There is a lot wrong with Twice Upon A Time: The First Doctor's out of nowhere sexism, Bill being part of Testimony but also the one who tells the Doctor to run away from them, very little plot, a kind of crappy looking regeneration.
BUT
I never watch it just because I want to watch a Doctor Who. I always watch it when I want an emotional journey, often because I'm feeling down. It starts with the Doctor at his lowest point, literally ready to give up and never regenerate again. So it's in sync with feeling down at the start. Then it builds to him deciding one more lifetime wouldn't kill anyone. It doesn't patronise you with everything's gonna get better, just it's worth one more try.
A problem with it as an episode is the Doctor refusing to regenerate comes out of nowhere. But in real life, one of the most common things people say about suicide is that they seemed happy and it came out of nowhere. You can never really know what's going on in someone else's head. And by leaving it vague and undefined why he's doing that, you can fill in your own meaning depending on what you're struggling with.
And Peter Capaldi is acting the hell out of it and breaks my heart several times in it even if the actual regeneration is an actual ramble. But that last speech how I see it is him not randomly telling Jodie how to be the Doctor, but listing the ways his Doctor sometimes failed to be the Doctor because he's only human (well time lord but you know what I mean). And then giving himself another chance to do better.
And it's just quite an uplifting and optimistic journey that can be very personal if you let it, and the issues in it are irrelevant to that. So yeah, that's why I like it.
Appendix: solution to the Bill problem
It's always annoyed me that Capaldi takes the captain away from Testimony because Bill tells him to but Bill is Testimony so why would she do that?
Well in the novelisation they did said that Testimony Bill had all her memories of her life with Heather afterwards up to her actual death but Testimony blocked them for the adventure so it was Bill from the time the Doctor would want to see her. So they can clearly control what she is allowed to know. And the episode is trying to say people are their memories so that actually is Bill. So I guess they just didn't activate her Testimony spying programming until they needed it because they didn't realise they needed to control her. Testimony is genuine about letting the Doctor speak with Bill again and not just an arm of Testimony. So Bill is just acting as Bill would in that situation not knowing yet she's actually Testimony.
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