So, I come to the point in the Mages College quest where Ancano blows me and some fellow mages unconsious and Savros dies...
After some attempts I rid Winterhold of the magical anomalies after which I receive Savros' amulet and the Torq of Labyrinthian...so far so good no?

I start my way to there, but die as soon as I get out of town.
No worries, I do it over and am more careful this time.
it is only after a while that I notice that I do not have the quest i my journal (while I do have the items) and so do not know the location of Labyrinthian.

Starting or advancing the quest through console does nothing and the MG07 quest remains at stage 0.00.

I decide to head out and find the ruins myself, after all, I have the items.
So after some long days scouring the land, I reach my goal.

When I have faced the labyrinth and explored the buildings,
I decide to proceed.
But the 'Ritual door' does not accept my Torq.."You don't have the required item to activate this"

A it frustrated I fast travel back to the college to see if I might have forgotten something.
When I get there, Ancano is walking around the college grounds like nothing had happened, i head into the Hall of Elements to find the barrier is still up...Ancano wanders in wondering what he's doing on the other side of the thing...
Mirabelle is nowhere to be found.

So, yeah, I think I'm stuck.
Any help would be great but I've pretty much given up hope already until a patch arrives.

Has someone had the same experience, or is able to help me out?:)

You talk about using the console. Have you ever changed things or toyed around with the console prior to this incident?

I had no issues personally. I would suggest console for the quest advancement but that didn't work. Looks like you found a rather horrific bug. I'm lucky to have missed all these really bad ones people are reporting.

ewwwww
ot, reload a save before ancano blew you?

I have quick exited, saved, disabled collision when stuck and used the fly-through camera and no menus for screenshots.
I have also made my character the owner of the Hall of the Dead in Whiterun. But this was after receiving the quest-items.
I don't think any of these could have caused this, right?

This is what I suggest. I had no problems when I was working on the collage quests. If that does not work then your saves are corrupted, and not much you can do about that.

very possible.

It's less a question of the effect you intended and more a question of what the commands used actually do. So it's hard to say.

I was mostly hoping there'd be something obvious, like accessing the chargen.

Hm, that's true.
Can't expect it all to be working exactly as in the previous installments.

Oh, that's right, I did enter the char-menu right after leaving Helgen.
I had used a ? in my name, which didn't display in-game, so I had to go in an change my name.
Could it have messed up the game right at that point already? I think the first time I did get a journal entry.

What bugs me the most is the fact that the quest won't be force-started/advanced, what could this indicate?

Thanks for your replies, guys.
Indeed going back to a backup save would solve it, but it would like to know what went wrong.