Kelvington calls “Time Heist” one “helluva good one”:
The super short spoiler filled review - If I were pitching it, I would say, it's "Doctor Who" meets "Reservoir Dogs" meets "Ocean's 11" meets "Now You See Me" meets "Back To The Future" meets "The Summer of '42" meets "The Wizard Of Oz" meets "Encounter At Farpoint". All the Fun, none of the Q.Regular long recap and review - This episode will draw it's most obvious parallels with films like "Ocean's 11", "The Italian Job", "The A-Team" and even the "Tower Heist". Essentially, any movie or show, where an elaborate plan is put together and completed with few hiccups. The only downside to the fun in the episode is there's not one single twist or turn who's outcome is unpredictable, or undone. True drama only really takes place when there is actually something at risk. That's not true here, but then as I'm constantly being reminded... it's a kid's show.
The episode starts with the Doctor in Clara's apartment as she gets ready for a date, this episode continues it's contempt for good writing, by having the Doctor once again not understand Clara's life, and throwing a few tacit insults at her. Because after three years he no longer knows how to talk to his companion. He's become the Jim Broadbent Doctor and can no longer really talk to girls. I truly hope they either just kill Clara in the next few episodes or just get rid of her really fast so the embarrassment of insulting the companion will be over. It's not cute, it's not clever, it's just a bit sad. Back to the crux of the story. The phone rings in the TARDIS and when answered the Doctor and Clara find themselves in a room with two other people. They are all holding or touching memory worms. Fortunately they don't get bit by them or they could have lost decades worth of memories. It turns out that everyone here has agreed to a memory wipe which helps move the plot along nicely.
Because the setup of the plot would kill the future intrigue of it. If you knew the who and the how, it wouldn't be any fun. And this episode is a fairly fun one. The Doctor, Clara, an augmented human, and a mutant who can replicate anyone she touches, get a set of instructions from the "Architect", as to where they are, and what they are suppose to do, it involves this rather secure bank, and they have agreed to rob it. There's a lovely "Reservoir Dogs" moment as they walk into the bank. We get to meet Keeley Hawes who is dressed down like a sexy librarian as the head of security and director of the bank, along with her chained up "Alien crashed ship headed looking creature" called the Teller who can sus out the guilt on anyone. The group gets into the underbelly of the bank, and discover a breadcrumb clue left for them in the form of small vial like objects which the Doctor takes. The one think I can say for sure about the future, is USB rules! There's USB ports everywhere! And augmented humans have USB ports on their heads because they are so popular. I really want a USB cord projector! They also appear to have eprom chips too!
The group splits up long enough for us to get proper introduction to who they are and their abilities and powers. They also have flaws too, for example the shapeshifter, just like the X-Men's Rouge can not touch anyone, but instead of draining them like Rouge, she turns becomes that person. I wonder what she will ask the wizard for? While hiding they come across the "Teller", the crashed alien ship headed creature, it starts to lock onto Clara, and then properly locks onto the shapeshifter, with what appears to be no way to break it's mental hold, the only possible way out, is to use the vials that were left for them, she uses it and dies, in a way that looks NOTHING AT ALL like a transmat, nothing... put that out of your head... she's dead. The Doctor even says so! She did not in anyway beam out of the situation.
The team splits up again in order to avoid the Teller, who appears to be able to lock onto you without line of sight. so they take him out of his cell why? Sorry, that's just a minor quibble there. This leaves the augmented human to unlock the vault. Engage the process of running through the same 1980's style corridor for the next few minutes until the Teller catches Clara and augmented human gives his life to save her. (wink... not a transmat) Just when all seems lost and the Doctor and Clara can't open the vault, a solar storm starts to hit the planet. The Doctor reasons that this is not just a bank heist but a time travel heist. Now we know the Doctor doesn't know what's going on here, and the Architect of the heist can travel through time as well... so that means he's... DUN DUN DUN... The Master!!! Not really, but I'm going to keep saying that until it's true! So the only time the vault/bank is vulnerable is when a storm hits it. So it means that when you have unlocked most of the locks and the vault still won't open you only need 1.21 Giga Watts to reset the vault and have it open!
Once the vault opens we find a few goodies, a technology that can restore the Scarecrow's brain, a gene suppressor for the Tin Man's heart, then they get caught! But instead of the Teller just wiping their minds then and there, they are taken to the office, the Teller is put back in hibernation and the guards are left to dispose of them, but they aren't guards, they are the fallen comrades who in no way died in what looked like a transmat beam. They are back! Woo Hoo! The Doctor appears to be in the dark about things, and Clara is genuinely surprised to see the others. At this point the story could have ended, but the Doctor still needs to find out what's in the private vault, so it's back into the underground again to find it. I don't really fault the story for doing this, bringing back dead people is a constant in "Doctor Who" and giving us red herrings is normal. In a lot of stories I would have bitched about this all damn day, but here it works.
You have to give the production team credit, there's basically four sets that are used over and over, and the production team does a great job redressing them to look like different rooms/vaults/vents. The corridors however... not so much. We meet the big bad in the episode, this Karabraxos who turns out to be Keely Hawes... what the f... It seems she's the original and the other Keely Hawes are clones, it's the only way you can trust someone. She has them at all her facilities. Does this mean there are Tellers at all the facilities too? Oops sorry I was thinking to much there.
Karabraxos sends for the Teller, and the Doctor figures out who the Architect is, he doesn't exactly spell it out for Clara to get it, but everyone at home knows that the Doctor is in fact is the Architect. The Doctor then gives Karabraxos his phone number so in the future she can call him to lead up to this moment. The Teller shows up and starts to attack the Doctor, who uses it to get the creature to break the memory wipe. We see an elderly Karabraxos calling the TARDIS back in Clara's apartment, and what follows are a set of missing scenes that every impossible heist movie uses to explain the impossible bits that you didn't see. Just like in "Now You See Me", In this case it's the Doctor getting his team together, planting his breadcrumbs, even a shot of the cute and cuddly memory worms waiting for their moment.
After the memory wipe is broken, it's time to reveal the real reason for the whole thing, and that's to reunite the male Teller with the last of it's kind female Teller, and take them home. It adds a very sweet coda to the episode. It's starts out being one thing, and ends up being another. My first question about this is, did they actually make two Tellers? Or did they just cheat it. It's not important but I'm more curious than anything. And yes while the story can EASILY be picked apart, I'm not going to, it was fun, it moved really well, there were few if any dead spots, and it's wicked easy to pick apart love stories. Which I won't be doing here today.
I loved the Robin Hood episode, I was a bit of a fence sitter last week, but even with all these borrowed premises mixed together it felt like something clever and fun to watch, was it the best "Doctor Who" this series? Nope, I'm sure that's yet to come. Was it the best written or put together one? Nope. But it was fun as hell, and it was in the end a super fun mashup of a half a dozen movies and TV shows, and as mashups go, this was a helluva good one! I should know!
