Doctor Who: Time Heist (2014)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils Doctor Who episode Time Heist (2014).

The big thing and few other reasons have prevented my from going to Rakkautta & Anarkiaa screenings. I wanted to do few movies from the festival, but I don't seem to make it to screenings. Probably I should have made better plans. I will try to get to couple movies during weekend and write about them here.

Back to topic at hand. Time Heist is first average episode of eight season. Some characters may come back later, but big story line wasn't moved forward. Episode felt too much like Ocean's Eleven. Ocean's gang stole from Las Vegas casino. Doctor's gang from safest bank in the universe. Doctor's gang consists of Doctor, Clara, Psi and Saibra. Saibra is much like X-men's Rogue. When Rogue takes victim's personality and superpowers, Saibra takes victims appearance. They can't control their powers, anyone they touch is their victim. This episode didn't use implications of that power more than couple lines. Those, who know Rogue, know what that kind of power does to you and what story opportunities it gives.

All have wiped their memories. Psi has done that earlier too. He can't remember his past. Others can't remember why they are at the bank or what they are stealing. They only have instructions from architect. Gang tries to understand why they have accepted to do this and what they are doing.

Premise is interesting. Episode could have been better if it was more character driven. Psi and Saibra were interesting characters. Too bad they didn't live up to the premise. Movie focused too much to the job instead of the characters. I think the plan was overly complicated and relayed too much on change and gang to be on correct place at correct time. We were teased of thing later turn out to not being true. It was disappointing to learn the truth.

Episode surely had lot of walking in artistically light corridors, when characters had transporters capable of transporting them anywhere. Sure, corridors looked nice, but they would be very impractical in real life. What really was point of the plan? Memory wipe was to distract telepathic creature, but they could escape from it by teleporting and they could teleport anywhere in the bank. Maybe not to vault, but they could teleport everywhere they needed to be to open the vault door. To underline this, Doctor had left briefcases around bank before they started to job. So why walk and risk getting caught when you can transport?

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