earlgreytea68 | "Time Heist" -- Thoughts (Reply)

So basically my thoughts on this episode can be summed up as this:

OH MY GOD IS THIS LIKE SOME KIND OF INCEPTION CROSSOVER/FUSION/AU VERSION OF DOCTOR WHO JUST FOR ME I AM IN PAROXYSMS OF JOY

So yeah, I loved this episode, can you tell? I *loved* it. I want all of the fic on the Doctor and Psi and Saibra and Clara going around robbing banks. WHY IS THAT NOT THE SHOW? I KIND OF WANT THAT TO BE THE SHOW NOW.

So clearly they were going for some kind of "Ocean's Eleven" crime caper type of thing and I actually love crime capers so I was predisposed to love this episode. (Note that I did not love "Inception" my first time through because it's not caper-y enough because it focuses too much on Dom's mopey story. I reblogged someone's comment that the Inception fandom is awesome because they ignore the main character's manpain to focus on how awesome everybody else would get to be if the movie was about them.)

So why do I say it was Inception-y? IT HAS AN ARCHITECT. IT'S ALL ABOUT MESSING WITH THE INSIDE OF PEOPLE'S HEADS. THERE IS CHARACTER WHO CHANGE WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE TO BE ANYTHING. And the guy in charge plays pretty fast and loose with everybody's life in the course of the heist. (And what they're doing at the end is trying to reunite a family, which is what happens with Dom and also, really, what the Inception team does for Fischer in fixing his relationship with his father.) And the guy in charge has a right-hand person who sticks with him through questionable decisions and the thief in the episode thinks that right-hand person is pretty hot and adorable. CLARA IS EVEN WEARING SOME KIND OF SUIT. I swear to God. I consider this entire episode a gift to me and you can't convince me otherwise, k?

I really, really liked Danny in the first episode he was in and he's gone downhill for me and I really wish they would do something to make him interesting to me again because I am not charmed by sputtering stammering as much as they think I am. He's hot, but I need more, alas.

I *loved* the set-up of this episode. I loved the Doctor picking up the TARDIS telephone and then us jumping to them having no idea what happened. It completely got my attention and I was on the edge of my seat the whole episode trying to figure out what was going to happen next and while I'm not sure the last reveal of the episode was as awesome as it could have been, it *did* seem very Doctor-y.

Clearly the mysterious origin of the phone number thing is going to be a big thing by the end of the season.

Psi is a hacker-slash-bank-robber and basically I adored him. "This is a good day to be a bank robber," the Doctor tells him, and I was even more on board for this episode than I had been before. And then he has that sad backstory where he wiped his brain of all of the people he loved so as to protect them OH MY GOD THIEVES WITH HEARTS OF GOLD ARE SUCH A WEAKNESS OF MINE. AND THEN HE THINKS HE DIES THINKING THAT NO ONE LOVES HIM AND NO ONE WOULD MISS HIM.

I loved the look of this episode, I loved the music, I loved the idea of the most secure bank in the universe, I loved the *look* of that bank.

I actually thought this episode, plot-wise, was fairly solid. Like, the expalantion for why they weren't using the TARDIS was clearly hand-waving a bit, but I also bought it. Like, "Well, at least you tried. Good for you."

I LOVED the idea of using time travel to rob a bank. OF COURSE. OF COURSE YOU WOULD DO THAT. I'M TELLING YOU, THIS ENTIRE SHOW SHOULD BE ABOUT THE DOCTOR TURNING TO A LIFE OF FUN CRIME.

So that poor businessman guy whose brain gets turned into soup at the beginning, was he really guilty and doing something sketchy?

I loved the fact that their brains were wiped because they had to be innocent, they couldn't know the details or they'd be detected. LIKE HOW DOM CAN'T KNOW THE LAYOUT OF DREAMSCAPES. RIGHT? IT'S ALL INCEPTION THIS EPISODE. ALL OF IT.

"Ever tried not thinking about something?" Okay, so, OH MY GOD LOOK ANOTHER INCEPTION REFERENCE. Because all I could think of was Arthur saying to Saito, "Don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about?" and Saito's like, "Elephants?" As soon as the Doctor was like, "Don't think about anything, keep your mind blank," I was like, "OMG GAH!" I tried not to think about anything along with Clara and it is SO HARD when people tell you to do that, it becomes impossible.

(Bonus thought: There should be an Inceptionfic where Eames just goes around saying to Arthur, "Don't think about what my mouth would feel like on the pulse point of your neck." "Whatever you do, don't think about me biting my way over your body." "Seriously, I'm telling you, *don't* think about me sliding that tie off of you and putting it to other uses." And finally at the end Arthur would be like, "I hate you *so much*" and drag him into bed. This fic would be called "Don't Think About Elephants," and if this fic doesn't already exist, then I am very disappointed.)

