Actually, that reminds me of why it bothers me. I don't agree that he should be too busy to visit, but given that he essentially dumped Jo without saying a proper goodbye (as he has done with other companions in the past), and she spent most of her life wondering and hoping that he'd turn up - surely the Doctor saying, "ha ha, I could have totally said hello but didn't, not because I couldn't or because I forgot, but because I'd watch you like a lab experiment" is quite a slap in the face?

Maybe it's another aspect of the Lonely God, Doctor-as-Jesus metaphor that Russell liked - he touched your life spiritually, and now he's an omnipresent force watching over you? When all she really wanted was her old friend to visit? Whether you like the Doctor being thrust into having a family like he did with River and the Ponds, you have to admit it's quite a turn around.

The Eleventh Doctor, unlike the Ninth and Tenth, does do belonging, and family, and Christmas dinner.

Its all the stranger in that RTD was such a scholar of the original series. Its like its something he always wanted to remedy and fair enough he got to do it. But it doesn't fit with the Doctor we know. And as you say its vaguely creepy. Its trying to force New Who values on the Classic show when we all know the doctor could be alot more ruthless than they like to show him now. But again this plays in with RTDs wish fulfillment of turning the Doctor into humanity's greatest champion! Something which reached its nadir with the 'you look like giants' speech from TEOT. Yuck.

I completely agree with this one. It really belittles the lives of all the previous doctors by reducing them to just a small fraction of his.

Quite apart from anything else it beggars belief that he would have been trapped for a thousand years on Trenzalore without coming up with some way to resolve the situation before then. He's overcome impossible odds time and again in the space of a few days or weeks. Now it takes him a thousand years? All it took was Clara whispering into the crack to persuade the Time Lords to do something. They did something and then disappeared. If he'd just whispered into the crack at the start they could have disappeared straight away and the siege would have been over!

Not to mention the fact he's forever telling companions he can take them back to the moment they left, and they visually made the point in the power of three that he can't bear to stay in one place just waiting for things to happen for a few hour's let alone hundreds of years, so with these two things in mind, why would he not just continue his travels as normal and pop back to the same moment on trenzalore for a while then continue travelling again until it was over. Even though the TARDIS dosen't alway's take him where he want's to go it wouldn't matter because when time is your plaything it wouldn't matter how long it took him to get back to trenzalore as long as he always went back to when he left

I too disagree with the "aging up" of the Doctor of late, but to be fair, for the first 300 years he didn't have the TARDIS, and once he got it back, he could have done just that, which may also play a part in his accelerated aged appearance.
But they did make the point that he became accustomed to it. Don't forget, the Doctor spent an unknown length of time in Victorian London in his depression after the Ponds were taken from him.

Cheap 1980s electronic atmospheric sound effects.