Doctor Who: 10 Biggest Missed Opportunities Of Series 8
1. Not Making The Series Happen Out Of Order For The Doctor
Steven Moffat is the king of timey-wimey plots and this could have been his Zenith - an entire series out of order. If Clara is to be dropped off at the end of each episode, why wasn't this put to some actual good use?
The series would start with Deep Breath and ends with Listen, after which the Doctor has been driven into the paranoid person he is in that episode, desperate to hide from Missy's matrix device which scans the entire universe. This would explain how he forgot about Orson Pink in 'The Caretaker' and why his character so radically shifts in terms of seriousness throughout the course of the series.
This would have made the finale less of a standalone story, too. It could have been a much larger plot thread that would be significantly more series-connected than the bolt-on Missy segments, and something Steven Moffat, as a writer, could have ultimately thrived in.
However, fans were instead merely left with the running thread being a mere afterthought as the Doctor hurried to make sure that his companion was dropped off at home each night in time for EastEnders.