Time Heist

Also 5. Don't Think

This episode was a real mixed bag for me.

Doctor Who has always operated by genre-snatching. The TARDIS is a plot engine enabling them to do anything - and so they do. The last time they did the heist caper was the Ribos Operation, which is incidentally, my favourite Fourth Doctor episode. Don't think I didn't spot those Inception references! (the Architect + Clara's costume referencing Ariadne's + "old and full of regret") The writers might have considered, given those cinematic touchpoints, that if you you steal from the best you have to be the best.

Look, the writers simply don't understand the heist genre. I spent two years obsessively watching heist movies. Walking in slo-motion to your heist in suits with a briefcase does not a classic make. Neither does drilling through a ceiling - it just reminds me how not post-modern-reinvention-of-a-genre, and also how not Rififi you are. This episode had no tension. It had brief moments of terror interspesed with a criminally slow pace. Unless you're clever enough to be Reservoir Dogs, or inventive enough to be Inception, the key to a great heist movie is constant nerve shredding terror + being one step ahead of your audience.

The monster was scary in conception, but in practice it amounted to two humanoids standing still and gurning at each other. An alarm bell and announcement "intruders on the 7th floor!" isn't tension, cus you know they're gonna get out of it. The idea of a time traveller robbing a bank with future knowledge was cool, but it just felt like they were constantly inventing problems they already knew how to solve. Where was the tension? What's the point of a heist if it's not tense?

I loved the future worldbuilding a lot. The shapeshifter was cool, as was the crook and their backstories. I can only assume they both come from the future, otherwise why wouldn't the best bank in the universe have guards against shapeshifters and also surveillance for people who loudly talk about how they are robbing a bank while they rob a bank. And I was interested in the episode, if always moderately pissed off at it for not being better. I liked the idea of a time heist; I liked the idea of the Doctor preplanning everything, even though that was an obvious twist.


I really want to see the Doc save someone again. I want him to try. I was really rather upset with him sitting back and letting the shapeshifter lady die. The discovery that it was a teleport was not enough - it was the scene where he just sat there and said nothing could be done. Hrm. Similarly, how about saving the rest of the planet? When the bank is totally destroyed by fire, I couldn't help but think...

This is the second episode of the season with "...and Steve Moffat" in the credits, and I find this interesting. Why? Is this a greater creative control thing, or did a lot of people hand in subpar episodes, or...? In any case, the crook with memory deletion is classic Moff.

All in all, it's a 6/10 from me for promising bits, but overall too many problems.

miscellany
My notes included the following phrases I now do not know what they mean: 

solitude is the obly peace

weird hug face