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Time Heist finds the TARDIS’ phone ringing. Very few people have his number, and “nothing can happen just by answering the phone”, but he does so, and something does happen, and both he and Clara are transported to a room with an augmented human called Psi (Green Wing‘s Jonathan Bailey), and a mutant human called Saibra (The Smoke‘s Pippa Bennett-Warner).
They’ve agreed to have their memories wiped with a memory worm… but they don’t remember why…
Anyhoo, in the search for a decent new episode after Robot of Sherwood and Listen, all four of them have to rob the Bank of Karabraxos. If they don’t, they die. And they’ve got to get past Head of Bank Security is Ms Delphox (Keeley Hawes, so damn good in Line of Duty, earlier this year), and if she detects you have criminal intent, your mind will be wiped by The Teller (Ross Mullan), and your brain turned into ‘soup’.
Saibra’s special talent is to replicate any other being, thanks to her hologram shell. If only I could get her to replicate me, and then she could take my place at work.
Psi, on the otherhand, has computer hacking skills. Not as cool, really.
Some good stuff… There’s a nice put-down after Psi snaps at The Doctor, with him replying with sarcasm, “Look, when we’re done, you go and find a shoulder to cry on. Until then, what you need is me.”
And elsewhere, Psi tells him: “I still don’t understand why *you’re* in charge”, to which the Doctor comes back with: “Basically, it’s the eyebrows.”
We also get a nice moment where they blow a hole in a lift floor with a ‘dimensional shift bomb’, which temporarily relocates the particles to a different plane – a safer way of making an explosion-free hole, but it does get a bit daft with other elements like wiping your memory to reduce the guilt in your mind, so you can’t be detected.
For the rest of the time, it hints at being a bit ‘Crystal Maze’ as they come across puzzles which need solving, created by the hand of The Architect, but it really just boils down to a load of running down corridors – and seemingly easily disposable tertiary characters, as The Teller goes after them.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the episode.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.