I'm probably in the "haters" camp and have skipped more than a few episodes in this series since the first one but for what it's worth :
I thought the "Orient Express" one was OK.
The mummy was quite well realised and the story was OK.
I thought the on-screen countdown was a bit gimimicky but that's a small thing.
Have sympathy with those unhappy with the Doctor "cheap attitude to life" view but also can see argument that he's always been like that in a way but this series seems to be going out of its way to hammer that point home but a bit heavy-handedly imho.
I still haven't seen the actual full end as the Catch-Up kept cutting out, but it sounds like I didn't miss much in the last couple of minutes.
Flatline - thought the shrinking people to 2D was a great idea - on a par with the Weeping Angels. And on the whole I enjoyed the episode.
Think what I could do without is the attempt to have an over-reaching arc across the series -that last teasing bit just seems a bit tacked on.
It makes me nostalgic for the classic series where stories were basically standalone. You might have some fleeting references or continuity between them but there was no artificial pressure of expectation to always be leading up to some climatic end of season reveal-all, and certainly much less soap-opera-y concentration on companions' hinterlands or companions' "relationship" with the Doctor.
Except maybe when they were leaving or just being introduced.
Call me old-fashioned but this seems to me to just be an excuse for writers to indulge in how far they can stretch the Dr Who format in terms of stamping their own "authorship" on the programme instead of concentrating on what I feel was always Dr Who's traditional strength - is it a good story/concept ? is there a scary/creepy adversary ? Are we more interested in the overall story than whether the companion thinks the Doctor is trustworthy or a "good man" or whatever the show-runner's particular bête-noire is this season ?
Personally I think it puts too much pressure on the writers and panders to the American view of TV where a show seems to have to have a continuing narrative keeping it going way beyond the narrative and characters' natural shelf life purely for reasons of episode numbers and syndication rights or whatever the economics are.
Whereas I always thought Dr Who's fundamental strength was always - he can go anywhere, he can meet anything, every story can be different, there wasn't even originally any pressure to explain anything about who he was, where he came from or what his motivations might be etc. The adventures were the thing. Occasional glimpses of the light-and-shade like Tom Baker's "Do I have the right ?" (to wipe out the Daleks) were a bit of icing on top of a rattling good adventure narrative, not the clumsy and laboured be-and-end-all of the whole cake.
On the upside - I like Capaldi continuning to refer to various characters as "pudding brains".
It helps that his accent makes "poodding" sound especially condescending.
For me that makes a refreshing change from the worst excesses of mockney Tennant's babying "Yes you are you're brilliant" to all and sundry irritating minor characters (and major ones like Donna Noble).
