- Title: Doctor Who – Time Heist
- wiki: link
With one of the best pre-credits openings of any Doctor Who episode in recent memory, “Time Heist” finds The Doctor (Peter Capaldi), Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman), and a pair of professional thieves (Jonathan Bailey, Pippa Bennett-Warner) all awaking after a short-term memory wipe before which they foursome agreed to rob the universe’s most impregnable bank. Using the mutant abilities of Saibra (Bennett-Warner) and the hacking skills of Psi (Bailey) the group makes it into the bank, but the further they go the more likely the group is to be caught by the bank’s security creature who is able to sense and punish guilt on any being it comes across.
Although it takes everyone way too long to figure out who “The Architect” of the robbery really is (even after discovering their benefactor has to be a time traveler), and the series continues to push the romantic subplot between Clara and Danny (Samuel Anderson) with mixed results, “Time Heist” offers a fun adventure story complete with an odd creature, a hidden agenda, and even a nice callback to “The Snowmen” with the return of the memory worm.
I have mixed feelings about The Doctor (the most traveled man in time and space) coming across a race which he can’t identify after all these years, and the twist ending explaining the creature’s motivations is a bit too cute. There’s also the question of why the Teller didn’t notice the foursome’s guilt when it originally encountered them. Even if they couldn’t remember the exact details of the plan, they were still conspiring to rob the bank less than 10 feet away from the creature. Despite these issues, at least for a fan of heist stories, “Time Heist” delivers as The Doctor does the impossible yet again.
