The downside to ditching cable and relying on the Net is delay. Amazon waits a day after broadcast before releasing a video, then it takes me another day to download it and convert to a format I can watch on my living room linux TV.

I plan to watch the Christmas special tonight. The trailers looked pretty good, anyway; and with your careful-not-to-spoil review (thanks), I expect to enjoy it.

That was a nice way to ditch the Ponds, in "Angels Take Manhattan". Nice that the series never actually kills off discarded companions, and judging by Rose's story, even walling them off in another universe or a loop in time doesn't preclude them from making a future appearance, thanks to some clever scriptorial hand-waving. Maybe the Ponds will get their own spinoff series, the way Sarah Jane did.