When I saw the preview for “Time Heist,” I was pretty sure I was going to hate it. It just seemed to be par for the course so far with this series of Doctor Who. The good episodes seem to be alternating with just plain silly episodes. I enjoyed last week’s quite bit, so I figured this one would be up there with “The Robot of Sherwood.” Or down there, depending on how you want to look at it. Plus, the whole idea seemed absurd. I could not wrap my head around the idea that somehow the Doctor and Clara were going to become common bank robbers. Then I watched this episode, and had to throw all of my initial thoughts out the window. It was pretty solid.
The basic story is that Clara and the Doctor answer a mysterious phone call to the TARDIS. The next thing we know, the two of them are sitting in some room holding two memory erasing worms. They are not alone. They are with two other people. Each has had their memories wiped. Next, the quartet receive a message from a mysterious figure who calls himself “The Architect.” He tells them that they must break into the Bank of Karabraxos, which has never been broken into, and is supposedly impenetrable. They discover that each of them has special skills to help them with this task and they go through a bunch of obstacles to get to the vault. One of the toughest obstacles is a creature they call “The Teller,” who is a telepath that can sense guilt. Once he latches on to people’s minds, he can turn them into soup. And, we learn, once he has latched on, there is no escaping him. As they go through each challenge, they find that the Architect has left them some cases with helpful tools or information, like some devices they assume are atomic shredders that will painlessly kill you, as an escape route if necessary. As they go through the obstacles, they lose the other two members of their group who use the exit strategy instead of allowing the Teller to turn their minds to mush.
In the end, the Doctor and Clara make it into the vault, and find the items on their list. The last item they need is in the Private Vault. On their way, they discover that the other two travelers are not dead, but had just been teleported. In the Private Vault they meet Karabraxos herself and convince her to leave the planet before a solar storm destroys everything. A this point, the whole thing comes together, and the Doctor pieces together what was really going on, with the help of the Teller. They discover that the Teller is not the last of his species, as they had been led to believe, but there is a female Teller locked up in the private vault. The Doctor and his crew rescue both Tellers and take them to safety. The Doctor, with the help of the Teller has remembered that this was the reason they broke into the vault and the bank. He was the Architect and had planned the whole thing to save these creatures, at the request of Karabraxos from the future.
The story could have been silly, with the whole bank robber angle and monsters and whatever, but it all seemed to work. It wasn’t silly, it was just plain fun. There is a little bit of intrigue as you wonder who the Architect is and why he selected these four to rob this impenetrable bank, and when you find out the truth, you feel vindicated because you realize that the Doctor would never really rob a bank. Plus, the longer this season goes and the more we get to know this new Doctor, the more I like him. He is odd in his own way, but he is dark and serious too. I would ever describe him as goofy, but he wouldn’t really fit in around here either.
Overall, it was a fun episode. I would recommend checking it out if you haven’t already.
