Time Heist

"Time Heist" is the fifth episode of the eighth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, written by Stephen Thompson and Steven Moffat, and directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The episode stars Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, with Keeley Hawes guest starring.

Plot

The Doctor arrives in the TARDIS in Clara's flat and tries to convince her to come sightsee with him as she prepares for a date with Danny Pink. Suddenly, the TARDIS phone rings, and when the Doctor goes to answer it, the two find themselves in a strange room on an alien planet, with no memory of how they got there. Two others, both with short-term amnesia, are there: Psi, a hacker with an augmented brain who has sacrificed his personal memories for the cybernetic implants, and Saibra, a mutant humanoid with the ability to shapeshift into another by touching them, a talent which she considers a curse as it prevents her from getting emotionally close. They find a recording of themselves agreeing to a short-term memory wipe and instructions from an unknown entity known as "The Architect" instructing them to break into the Bank of Karabraxos and steal very specific items from its vault. They flee the room as guards approach.

Saibra's abilities allow them to enter the bank as customers. They observe the bank's head of security, Ms. Delphox, employ the bank's primary security measure, a highly telepathic alien creature known as the Teller who can sense criminal thoughts, lock that person into place as it scans their mind, and then destroy their brain. The Doctor surmises that the memory wipe was to help protect them from the Teller. The group continues deeper into the bank, finding more messages and items left by the Architect to help them, including, at one point, six handheld devices that the Doctor believes are personal disintegration units. As they proceed deeper, they are forced to pass near the cage where the Teller is kept. Clara is inadvertently caught in the Teller's scan, but Saibra pushes her out of the way, and becomes the target of the scan. The Doctor implores her to use the disintegrator, as it would be a far less painful fate. The others can only watch as her body disappears. Ms. Delphox later releases the Teller to track them down in the corridors near the vault. When the Teller is close to detecting Clara, Psi purposely thinks of his past criminal acts, drawing the Teller to him, and then uses the disintegrator as Saibra had done.

The Doctor and Clara arrive at the vault door, finding it impregnable. However, on the planet's surface, a solar storm starts to strike the bank. This triggers a failsafe on the vault, causing the door to open; the Doctor recognises that this has been a time heist, designed to have them at the vault at that moment. Inside, they recover two of the items: a serum to stabilise Saibra's DNA to prevent unwanted shapeshifting, and a device to help Psi recall the memories he had erased. The last item requires them to find Karabraxos' private vault, but they are caught by Ms. Delphox and two guards. She takes them to her office, confiscating the two items they recovered, but then is called away leaving the two under the guards' watch. The guards reveal themselves as Saibra and Psi: the disintegrators are actually short-range teleporters to a ship waiting in orbit with the Doctor's TARDIS aboard. Though Saibra and Psi suggest they leave before the storm destroys the bank, the Doctor insists they must find out the last item they were to recover.

They locate Karabraxos' vault and find it contains Madame Karabraxos' living quarters. Karabraxos appears the same as Ms. Delphox and the Doctor realises Delphox is her clone. With her identity revealed, Karabraxos orders the destruction of her clone and starts to pack the most priceless treasures before she evacuates the bank. The Doctor recognizes the contempt Karabraxos had for her clone, and a realisation dawns on him. He quickly gives Karabraxos the phone number for the TARDIS, telling her to call him when she is old and filled with regret. Karabraxos takes it and teleports away, leaving the four trapped in the vault with the Teller. The Doctor purposely allows the Teller to scan him, the scan bringing back the memories that were lost in the short-term memory wipe. It is revealed that the call the Doctor got was from an elderly Karabraxos, who had come to regret a decision and asked the Doctor to fix it. The Doctor is then shown to have been the Architect, having selected Saibra and Psi for the job and planting the items to help them. The Doctor is able to convince the Teller they are here to help it via the telepathic link, and then points out why they have six teleportation devices. The Teller helps to unlock a door in the vault, where its mate has been kept locked up as a way to force the Teller to work. The Doctor and others free the other alien and the six escape to the ship as the storm hits and destroys the bank.

