Time Heist

Chapter The 208th, which is timey-wimey and heisty-weisty.

Plot:

The Doctor is visiting Clara, trying to persuade her to come on a time-and-space trip with him, but she just wants to go on a date she has planned with Danny Pink. The TARDIS phone rings, surprising them both as hardly anyone knows the number. The Doctor answers it, and the next thing either of them remember is that they are in a strange room, having just voluntarily wiped their recent memories. They are accompanied by Psi, a hacker, and Saibra, a mutant human shape shifter, and are instructed by a mysterious and shaded character speaking to them on screen - the Architect - that they have to break into the highly secure Bank of Karabraxos's vault using their various skills. The Architect provides everything they need, including cases of equipment hidden around the secure areas of bank (if he was able to plant them, they wonder, why did he need their help to break in at all?) The bank's head of security Ms. Delphox protects the bank with a telepathic creature called the Teller that can sense guilt, hence why they all wiped their memories. It can also feed on all the thoughts in someone's brain, leaving them blank and drooling with a concave head. To avoid this fate befalling them, the crew have been provided with 'shredders' that they believe will rip apart their atoms painlessly as an "exit strategy". 

As they all get deeper into the complex, and closer to the vault, Psi and Saibra are trapped by the Teller, and have to use their shredders. The Doctor and Clara think they have failed, as the vault is still locked, but a solar storm suddenly hits the planet allowing them to bypass security and enter. The Doctor realises that this is a time-travel heist; they've been brought to the exact time they can get into the vault, which clues him in to the identity of the Architect (it's the Doctor himself). The owner of the bank, Madam Karabraxos, lives in the vault (and Ms. Delphox is one of many clones of Karabraxos that work in the bank). As the storm worsens, Karabraxos makes a hasty retreat taking whatever riches she can carry, but not before the Doctor has given her his phone number. The heist is actually a rescue mission; the future, old and regretful Madame Karabraxos called the Doctor in to free the Teller, and his life mate who was being held in the vault to force him into slavery. Psi and Saibra are alive, the shredders were just local teleporters. Using these, the four of them go to the TARDIS, taking the two Teller creatures, who the Doctor rehouses on an uninhabited planet.

Context:

It was Sunday October 31st 2021, and I had watched the first episode of the new Jodie Whittaker epic Flux with my younger two children (boy of 12, girl of 9) who were pleased the show was back, but were mainly still hyped up on their first Halloween trick-or-treating for two years. And sugar: they were hyped up on sugar too. Once they were finally calmed down and put to bed, the Better Half turned in for the night too, exhausted after traipsing around the local streets with them this year (we alternate, and it was my turn to do door duty and dole out sweets to the many, many local children that came to our pumpkin festooned front porch). The eldest had come back from seeing his friends and was sleeping too, so I had the living room to myself. I had eaten no sugar, but was a little bit hyped on Doctor Who, so fancied watching another story. I let the randomiser do its work, and it selected this Peter Capaldi story, which I put on from the Series 8 Blu-ray box set. As I watched, I treated myself to a dose of sugar, in red wine form, and a Happy Halloween it was! 

First Time Round:

Around the time we first caught this story, the Better Half and I had fallen into the pattern of watching each latest Doctor Who episode from the trusty Humax PVR, timeshifted later in the evening of its debut broadcast (which was Saturday 20th September 2014 for Time Heist). This was to screen it for suitability for our three children, whose ages ranged from two and a half to eight years old at the time, so some of the darker stories of this era had the capacity to scare them a bit too much. Time Heist, apart from maybe the grisly special effect to depict the Teller's victims' heads after he's finished with them, was fine for all the children; they watched it with me on the Sunday morning, and I told the youngest to look away during that bit. I thought the show at the time was working well; I had enjoyed every one of Peter Capaldi's first four stories, and thought this one and the next one were great too - a six story run of enjoyable stories was a rarity for me during the years that Steven Moffat was executive producer and lead writer. Having rewatched a few of the six for the blog in the years since, I have sometimes been disappointed that the story didn't live up to my memory. Would that also be the case with Time Heist?

