Day 805: Time Heist

The first half of Peter Capaldi's first series as the Doctor consisted of writers who were all old hands at the series. The aim is clearly to show that Capaldi can handle doing more 'traditional' Doctor Who stories, before moving into the newer voices for the second half of the series, of which a few will become more prevalent through the rest of his time as the Doctor. You've got two episodes from Steven Moffat, as well as one from Mark Gatiss, both of whom have been involved with the series since Eccleston. Of the other writers, one of them hadn't written much for the series before but had been very involved with a variety of spin-offs, another had written several episodes for the series as well as a range of books, audio plays and even a stage production, and the other one was Steve Thompson.

Steve Thompson's not had the best track record in terms of episodes. There was The Curse of the Black Spot, which had some good ideas but was weakened by some poor direction. Then he came back for Journey to the Centre to the TARDIS, which again had some good ideas, it's just that it didn't completely hold together, and there were also severe problems in terms of direction and acting. So now, we get what is possibly his last episode for Doctor Who: Time Heist. And Time Heist, to its credit, does have some good ideas. The Teller as a creature that can suck people's brains out is a nice and creepy concept. The entire idea of a time travelling heist is also strong, if a little bit hampered by the method through which Thompson decides to execute it. It could have been better if the time travel element were introduced sooner, giving the entire procedure a certain air of uniqueness, rather than the generic science fiction that we're left with for the majority of the story.

But the main problem that I have with Time Heist is that it never really wants to do anything. It feels like Thompson's just writing the story to deliver the brief and then leave; there's no sense that he wants to do anything special with the story, to go anywhere new or to make it feel exciting. And so that means that, no matter how good the direction or the acting wants to be, it can't quite rise above the generic nature of the script.

Still, at least Capaldi is good in it. And that's the main bonus of these first six episodes: we get to see what Peter Capaldi's like when he does things that could have conceivably been done by any other Doctor. Tomorrow, we'll get the last of those episodes before we dive head first into something new.