the GI named the Valeyard already. Personally I wasn't nuts about the Valeyard, as he just didn't seem like a very well written character, but that's me and I don't hold it against anyone who liked him.

So, who is he? The Doctor emphatically states "I said he's me, I never said he was The Doctor!" The obvious implication is that this incarnation (whom I will call, for sake of clarity, Hurty) was the one who participated in the Time War. This makes sense for a number of reasons, the most clear of which to me is that Steven Moffat has only really alluded to the Time War, but never had a story that dealt directly with it. I think this was a smart move on his part as Russell T. Davies referred back to the Time War often, and sort of closed that loop during his tenure, at least insofar as explaining why it was necessary for both sides to be destroyed (the Time Lords end game ultimately being no different than that of the Daleks).

However, with the 50th Anniversary, it would surprise me if Moffat didn't finally tackle the Time War given how significant it is in the canon of the show. The allusions to it this season have suggested that it would become a more significant story line, and the presence of Hurty all but confirms it for me.

So, why is Hurty the Doctor's secret? Well, for one thing, he apparently did something really bad that, though he had no choice in the matter, was nonetheless something bad enough that the Doctor disowns Hurty from the timeline of the Doctor. One assumption is that Hurty is the one who threw the switch that made everyone go boom. Well, yeah, but we already knew that the Doctor killed the Daleks and Time Lords, didn't we? He has admitted to doing so time and time again. This would seem to argue against Hurty being the one who did it. So then, what did he do?

My current theory is that it was he who started the Time War.

Thoughts?

this story was written before we learned River was Amy and Rory's daughter