WARNING! SPOILERS: This post contains spoilers and speculation for the Doctor Who series eight episode Time Heist. We begin with a mysterious phone call, wiped memories and strangers in a dark room. Our mission impossible is robbing the most secure bank in the universe. The clues we need to accomplish this are doled out by an enigmatic hooded figure called the Architect. A deliberate tongue-in-cheek jaunt down a familiar path, Time Heist should be great fun. Instead this is an episode that starts with an intriguing if goofy premise and goes everywhere it shouldnt. Theres a beautifully shot sequence near the beginning of Time Heist where the Doctor and his team enter the bank and wade through a crowd of customers in classic hero style. The moment the security system is deployed brings true tension and horror to the scene. Yet it all goes downhill from there. The build-up is sacrificed to a sloppy plot and cardboard villain. To balance our account lets look at five ways Time Heist slipped up and five ways it saved the day.
10. Debit: Clunky Dialog
Its harder to write dialog than one might think. The natural rhythms of speech are difficult to capture on the page and even good dialog can sound forced. There are several cringe-worthy moments in Time Heist thought the actors do their best to deliver the lines in a believable manner. Stilted speech takes us out of the story. It forces us out of our head space, and leaves us standing outside the scene rather than living within it. Ms. Delphox, for example, is forced to utter the words, Well be fired. Fired with pain. The line Fired with pain, is not only clunky its unnecessary. I imagine Keeley Hawes was quite capable of delivering the words Well be fired, in such a manner as to connote extreme fear at what might happen in that event. It didnt need to be spelled out for us and it reduced the power of the scene.