Doctor Who Recap and Review – “Time Heist”

Spoiler City Ahead!

Who doesn’t love a good heist story? This Doctor Who episode, “Time Heist,” is stylistically a lot like the Ocean’s film franchise.  In a behind-the-scenes clip during the episode, Jenna-Louise Coleman said it was Oceans Eleven in space. This episode pretty much jumps right into the adventure without much time to realize it started. Clara is about to go on a date, so she refuses to go with The Doctor.  It sure seems like Danny Pink is getting set up to be a tragic loss or the reason Clara leaves. She is heading out the door until the Tardis phone rings. Both Clara and the Doctor stop dead in their tracks and ponder who it could be, since very few people in the universe have the Tardis phone number. As the Doctor goes to answer the phone, we are immediately transferred to a dark room where we have Clara, The Doctor, and two unknown people all screaming and holding memory worms.

We then jump right into things as they are given the plans to rob the bank and, alerted, the bank has already sent security to bring them to the incinerator. Quickly, we learn who the other two people are: Sabina and Psi. Saibra, who can change shape, as her face changes right as they let go of the worms. We learn she thinks it is a curse because she changes shape whenever she touches another living being preventing her from having any kind of romantic relationship. Then we have Psi, who is a Cyborg and is also an expert bank robber. We learn he has wiped his mind completely in the past to save his loved ones when he was incarcerated in the past. After the short intros, Psi downloads the heist plans and they run! They make it into the main bank with Saibra help posing as a bank customer and as they are making their way in and whole force of men run out, surrounding a man while a huge alien is escorted in in chains and a straitjacket. Ms. Delphox tells the man his guilt has been detected and as he yells at her that he is innocent she just bats and eye and has the alien, whom she calls The Teller, scan his brain for guilt and since he finds it Ms. Delphox orders his mind wiped, which makes the mans head cave in which for a show that is meant to be able to be watched by children was a bit gruesome.

The team make it past the main room undetected and get into an elevator; it is here where they are detected and find a case filled with a helpful tool put there by the man who orchestrated the whole heist, “The Architect”. They open the case and find an odd tool. The Doctor finally figures out how to use the device and it ends up cutting a hole in the bottom of the elevator then immediately replaces it for an awfully easy escape plan. They continue their way through the bank until they have to pass by a room that has The Teller locked up in a cage. While security is searching the whole bank for them and literally running right by them the team struggle to maintain composure in trying to keep their minds blank so The Teller can’t scan them. As they finally are able to make a run for it Saibra gets caught by The Tellers psychic powers and can’t move. As they discuss how they have no idea how to have her escape the doctor remember these six devices given to the team that seemed small at the time but he figures they are suicide pills basically and throws one to Saibra as she does not want to become like the man who’s head got caved in. Saibra uses it and is immediately disintegrated. As the team makes it to the next room we find it is the hallway leading straight to the vault and in the mean time, Ms. Delphox is tracking the team and decides to let The Teller loose and roam the halls trying to scan and find the last three members of our team.

The conflict between the team starts to really fly here as Clara and Psi cannot believe the Doctor just let Saibra die, helped and now doesn’t seem to care. Psi has a great line against The Doctor saying, “Is that why you call yourself The Doctor huh? Occupational hazards?” Although things get a bit heated, they still have a job to do; since the vault is right there and so are the three of them, the Doctor figures The Teller would be able to detect three minds in one place better than three separate minds. So he and Clara run off leaving Psi to hack into the vault and open it. Psi says he would be happy to be one of The Doctors Occupational hazards and then the Doctor hands him another one of the fancy little suicide pens he gave to Saibra. The Teller ends up finding Clara and trying hard to scan her mind, but she holds on long enough to have Psi finish hacking the vault and have him hatch his own plan to upload the memories of every thief and robber in history which entices The Teller and makes him leave Clara to chase down Psi. Once they meet Psi tells Clara that he must do it because when her life flashes before her eyes she sees family and friends, but he sees nothing and then he injects himself/stabs himself or whatever those suicide things do… (Damn Doctor Who… We just meet these two people and you kill them off right after to make me love them!) The Doctor and Clara hurry to the vault only to find out Psi’s hack didn’t work and that there is one more lock in place. All of a sudden, a solar flare hits the bank, we figure out a whole solar storm is coming, that is when the Doctor realizes they were not sent there to rob a bank but actually sent back in time to fix something at the bank and the only way they could do is during the solar storm because it would lower security to the bank. Then right as this realization comes to fruition the bank vault opens.