Reaction:

With no offence to Stephen Thompson, co-writer of Time Heist with Steven Moffat, he isn't the writer brought in to do the big Doctor Who stories. If one sees his name in the beginning credits, one does not expect famous monsters or major revelations. Like Stephen Greenhorn's commissions in Russell T Davies's time as showrunner (maybe it's a Stephen thing?), the stock in trade is the mid-season standalone adventure, and there's nothing wrong with that. In the previous two years, Thompson had delivered The Curse of the Black Spot, and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS; both perfectly fine examples of 'Meat and Potatoes' Doctor Who, but nothing to knock your socks off. I was expecting the same with Time Heist, and I was more than pleasantly surprised: it's bloody excellent. I don't think the difference is to do with the input of Steven Moffat as co-writer, as he would have rewritten those earlier scripts as well, with or without a credit. It's just a better concept. They seemed to be looking for genres that Doctor Who hadn't tried as templates for episodes in this period, with an urban thriller tried the series before, and a found footage horror the series after. A heist caper in 45 minutes is a tall order, as certain story beats have to be hit: there has to be the set up of the impenetrable vault's various security features, introductions to the different members of the crew, a few close scrapes and con tricks as our heroes make their way deeper and deeper into danger, a moment where it seems like they've been caught, and a final reveal where they have prevailed after all. Time Heist includes all this and a few more reversals (Delphox is a clone, the Architect is the Doctor, the true nature of the Teller and his species), and a couple of science fiction concepts (time travel and solar storms) for good measure. The script is a model of economy and focus.

Another essential aspect of a heist caper is style, and Time Heist succeeds there also. The sets and costumes are great, particularly Clara's trouser suit - it's a smokin' hot look for Jenna Coleman as the character; surprisingly, it was never used again; maybe it was too much of a stretch that Clara would dress up quite so much for everyday adventuring (she's waylaid when just about to go on a date here). There are some slo-mo shots of the crew sweeping into the main banking hall that are straight out of any glossy con artists show or film. Douglas Mackinnon's direction doesn't just focus on the look and feel, though, he gets great performances from all the cast. Regulars Capaldi and Coleman are on fine form, and there's a nice comic cameo from new regular Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink. There's solid supporting work from Jonathan Bailey and Pippa Bennett-Warner as Psi and Saibra respectively. Best of all is the main guest star, Keeley Hawes, an actor that had always done good work, but who had really stepped up a gear in 2014. Earlier in the year, she'd appeared for the first time in Line of Duty, a BBC crime series that was just starting to develop into the phenomenon it would later become, and one significant reason for the show's success was Hawes's multi-faceted career-defining performance as Lindsay Denton. It can't be a coincidence that her introductory episodes in Line of Duty were similarly directed by Mackinnon.

Hawes does equally good work for the director here, with maybe a little less nuance and with the cartoonish nature of her baddie Ms. Delphox nudged up just the right amount; it's a delicate and rewarding performance. She then gets to play the subtly different Madam Karabraxos, and the aged, regretful Karabraxos too; three performances for the price of one, it's great value. Despite the focus on style, every one of the three main guest characters has a mini-character arc, changing for the better. The resolution scene, where the four heisters eat a takeaway in the TARDIS, is a moment of relaxation that our heroes don't often get in this period, and it's great to see. The final character moment of Capaldi fits into the series arc, revealing that the Doctor has been showing off as he's a bit jealous of Clara going off with someone else in favour of his adventures: "Robbing a bank. Robbing a whole bank. Beat that for a date." I'd reiterate that this is a 45 minute long story; all these story points and moments are squeezed into that limited run time, and thanks to careful handling it feels breakneck but it doesn't feel rushed. All the elements come together for this show: the Teller is a great concept and design, and is played well by the creature performer, Ross Mullan. The effects are of a high standard throughout, the music is good, and there are some witty lines. There are a few tiny quibbles, but nothing that spoiled my enjoyment. There are probably tiny plot holes, for example, but show me a heist film without those! If you - like me - might have been overlooking this gem tucked away in the middle of Capaldi's first season, then I'd encourage you to give it another viewing. 

 

Connectivity: 

Like Warriors of the Deep, Time Heist features a cybernetically-enhanced human whose skills are put to use by an external party to hack into systems.

Deeper Thoughts:

I have achieved my fan 40th (or Oh God I'm Old!). I might have missed it, were it not for a flurry of 'On This Day' style tweets that appeared on my timeline talking about The Five Faces of Doctor Who BBC2 repeat season. This alerted me to a significant milestone in my fan life: I have been a Doctor Who fan for 40 years now. The day that I write this (4th November 2021) is 40 years to the day since I first became hooked on the show that's bigger on the inside than out. It was the third episode of An Unearthly Child, the very first Who story, and the first of five stories from different Doctors to be repeated during the latter weeks of 1981. The full details of that first experience with the Doctor can be found in the Carnival of Monsters blog post here. Condensed into the next four and a bit weeks was my Doctor Who induction, and I've not grown out of it since. Milestones came thick and fast after that: I watched my first episodes go out 'live' in January 1982. Sometime later in that year, I first read Doctor Who Magazine, and shortly after that started collecting it. I can't remember exactly, but I must have read my first Target novelisation around that time too: for the next year, I would happily get out on loan every one of the dozen or so titles that were in the children's section of Durrington library. Again, I'm not sure of the exact date but it was certainly no later than 1983 that I had been bought my first ever Doctor Who book (it might have been The Doctor Who Technical Manual, or a Target book). Also in 1983, I went to my first ever fan event, the Doctor Who 20th anniversary celebration in Longleat, Doctor Who's version of Woodstock.

