July 8: "Time Heist"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Time Heist"
(from Doctor Who: Exclusive Time Heist
poster revealed)

Somewhat surprisingly, Doctor Who hasn't really done a heist storyline before, but now they've remedied that with "Time Heist".  Except this isn't your standard heist, which helps make this more interesting than it otherwise might have been.  No, instead of watching a lot of elaborate planning and then seeing the heist come together and then go wrong, leading to lots of improvising, here the Doctor and his three colleagues have to figure out what the plan is on the fly, as they're chased through the Bank of Karabraxos by security guards.

The opening of this story, before they get involved in the heist, is the best version yet of the Doctor's comments about Clara's appearance.  They're not potentially mean-spirited but instead are simply looking at things from a different angle.  "Why is your face all coloured in?" the Doctor asks, mystified; and, "Are you taller?"  "Heels," Clara replies.  "What, do you have to reach a high shelf?" the Doctor wonders.  These sorts of jokes do a much better job of getting the Doctor's cluelessness about such things across than cracks about her weight; more like this, please.

The heist stuff is entertaining as well; as I mentioned, the four of them -- the Doctor, Clara, augmented hacker Psi, and shapeshifting Saibra -- are trying to work out what the plan is on the fly.  All they know is that the Bank is one of the most heavily secured locations in the universe, and that they all agreed to participate before they got their minds wiped by the worms from "The Snowmen".  And so because they don't know what's going on, they're as much in the dark as we are, which maintains a lot of the suspense for the audience.  And it is exciting, watching them bluff and evade their way past each stage to the next, while security seems to resolutely stay one step behind.

The Teller and Ms. Delphox establish a plan of criminal intent in a
customer while the Doctor's party looks on. ("Time Heist") ©BBC

The Teller is a pretty impressive creation, and it gives us a story reason why the bank robbers are as much in the dark as we are (if they knew what their intentions were, then the Teller would know and feast on their criminal brains) -- plus it gives us a very dangerous presence that's constantly tracking them.  Guards are one thing, but the Teller...  It's a nice extra bit of tension to some already somewhat tense proceedings -- it's the Teller that causes Saibra and Psi to each use their "exit strategy" (although even on the first broadcast my initial thought was, "Hmm, that looks more like a teleport effect than a disintegration one..."), rather than anything else.  Our new colleagues Saibra and Psi are very likable as well -- neither of them seem like hardened criminals (even if Psi can fill his head with lots of criminals and villains to entice the Teller²⁵⁸), which helps, and Jonathan Bailey and Pippa Bennett-Warner do a great job with the parts.

So we have a lot of fun as we watch the four of them maneuver their way through the bank, but it's the scene in the private vault that's the best, as the Doctor works out what exactly is going on, tells Director Karabraxos to call him sometime, and then has the Teller look through his brain to find out for certain what's really happening -- which includes one of the best Capaldi lines yet ("What do you think of the new look?" he asks the Teller, indicating his outfit.  "I was hoping for minimalism but I think I came out with magician") -- to confirm that this isn't a bank heist but rather a rescue mission, to rescue the only other living member of the Teller's species.

It's an entertaining ride from start to finish, with a satisfying happy ending and no sense at any point that you've been cheated out of anything, or that they've had to cheat in any way.  (The biggest "cheat" is how the most secure bank in the universe has all those big "do not enter" ventilation shafts around, and that might be more a design issue than a scripting one.)  "Time Heist" is a fun, strong story -- writer Steve Thompson has finally come out trumps with one of his Doctor Who scripts.







²⁵⁸ Ooh, it's a bunch of quick references in the images here, including a Terileptil, an Ice Warrior, Kahler Tek, a Slitheen, Captain John Hart from Torchwood, Androvax and the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures, and, er, a Sensorite.  (Given their behavior in The Sensorites, one wonders how a Sensorite became a hardened criminal.)  Oh!  And Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer, in the show's first direct reference to a character created for the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.