"Don't be so pessimisitic, it'll affect team morale." "Oh, and getting blown up won't?" "Only very, very briefly."

PSI WANTS OUT OF THE CRAZY SCHEME BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO KILL THEM. WHICH IS WHAT EAMES TRIES TO DO ON THE FIRST LEVEL OF THE DREAM IN INCEPTION. SEE?

If I were still living in a place where I played trivia every week, I would be Team Not Dead this week.

That bomb was very clever and I loved it.

"That's your plan? A thing will happen?" "A thing. Probably." <--This is my entire life plan and the Doctor articulated it for me so beautifully. I should have it embroidered on a tea towel.

"Guilt in this bank is fatal." And, Doctor, you must have more guilt than any creature in the entire universe, no?

Oh, look, Saibra can change faces so she's good at reading people. SOUND LIKE ANYONE ELSE WE KNOW? (It does. It sounds like the fanon on Eames. In case you wanted to know.)

Loved calling the evil, terrifying creature "the Teller." This is basically how I feel every time I have to go to the bank and have an in-person interaction. Like, "OH, NO, I HAVE TO GO TALK TO A *TELLER*???" (Not because tellers are necessarily terrible, just because I am a horrible person who doesn't like to have human interaction.)

So I actually thought Clara might start thinking about Danny when she was supposed to be keeping her mind blank and that something was going to happen with that. Only because it was a plot point last week, that she couldn't keep Danny out of her thoughts and it threw them off. Come to think of it, that's two straight episodes about how very powerful our thoughts are.

"Atomic shredder." Very effective name.

"A good man. I left it late to meet one of those." Two things about this. (1) Noteworthy, in view of the beginning of the season when we had the Doctor asking Clara if he was a good man and Clara being like, "I don't know." (2) The Doctor can't promise to kill the Architect, and it's a good thing, considering who the Architect turns out to be. The Doctor knows well about things never being as simple, as open-and-shut, as black-and-white, as you might wish them to be. You can't promise to kill the person making your life a living hell, because in the end that person might turn out to be you.

"No. I'm an amnesiac robbing a bank. Why would I be okay?"

The Doctor and his professional detachment in this episode is a very Sherlockian idea, that you don't work as effectively if you're busy being so emotional. And, of course, it all culminates in the "shut up" scene which is just a direct lift from "Sherlock." (Which, you know, bothers me less than I know it bothers others. But this is a "Steve Thompson" [IF HE IS A REAL PERSON] [jk I know he's a real person, I'm just *saying*] / Moffat episode, so you knew it would feel Sherlocky.)

"Separate." Probably the most terrifying moment in this episode. I felt for Clara, having to be on her own dealing with this.

THEN THE THIEF SACRIFICES HIS LIFE TO SAVE THE BE-SUITED RIGHT HAND PERSON AND NO, I AM NOT HAVING ALL SORTS OF FEELS, OKAY?

"Atomic seal, unbreakable." Didn't we used to call those "deadlock seals"? Or am I making that up?

I totally didn't see the guards-being-Psi-and-Saibra thing coming. Maybe I'm slow on the uptake but I was like, "Oh! Awesome! It's a rescue! They weren't dead after all!" Because I really thought they were dead and I was very sad for them because I loved them.

IT'S A STORY ALL ABOUT CLONES. They don't watch this episode of "Doctor Who" in the Baker Street household. It is disfavored and frowned upon. (But I guess it's a shout-out to me in that respect, too. THIS ENTIRE EPISODE EXISTS BECAUSE OF MEEEEEEEEEE. [My head is a fun place to be])

"De-shut up."

"I know one thing about the Architect. . . . I hate him. He's manipulative, overbearing, likes to think that he's very clever."

"Sorry, I thought we were getting along famously. Am I, like, misreading the signals or something?" Hahahaha! Oh, Doctor.

The Doctor makes that little call-me gesture to the Director and she does eventually call him. The next time he uses the little gesture, it's to Psi over Clara's head. SO YOU CAN'T TELL ME THEY DON'T GO OFF ROBBING BANKS TOGETHER. THEY TOTALLY DO. I WANT THOSE STORIES SO BADLY. I WANT PSI AND SAIBRA BACK ALL THE TIME THEY WAY WE GET JENNY AND STRAX AND MADAME VASTRA BACK ALL THE TIME.

"I was hoping for minimalism, but I think I came out with magician." <--Favorite line of the episode, I laughed *so* hard.

So I didn't really know what the reveal was going to be at the end, why the Doctor was doing all of this, and I was waiting for some huge thing, and I'm not sure that I expected it to be just "saving a species." But it *is* a very Doctor-y ending, I was just waiting for it to be something else, I don't know what. Something Master-y or Gallifreyan, probably.