By 1986, I had connected with a handful of local fan friends, and taped my first series off the telly onto a video cassette. In 1987, I purchased the first of many official Doctor Who VHS tapes (the first DVD I bought was in 1999, the first Blu-ray in 2010, the first download, 2013). I joined the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in 1990, had my first online discussion about Doctor Who sometime around 1998. I went to my first (and so far only) proper Doctor Who convention in 2003, the 40th anniversary Panopticon in London, where Caroline John mistook me for someone else (see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Spearhead from Space blog post) and I bought a drink for Michael Sheard). At Longleat, I'd thought about where I'd be when Doctor Who was another 20 years older, and being thirty-something had seemed very old; but, after all that time, I was still essentially doing - and loving - the same thing. My average of one Doctor Who event every twenty years was set to rise, but only after the series returned to TV and had been on screen about a decade; maybe the 2013 50th anniversary events (which I didn't attend but heard about) whet my appetite. A year after Time Heist was broadcast, I went to the Symphonic Spectacular in Wembley Arena (live Doctor Who music and monster artistes roaming around, with Peter Davison presenting), and a year after that (2016) I attended the first of what became a regular treat of BFI screenings of Doctor Who stories, either live action or animation.

I don't know whether fandom has changed very much in those 40 years, or it's just my relationship to it, and understanding of my place within it, that has evolved. At the start, it seemed that everyone I knew liked Doctor Who; that enthusiasm gradually tapered off, until around 1986 / 87 when it markedly reduced, and by the end of the 1980s everybody seemed to have grown out of it. There's a certain amount of evidence that the phenomenon was reflective of the public at large, but it may have just been down to mine and my peers' age through those years, going from children to adolescents. In the period the show was off the air, it became obscure and vintage enough to be something like that indie band that hardly anyone else knew about but you loved. Then it returned and suddenly that band was thrust into the mainstream and seemed just a tiny bit less special after that. By the time Matt Smith became the first Doctor to debut at an age younger than I was while watching (a fan milestone that's an uncomfortable reminder of one's mortality, like the fact that I'm now ten years older than Homer Simpson) a new generation of Doctor Who fans existed, including a large number in North America. Now that Doctor Who is a globally loved Comic-Con worthy franchise rather than the cottage industry of fan projects in the so-called wilderness years of 1990 to 2004, I have to accept it belongs to everyone. In some ways things have improved. The new fans have normalised the practice of dressing up as Doctor Who characters, a practice that was mocked mercilessly when I was their age (not by other fans, by the national media in the UK). There are still negative people, there always will be, but in general the current fandom is a positive, diverse and welcoming collective.

It was not a badge of fan honour to live through those Doctor Who-free years, but I'm glad that I did. I've seen the show being taken off the air, and I know it isn't the end of the world, that it'll always come back. Even after 40 years (a majority of which had the show on air) there's still a stubborn, underlying feeling, though, a fear that one day the stories will run out; it's hard to shift. It makes a little bit of sense, mind. The nature of Doctor Who, its falling into discrete eras where the lead role is played by a different actor, means as long as it continues, there will always be an ending imminent, even if that doesn't mean the end of the show as a whole. The song is ending soon, but the story never ends, as Russell T Davies put it (in The End of Time). I want to savour every moment of Jodie Whittaker's marvellous Doctor while it lasts, but quite a bit of publicity (the Radio Times cover, the interview with Graham Norton) was pushing her departure to the fore, even though it's not for another year yet. One way in which the era will be hastened to a close, alas, is by this blog. Having watched the first part of Flux, it's clear that it can't be covered in pieces, the six chapters don't look to be self-contained enough for that approach to make sense. As such, I'm going to have to blow it all in one blog post, leaving very little of Jodie left to blog (as she's had fewer stories than other Doctors). Who knows, though, she might come back one day. In 1983, when I thought about the anniversary in another 20 years time, I thought I would be impossibly old. All being well, though, I should see in the 60th anniversary. If I can stay alive, maybe even the 80th (and a ridiculous 60 years of being a fan) is something to aim for. We'll see.

  

In Summary:

Any good heist story needs a twist, and the twist is that this mid-season minor episode is excellent in every way.