The Doctor takes the Teller and its mate to a planet free of higher life forms which allows them to live a life in peace. The Doctor, Clara, Saibra, and Psi enjoy a celebratory meal together before the Doctor returns them to their original worlds. He then drops Clara back off at her flat and asks her if robbing a bank was as great an experience as going out on a date.

Continuity

Memory worms were first introduced in the 2012 Christmas special, "The Snowmen".^[1]

While being scanned by the Teller, the Doctor mentions the Fourth Doctor's "big scarf", and either the Second or Eleventh Doctor's "bowties – a bit embarrassing".

The Doctor notes that Clara got the TARDIS phone number from "a woman in a shop", connecting with the events of "The Bells of Saint John" and "Deep Breath".

When Psi tries to lure the Teller away from Clara by visualising some of the galaxy's most notorious criminals, the mugshots he is seen accessing include a Sensorite (from the 1964 serial The Sensorites), a Terileptil (from the 1982 serial The Visitation), a Slitheen, an Ice Warrior, the Gunslinger from "A Town Called Mercy", Captain John Hart from Torchwood, Androvax and the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Abslom Daak from Doctor Who Magazine.^[1][2]

Production

Speaking about the premise for the episode, director Douglas Mackinnon said “What we wanted to do was a heist movie for Doctor Who. I've watched virtually every heist movie there's ever been, and it incorporates things into it, but because it's Doctor Who, time travel is involved."^[3]

The read-through for the episode took place on 11 February 2014. Filming began on 3 March 2014.^[1] Filming took place at George Street in Bridgend on 5 March 2014, and in Roald Dahl Plass, Cardiff Bay on 13 March.^[1][4] Filming continued at the Hadyn Ellis Building, part of Cardiff University, on 18 March 2014,^[5][6] and at the nearby Bute Park the next day.^[7] Media coverage of filming made note of a new monster that was spotted on set, with some calling it Doctor Who's "strangest monster yet."^[5][8][9] Scenes were also filmed at the Uskmouth Power Station, previously a location for "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" and "Into the Dalek". Filming concluded on 24 March 2014.^[1]

A trailer for the episode was released on 15 September 2014.^[10]

Reception

Overnight in the UK, "Time Heist" got a figure of 4.93 million with a 23.8% share. Its final ratings were 6.99 million. "Time Heist" came in second for the night behind the X Factor.^[11] In the United States, the original broadcast of the episode reached 1.03 million viewers.^[12]

The episode achieved an Appreciation Index of 84. The episode received generally positive reviews. Digital Spy said the episode "should have been 15 minutes longer" and "crammed too many ideas into 45 minutes." Ben Lawrence, writing in The Daily Telegraph noted that "in a show that is sometimes rather burdened by the need to maintain clever story arcs, Time Heist was a standalone episode that allowed some breathing space."^[13] Den of Geek stated that it was "A solid, fun episode of Who... Not the best, but enjoyable. It came together well" and that it "had enough in the tank to keep us happily entertained for 45 minutes".^[14] Writing for SFX, Nick Setchfield praised director Douglas Mackinnon's "visual flair", but felt the episode as a whole was "solid, mid-tier Who but... not the smooth criminal it could have been."^[2] In a review for the Radio Times, Patrick Mulkern said the episode was "singularly unengaging" despite being based on an interesting concept. Mulkern did however, praise the performances of Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi, described as "the right man for the job but doesn’t always get the material he deserves."^[15]

Leak

"Time Heist" was one of five scripts leaked online after being sent for translation to a BBC Worldwide server in Miami.^[16] A rough cut of the episode was also leaked, on 21 August 2014, following the leaks of the first three episodes of the season ("Deep Breath", "Into the Dalek", and "Robot of Sherwood").^[17] It was followed shortly by the leak of the fourth episode, "Listen".^[18]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Twelfth Doctor

• "Time Heist" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "Time Heist" on TARDIS Data Core, an external wiki
• "Time Heist" at Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel)
• "Time Heist" at the Internet Movie Database