Some thoughts:

• Don’t like most of the opening title sequence. Sorry. I like some of the bits of it. Don’t like putting Matt Smith’s head in it. Don’t like the melty blobby wax 1970 effect. Don’t like the tweedlee synthesizer bits of the music. Don’t like the sliding-down-the-scale bits of the music, either, especially as they’re in tweedlee synthesizer. The whole flavor is, “Let’s give up on the cinematic feel we’ve been moving toward and make this whole thing small-screen and cheesy again.”
• Do like the closing credits sequence very much. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but it’s worth saying.
• Don’t hate the TARDIS interior. Still not my favorite, but I’m not seething with disgust or anything. Serviceable. Workable. A bit fun. The coppery one is still the best ever in history, hands down. Thank you, designer, for not making all the controls gleaming and homogeneous. That would have been terrible.
• This is not a very standalone episode. I recently introduced a non-Whovian friend to Doctor Who using Christmas as a gateway by showing him A Christmas Carol, which was brilliant in nearly every way. This totally works. The Snowmen is far too arc-ish and referential for this and would probably confuse the heck out of my not-we friends.

Edit to add: I don’t want to like Clara too much, but I do. So there. Putting this in the non-spoiler section because everyone knows there’s a Clara and if they don’t, I can’t help it. It’s been blared from the rooftops for months now.

Spoilery aspects:

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