Doctor Who: Time Heist

Although it’s probably not one that would necessarily bear a re-watch as a lot of the fun was trying to figure out what was going on. We spent a lot of the episode guessing what the explanations were, and I think we pretty much didn’t get anything quite right until just before the reveal in each case – so well crafted in that sense 🙂 I do quibble at the “you’ll always hate your clone” thing, which I don’t think inherently makes sense unless you assume everyone in the world hates themselves. I can see why Saibra might run into trouble with people not liking her given she turns into them, which has to be creepy. But not the “oh I hate the Architect therefore he is me” thing.

I liked the juxtaposition between this episode & the Robin Hood one’s portrayal of the Doctor assuming he’s in charge. In the Robin Hood one he just ended up bickering with Robin in an undignified fashion. But this episode showed why he often takes charge – even if he hasn’t necessarily got A Plan, he’s pretty damn good at making it up as he goes along. The brutal pragmatism was stressed again in this episode, still not sure if we’re going somewhere with that or if it’s the way the Doctor is now.

I have a feeling this is going to’ve been a key episode in the overall season arc – Ms Karabraxos reminded me a lot of Missy in both appearance and manner. And we’ve been reminded a couple of times now that very few people have the TARDIS phone’s number, yet Clara was given it “by the woman in the shop”. So while we’ve had a payoff for the Doctor giving Karabraxos his number, I’m not convinced it’s the only payoff.

I don’t really have anything else to say about this episode – it was a good & clever puzzle story that I enjoyed watching but it hasn’t left me with many thoughts I wanted to talk about. Except my niggling sense it’s going to turn out to’ve been additionally significant later.