Dead glow plugs will definitely cause the issues you're seeing. How's your compression? Once the cylinder is warm enough for the fuel to vaporize sufficiently, the smoking, skipping, and knocking goes away.
It's relatively normal for the transmission to hang in 1st longer than usual and to shift a bit firm for the first couple minutes in the cold. There's a vacuum circuit with a switchover valve in the later cars that's supposed to soften that behavior up until the engine warms up. Running synthetic transmission fluid seems to help a LOT in mine. Consider Valvoline Max-Life when you do the fluid/filter change (make sure to drain the T/C). A little extra money, but it does make the gearbox more civilized.
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