The Doctor and Clara look through the vault to find the three different items Psi, Saibra and The Doctor were sent to retrieve. They get to Psi’s first, which is an item to reboot a system and restore all files which would give Psi all his memory’s back. Then they get to Saibra’s item, which is a formula to stabilize her genetics. Then right as they start to head to the private vaults to find the Doctors Item they turn a corner and there stands The Teller. We then flash to Clara and The Doctor, captured by Ms. Delphox, in which she reveals The Teller is the last of his kind. The Doctor argues with Ms. Delphox’s actions and she send them both to the incinerator. But right when we feel all hope is lost one of the guards assures us it isn’t and changes form to reveal it as Saibra and the other guard takes off his helmet and it is Psi! The Atom disintegrators or so the Doctor thought were actually just teleporters which sent them to the ships hull where they find the Tardis and figured a way into the private vault. The team heads out to the final destination and as they enter the vault they find unlimited amounts of treasure from across the galaxy and one woman at a desk – Madame Karabraxos, the owner of the bank. The Doctor threatens her until she turns around to reveal it to be Ms. Delphox. Or rather, Ms. Delphox is just a clone of Madame Karabraxos whom she has killed for letting The Doctor get into the private vault. We then get to the point that the solar storm is going to destroy the bank which makes Karabraxos panic and grab all the treasure she can, The Doctor starts acting a bit silly, telling everyone he hates “The Architect” who orchestrated this and then he figures out he actually is the Architect himself and he sent himself back to rob the bank. While he is going on this tirade, he writes down the Tardis Phone Number and writes, “I am a Time Traveller” on it and give it to Karabraxos, whom then leaves. Everyone now is really confused and asks the Doctor is he remembered why he was there and he says well, there is only one way to remember and the doors open to reveal The Teller. The Doctor want him to scan his thoughts and as The Teller does the Doctor over powers him as he remembers why they are there, which is for The Teller himself because he is not the last of his kind, as Madame Karabraxos had a female of his species locked up.

The team then heads to the Tardis where The Doctor sets both of the alien species free on their homeworld to continue their species. After this we are treated to a happy ending with everyone eating chinese food talking about how awesome the heist was and confirming relationships which are left open for either Psi, or Saibra to return at a later date. We then of course have the Doctor drop off Clara for her date with Danny and as she runs out of the Tardis, the doctor says, “Rob a bank…Rob an entire bank…Some date…” Which leads to some interesting questions of why he cares…

This episode was definitely one that I feel may not count a lot toward the major plot going on this season, despite the Doctor basically thinking he was killing these two people and despite him giving himself the teleporters to begin with. As Clara stated at one point, “He isn’t really like that all the time” and as much as this season had made us question that, this episode showed he still is the hero we know and would more so save a life than spare one for convenience. While this episode was very high quality and a bit more of a smaller stylistic type of episode very much wanting to have The Doctor be the new Frank Sinatra or George Clooney in this sci-fi take on a heist story. I liked The Teller the whole time, but I really liked the idea of having the menacing terrifying creature whom all we see is him destroy actually be the victim and the whole reason they were there. I felt this was a great point because it was more than a heist and more than even a time-travel heist; it was a rescue mission first and foremost.

Overall this episode was somewhere in the middle for me for this season, as it seemed more that Stephen Moffat just wanted to do a heist story more than progress the overall story of Doctor Who, much like last year’s episode a Town Called Mercy where it was just a reason to do a spaghetti western and not much to offer as a good Doctor Who. I would give this episode a good B- mostly because it was a very fun and enjoyable episode, and Doctor Who always makes me fall in love with characters even if they are in only one episode. Only if the story had as much heart as the style I feel this episode would have received a higher score, but at least The Teller is free!

