Reddit reviews Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Interesting. It sounds as though the quiet time with one's thoughts and without distractions enables things to integrate, coalesce, and settle in terms of one's unconscious: getting things sorted, as it were. One of those processes that occur outside the conscious mind. Cf. Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious.

> As for "ridiculous," I'm using it to mean "absurd," in a positive sense (as does the Doctor - see "The universe is big, it's vast and complicated, and ridiculous.

That is not how you were using the word. You used it with a definite note of contempt. You used it to indicate that he was beneath consideration and as a justification for excluding the Doctor's regenerations from consideration. The Doctor does ridiculous things not unlike high status people will use self-deprecating humor. It's done to put those around them at ease. It is part of his social mask, not who he is.

>the Doctor's bumbling with Time Lord science

So bumbling that he was able to adapt it in ways that the rest of his people had never considered to save them all. So bumbling that the Sisterhood of Karn, who apparently had access to a higher level of tech than the Time Lords turned to the Doctor as their last, best hope.

>He's established as being unskilled in accurately flying the TARDIS

It's actually been established that the TARDIS has a mind of it's own and will take the Doctor where he needs to be, not necessarily where and when he wants to be (The Doctor's Wife).

We saw the Master regenerate in Utopia. There was no reason whatsoever to believe that he exercised any conscious control of the process.

>being unskilled in regenerating

There is reason to believe that the Doctor has much more control (unconscious control, but still control) over the process than most people believe. If Moffat takes the time to explain why the Doctor has the same face as Lucius Caecilius from "Fires of Pompeii" we are likely to get more on this.*

*There is no evidence that the Doctor ever had any contact with Capaldi's Torchwood character. Occam's Razor suggests that he got the face from someone we actually saw him meet and interact with.