The Karabraxian Job

This review brought to you by Memory Phones: Making every conversation new again!

The Story

The phone rings. Clara says "don't answer it". The Doctor says "why not?". And now they're robbing a bank.

Their partners in crime, literally, are Psi - a guy with a computer for a brain - and Saibra - a woman who can look like other people, but only when... blah blah blah, she's a shapeshifter.

This is her Tuesday face.

The gang of four has their work very precisely cut out for them by the Architect, a robotic being with an American accent who scattered clues throughout the bank leading them towards whatever it is they're looking for. But danger lurks, in the form of the Teller, a mind-reading alien that can detect guilt and has a fetish for melting brains.

Pictured: Teller porn

As our intrepid heroes robbers venture further into the bowels of the bank, the extras find themselves being seized one-by-one by the Teller. Rather than face the unpleasantness of brain soup, they each, in turn, off themselves using some handy dandy suicide sticks that the Architect left for them.

...except of course that they're not dead. The Architect ordered the wrong sticks, so our friends got teleported back to some spaceship. Oh, by the way, there's a spaceship.

The people who got the suicide sticks by mistake were much less understanding of the mix-up.

By this point, you may be wondering: Why would the Doctor and a team of misfits rob a bank??

Well, Saibra wanted a gene suppressant, Psi accidentally erased himself and needed a backup, and the Doctor and Clara felt the irresistable call of true love.

No, no, no. I didn't mean from Hide. I meant from this episode!

Closer. Less human.

They wanted to release the imprisoned aliens into the wild! Jeez, was that so hard?

If you want her to know how to feel, you just have to... Teller!

The Doctor releases the Teller couple, his bonus companions, and finally Clara.

And then, many years later, an eldery woman makes a phone call.

"I'm calling to report intruders in my private vault.... Yes, it was about eighty years ago... What statute of limitations?! But they stole the most expensive bootstraps in the universe!"

The Review

So about the Teller....

No! No! No, no, NO!

NO!!

I get it. You're writing a bank-robbing episode. So you've got to include the one word that everyone associates with banks. "Teller"!

But the teller is the guy (or gal) who gives you your money. This is not that. This is the "Bank Security Officer" - a much less excitingly bank-y title.

Okay, fine. He's called the Teller. So we're told "The Teller is never wrong", and then what happens? It's wrong. Not only are the Doctor et al guilty as sin, they are talking about said guilt while the Teller walks towards them. Forget psychic powers - all Karabraxos needed to catch these masterminds was a good microphone. But instead, the infallible Teller liquefies the brain of some random shlub.

"Oops. We were wrong. It was those guys. No hard feelings right?"
"Nahhhh My feelings are really.... soft...."

But as anyone who has studied statistics knows, there are actually two kinds of fallibility: false positives and false negatives. Maybe the Teller can always feel guilt when it's there, but just occasionally also sees guilt where it doesn't exist?

Nobody in this shot has anything to hide, right?

But nope, even when the two guards, one of whom keeps his face hidden, are both hiding a fairly obvious secret, the Teller just wanders off.

Unless...

He already knows. Of course! From the moment the Teller first sees them, he knows that they've come to rescue him, even if they don't. He probably even knows that the "exit strategy" is actually a teleporter! So of course, he goes to every length to keep them safe, while still letting Miss Delphox think he's working for her.

Moral Dilemma: Do you kill the people who unknowingly risked their lives to free you and your lover from slavery?
Answer: Easy - no, of course not! You find someone else to murder instead!

But other than that, and the ridiculously campy way Miss Delphox/Karabraxos was portrayed, I actually quite enjoyed Time Heist. It's not easy, in the span of 45 minutes, to create several new characters, give them personalities and life stories, all while also spinning a compelling narrative.

First we've got Saibra, a woman who can never seem to keep a straight face.

And then we've got Psy, who has to keep reminding his barber not to push any of the buttons.

I will admit - the Moffat trope of bringing characters back to life does annoy me. And I'm happy to call myself a bit of a hypocrit for this, but I was legitimately glad to see the side characters survive to the end.

(Although I defend my defense of this with the fact that having those sticks be teleportation devices instead of insta-death does make sense, and I was kind of expecting that anyway.)

If I had one complaint... I wish that Saibra's big secret were drawn out a little bit more. We see her rather horrifying interaction with the memory worm, and then find out exactly what it is six minutes into the episode.

15 Intermediate Morphing Fails! #8 is SO GROSS

Although even that gripe is also a point in Time Heist's favor. Saibra's super-power was used heavily, and quite effectively, throughout the episode. Turning her into a patron, then a guard, and having her voice the whole not-trusting-oneself thing that ended up driving the whole story. Drawing out her mystery might have prevented that theme from developing further.

I wonder what would have happened if Saibra ever touched the Teller...

...guess not then.

So that's the side characters. They certainly did a lot to make Time Heist more enjoyable, but for me, the big win was the major intertwined mysteries: Who was the Architect? Why were the Doctor and Clara robbing a bank? Who made that phone call at the beginning?

So... half a cookie for anyone who called this!

When I first heard the Architect's voice, it sounded like there was something wrong with it, beyond just being distorted. Some of the words sounded very odd. I figured it out on my second viewing - answer's at the end.

Just kidding - that one was kind of obvious. Although I did enjoy how this brought to light the whole not-trusting-someone-who-is-you-but-isn't-you theme.

I also enjoyed how, in Karabraxos's private vault, the Doctor recognized the causal loop that had brought them there to begin with, and gave the Director his number.

"By the way, I've tried it, and it won't work if you just use your fingers. You need an actual phone."

That the phone call to set Time Heist off came from Madame Karabraxos - that she started the whole chain of events that led to her getting robbed - and that her "robbery" was freeing the two creatures that she had kept imprisoned for her own financial welfare - I thought those were deliciously welcome twists.

The last win I'll mention for Time Heist is style. It's been a thing for the last two seasons that Doctor Who's episodes are getting much more unique, and separate from each other in terms of genre. That's part of why the show is so much fun to watch. And sure, maybe some episodes have copied each other, and others have had styles that I strongly disliked, but this bank robbery thing is a new one, and I think they did it quite well.

You can tell they had fun with the transitions between scenes, but did they have to chop that poor actors into pieces?

The music, the sets, the transitions between scenes. The pacing, and even the villains, for whom I didn't care that much, all brought the episode together beautifully. I mean, it's a bank robbery - of course we've got to have the giant vault door, the classy vaults, the surreptitious loading up of the bank's floorplan.

...Wait a minute. What is that projector? Is it... can it really be... a USB plug?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Overall

Time Heist had its strengths, and it had its weaknesses. The name "Teller" bothered me more than it should, and the villains in general were pretty weak.

But in general, Time Heist was a good episode that did a great job at holding my interest. It introduced a well-balanced side cast, and had a nice set of mysteries that came with well-thought-out answers - saving some aliens from accrual imprisonment, for instance. I had no desire to withdraw from watching, and I only hope that this episode will not be a-loan on the list of successes this season.

Predictions? I dunno - I wouldn't bank on it.

I'm sorry. I know those puns were... revaulting.

NEXT: THE CARETAKER

That thing looks like a very nice caretaker, don't you think?

*The reason the Architect's voice sounded strange to me was because the distortion sounded like an American accent.