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Doctor Who Recap and Review – “Into the Dalek”

(SPOILERS AHEAD!!! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE EPISODE!)

 

Last week, we got to meet the new Doctor, and this week we get to know him a little bit more; ultimately, we get to see a side of the Doctor we never have, at least in the new series. We were promised a darker Doctor with Capaldi at the helm and he does not disappoint, as this episode had some of the darkest moments and decisions the Doctor has ever made, especially for anyone not familiar with the other darker Doctors from the original series.

The episode starts with the Doctor saving a soldier from an exploding ship. After an initial conversation, she has the Doctor take her back to her ship where we learn it is a secret ship, and due to the Doctor finding it, they must kill him until they realize he can help as he is a doctor but they don’t know he is THE Doctor. They say they have a patient that the Doctor could help and proceed to take him to the patient which ends up being a Dalek. If that is not surprising enough, The Doctor has the normal conversation with the initial Dalek which reveals that it is “Sick” by yelling “ALL DALEKS MUST BE DESTROYED!”

After the credits we are immediately introduced to the new Character of Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) who is a teacher at Coal Hill School, which is of course the same school Clara teaches at. We get a bit of an odd glance between the two as Clara is walking into school and after we are told Danny is a Lady Killer by people who don’t know him and any idea that may be so is shot down immediately when he meets and starts talking to Clara. However, before that happens, a kid in Danny’s class asks if he has ever killed anyone, and especially outside of the military where he starts crying. This is definitely going to be an important part of this character as there was too much focus on it to be forgotten. Clara being the wonderfully cute companion she is, forgives Danny’s initial awkwardness and invites him to take her out for drinks and she is walking away she runs into the Doctor and the Coffee he promised her.

Of course, this meeting is short and they both head straight to the ship to help the crew with this Dalek. It doesn’t take long for them with some of the crew to shrink down in a special craft made for Doctors to shrink down and combat illness on a molecular level. After just about the trippiest sequence ever in Doctor Who where they exit their craft into the Dalek, it all seems made for molecular-sized beings and a lot safer than the inside of a Dalek should feel. That is, until one of the officers decides to shoot a cable line to get down to a lower level. As the cable stabs into the side, it alerts the Dalek and antibodies show up to remedy the problem. The antibodies surround the officer that shot the cable line and the Doctor, already mad at him for shooting and hurting the Dalek, throws him a pill and just assure the man to trust him. Immediately, the Dalek antibodies kill the man and the Doctor had only given him the pill to track where the antibodies sent his remains inside the Dalek. As the antibodies now start chasing the group and they jump down a shaft and end up landing into a huge puddle of what we learn is protein from people the Dalek has killed; this quickly ends and they end up finding out what the “problem” is.

The “problem“ ends up being a slight radiation leak which seems to both please the doctor and really upset him as it ends up he is right in arguing that there is no good Dalek, and yet in fixing the Dalek it goes back to normal and of course starts to “EXTERMINATE!” After this, the Doctor is being kind of an ass to everyone in telling them he was right up until Clara slaps him in the face, making him realize it isn’t that the Dalek is pure evil and had a malfunction, but the moral of everything that happened is that the malfunction made a Dalek good. So they then set off to try and bring the Dalek’s memories back to remind him of why he believed humans should live in the first place.

They head up into the memory banks to access the old memories and try and turn the Dalek good again. As they start that journey, the Doctor realizes in order to get to the memory banks one of the officers must sacrifice herself by shooting cables while the antibodies continue to chase them. We see this officer die and immediately be transferred to “Heaven” with the strange Missy character we saw last episode. The moment with her doesn’t offer much but exactly what we saw last episode with the clockwork robots. After this, we see Clara and Journey, the woman the Doctor saved at the beginning of the episode, go up to the memory banks to access its memories and set it up for the Doctor to invade the mind of the Dalek. Once he does this, the Dalek sees everything he did before to change his mind and then he looks into the Doctor’s mind and sees his hate for the Daleks, which in turn makes the Dalek, now know as Rusty, take out all the other Daleks whom have been attacking the ship saving the crew. The next thing we see, somehow the Doctor, Clara and Journey are outside the Dalek as the ship Aristotle’s soldier come into the room with all the destroyed Daleks.

