The Night of the Doctor is the little 7 minute prequel to The Day...

I also watched The Day... twice, (mainly because I dozed the first time), and I still have mixed feelings about it. I liked The Name of the Doctor, much better.

I didn't really take much religious significance from Clara's appeal to the crack at the time but I can see what you mean. It had all the appearance of prayer.

Yes of course they were always going to get around that pesky regeneration problem and yes it was classic deus ex machina, which it pretty much had to be. The old d.e.m. gets too much criticism anyway. I suppose they could have come up with something more interesting but no need to detract from the main plot when everyone knew the regeneration was inevitable.

I suspect we will be seeing that confounded crack often in future episodes, whenever they get between a rock and a hard place.

I wonder if the long hiatus is partly to let the fans get over the loss of Matt Smith and get ready for an older and much different Dr Who.

Smith has become quite popular, maybe more so than David Tennant. I still favor Tennant, but I was struck by how he seems to have aged. I noticed it first in Broadchurch, a murder mystery mini series on BBC. I figured perhaps he was supposed to look a little run down in that role, but he looked equally bad this week as well. He is only 42 but for some reason unknown to me, British actors often don't seem to age as well as ours.

For whatever reason, he just didn't look fit and healthy to me.