After last week's memorable and controversial effort we return to a more standard romp with Steve Thompson and Stephen Moffat's script giving us a sci-fi version of the bank robbery, not so much Ocean's Eleven as Doctor's Four. After receiving a call on the TARDIS phone, the Doctor and Clara finds themselves in the Bank of Karabraxos, the most impregnable bank in the universe. Recent memories wiped by memory worms, they're in the company of a mutant shapeshifter and a augmented hacker with a computer in his head. They've been given a mission by the mysterious Architect to penetrate the vault of the bank. However, bank security, controlled by Ms Delphox (Keeley Hawes), is pretty dangerous, especially when monster the Teller can detect the guilt in your mind and turn your brain to soup. What is in the vault and who has sent them on their mission?
Though laced with some of Moffat's trademark timey-wimey, Time Heist is an entirely enjoyable and easy enough to follow adventure. It's brisk, fun and has the odd dark and scary moment. It's not destined to top any fan polls but was diverting and looked good, director Douglas MacKinnon enjoying his camera flares and colourful dissolves and indulging the tropes of the genre, a nice slow motion shot of our team walking to the bank, while Murray Gold provided a suitably caper style score. Once again, Peter Capaldi was absolutely brilliant as the Doctor: eccentric and grumpy but commanding and callous as well. The moment when one of the team seemed dead and he just brushed it aside was great, turning on the others and hissing that they could find a shoulder to cry on later but now they needed him to stay alive. Am I the only one who's reminded of Season 13 Tom Baker in these moments, always remembering the bigger picture? He also got a few moments of humour too, regaling the team with an anecdote and commenting that in his new look he was aiming for 'minimalism' but may have ended up 'magician'.
Jenna Coleman has less to do as Clara this week but the director made use of her amazingly expressive face to ratchet up the tension as she tried, and failed, to shield her thoughts from the Teller. She also looked utterly stylish for a change in her suit and tie get-up (let's hope she's burned the eye print blouse). Danny Pink is a lucky fellow. In support, Pippa Bennett-Warner's shape shifter Saibra was fine though the writers had robbed her character's arc wholesale from Rogue in the X-Men comics. Jonathan Bailey as Psi was better, a likeable and useful chap who would made a great companion. Bring him back. We're used to this Doctor being a loner, lacking the bonhomie of his predecessor but Capaldi's Doctor sparked off the disparate members well. As the nominal villainess, Hawes had very little to do, other than being arch. The reveal about her connection to the owner of the bank was a nice touch though.
The various twists were well staged and made sense at the time (though if you start really thinking about them it all falls to pieces almost instantly) and the Doctor working it all out in the vault was a good scene, Capaldi bobbing about and waving his arms. The Teller was also a brilliant creation, though it did look a little bit as if it had two giant erections stuck on its head. The eventual reveal that the heist was in fact a rescue mission for the Teller and its imprisoned mate was a little too much like the ending of Hide in Series 7 but it gave the episode an ending that resonated deeper than mere success at robbing a bank. The Tellers were also naturalists so it's probably just as well that they live away from others - imagine going to the shops and stumbling onto them on a sleepy Sunday morning. Time Heist will not be regarded as the best of Series 8 but it was certainly Steve Thompson's best contribution to the show so far and continues a run of episodes that are the most fun since Tennant.
GK Rating: ****
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