As everything is resolved now and the Daleks are gone, Rusty rides away to Davros knows where; but before he leaves he notices the Doctor is sad and asks why he is since they won the battle. The Doctor tells him it is because he saw so much hate in him. The Doctor tells him that he is a good Dalek to which the Dalek replies, “No, you are a GOOD Dalek.” The doctor then abruptly walks out leaving Clara to run after him. As they are getting into the Tardis, Journey runs up asking to travel with the Doctor, but the Doctor turns her away because she is a Soldier, which will obviously cause some sort of conflict with Danny Pink when he joins in on the adventures.

Ultimately, this episode did not offer a good Dalek story but it did make you realize that, just like Clara says, you don’t know if the Doctor is a good man but since he tries to be, that is what matters. It is an episode that sets Capaldi apart from all of the young energetic and bouncy Doctors we have seen in the new series, and although they all are fantastic, there has not been a certain Doctor that I have even really disliked of all 13 so far. Just like he should, Capaldi is offering us something completely new and although people grew to love Smith I am fairly confident Capaldi’s run will end up being one of the best, if not the best of the modern series. For next week, we get a Robin Hood story in the episode, “Robot of Sherwood,” where somehow the Doctor and Clara travel to a place where fictional characters exist.

 

Overall I would give this episode a B as I enjoyed it and it offered a lot, but I still was left a little confused at a lot of parts and there were slight plot holes. Overall, though, this episode shows what this season has to offer and if all the episodes offer this amount of insight into the new Doctor we al have a lot to look forward to.

 

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Doctor Who Recap and Review – “Deep Breath”

FINALLY!!!! (Spoilers ahead!)

Hasn’t it felt like forever since we’ve seen a new episode of Doctor Who?! Well, it’s only been 8 months, but it feels like forever. We’ve not only had to wait for a new episode, but for a highly divisive new Doctor. Many were concerned about Peter Capaldi’s age, which turned out to be a non-issue, in his debut episode. But before Capaldi’s entrance, we got a glimpse at some old favorites. The episode opens with a Tyrannosaurus Rex walking around Victorian London. The police summon the Paternoster Gang, better known to us as Silurian Madame Vastra, her human wife and partner Jenny, and their butler Strax the Sontaran warrior.

The T-Rex then chokes up a familiar looking blue box that the gang immediately investigates. They notice that the T-Rex seems to have something stuck in its throat and out pops the TARDIS and our first glance at Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. It’s quick, it’s harsh, and it’s brilliant. The Doctor emerges and we realize that he has no true memory of anything. He seems to remember who everyone is, but, not what face goes with what individual. He confuses Clara and Strax, even when they’re standing right next to each other. This is one of my favorite scenes and it’s a great introduction to our new hero.

The Doctor then goes in to his typical post-regeneration “illness” so Clara and the gang take him back to their home so they can figure things out. Once the Doctor wakes up, he is utterly confused as to why a bedroom exists, not understanding that we have a room that’s meant for not being awake in. He eventually calms down and goes back to sleep, during this time he has a very touching moment where it’s just him and Clara in the room together. The Doctor is asleep and Clara is watching the T-Rex when the Doctor starts translating for the dino in his sleep. We realize that this poor creature is just as lost as confused as the Doctor is; he is truly a creature out of time.

In the meantime, Vastra once again interrogates Clara, as she doesn’t believe that Clara is worthy to be with the Doctor anymore, claiming she was only with him because she had a crush on the Doctor. Clara is absolutely furious at this assumption and makes one of the better speeches by a companion that I’ve seen. Vastra has a change of heart and accepts Clara. The scene itself is weird and out of place, but I loved it because it showed us how dedicated Clara is to the Doctor regardless of his outward appearance.

Later, when alone, the Doctor awakens and goes to help the confused dinosaur. He first goes to the door but claims that’s too boring for him and goes out through the window, a great moment that adds some of the humor of the past. He rushes to the roof and promises the mother T-Rex that he will get her home. Unfortunately, as is all too common in Doctor Who, the T-Rex bursts into flames and dies. The Doctor is soon joined on the scene by the rest of the gang where he berates their questions and asks the only real question, “Are there any other murders like this?” to which the answer is, of course, “Yes”. The Doctor then notices a strange individual and asks why someone would seemingly not care when a dinosaur is burning in front of them. This is our villain, a reverse Cyberman in that it’s a robot that uses organic parts for its upgrades. To avoid any further spoilers, I’ll end my synopsis here. (WARNING: I LIED, MORE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!)

Peter Capaldi has made a tremendous debut as the Doctor. He is fresh, familiar, funny, and dark. 12 does things to Clara that Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith never would do. I mean, he literally locks her in a room with an evil robot who likes to harvest human parts in order to stay alive. (Sound familiar at all, my fellow Whovians? It should. It did to the Doctor.) Of course, he has a plan and doesn’t let Clara die. In fact, this is a great moment for Clara who has to stand up to something absolutely terrifying and she does a damn good job of it. (Watch out Rose, Clara is turning out to be my favorite companion if she isn’t already.)

My absolute favorite scene is when the Doctor is in his pajamas after the T-Rex has died and is searching through the trash for stuff when he encounters a drunkard. The Doctor proceeds to rant on to him about his face and how it’s familiar (Fires of Pompeii anyone?) and how his eyebrows could open bottles. It’s a great moment of personal discovery for the Doctor seeing how much his physical appearance has aged and not fully understanding why.

I could go on forever about this, so to keep it relatively short I will summarize my favorite and least favorite parts here.

Let’s start with the bad:

– Vastra & Jenny’s relationship – Don’t get me wrong, I got no problem with bispecies homosexual relationships, but I think they went a little overboard with making that point. Every scene they were in had a reminder it seemed.

– Length – I feel like they substituted some quality in order to make it feature length. There was more than one scene I felt should have been cut.

– Clara Oswald – I really wish she could remember that the Doctor regenerates into different ages. Not Clara’s fault as much as the writers.

– Matt Smith’s cameo – Was it really needed? We’ve never needed it before. AS touching as it was, I felt it was only for the fangirls who have issues with an “old, non-hot” Doctor.

And now for my favorite stuff:

– The Doctor – He’s so dark! Did he throw that guy from the skin balloon? Did he steal the coat of that poor, cold drunkard? He could very well end up being my favorite Doctor if he keeps this up.

– Clara Oswald – A wonderfully strong companion. She has a few moments of weakness in this episode but she makes it up with gusto.

– The Doctor’s entrance, bedroom scene, Clara’s interrogation, the alley scene, the restaurant scene, Clara vs Robot, the skin balloon scene, etc…

– The lines – This episode is chock-full of great jokes, wonderful speeches, heartfelt moments, and many more.

– The TARDIS – Full of bookshelves and round things. The new TARDIS is super classy.

– The ending – Mysterious Missy…the Master, the Rani, River, someone else? Can’t wait to find out!

– Chalk – Looks like #12 is going to be writing things out a lot. That mixed with the books makes me very excited.

– Accent – Loving the Scottish dialect.

– Villains – Great call back to an older but recent villain. And, that woman at the end, she’s definitely up to no good…(probably not River).

– Matt Smith’s cameo – It was great to see him again of course. It was also a very well written piece and it made me cry.

– 12’s look to the camera! Terrifying and exhilarating!!

This episode gets a solid B+ in my book. I loved it, but, it wasn’t without its problems; a shorter episode would have been ideal. Capaldi and Clara may turn out to be my favorite combo yet and I cannot wait for next Saturday when we get to see Capaldi take on the Daleks! Either way, I’m just so happy that the Doctor is back on my television!

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