Fancy Things Friday: Doctor Who; Time Heist

Welcome to Fancy Things Friday, where I talk about things on a Friday that I think are fancy!!

**** BEWARE!! THERE ARE SPOILERS EVERYWHERE! FOR AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ****

Could it be? Is it true? Has it finally happened? Yes, it has. Steve Thompson has got an episode right! Huzzah for Steve Thompson! I've been rooting for him from the beginning. He's the secret third genius writer for Sherlock, he gets those right. I knew he could do it at some point with Doctor Who! Third time lucky. We have Time Heist.

First off, I have to say that the moment Psi appeared on the screen, my throat did that squeal thing and my breath did that not working thing. I was immediately a fan. Ever since I watched a little known British comedy called Campus (from the makers of better known West Wing), where he had a main role, I have been bowled over by the effect that man has on me. He is beautiful to the point where I lose all words. As such, I will try and not let his weird hold over me effect my overall view of this episode.

I liked this episode. I liked it's simplicity and the general fun nature of it. Sure, there are sinister moments, but what I love is a lot of the more severe ones are from the Doctor himself. He has got dark this series and I am getting more and more on board with this new attitude. It adds a sense of mystery to him, like you don't know just how far he's going to go. Matt Smith was all about being such a good man, Capaldi is all about smashing that image down to the floor.

The main example of this is the ease in which is used those injections in this episode, back before he knew that they were transporters and thought they were killing people. He handed them out without a care, essentially handing his little team a means by which they can kill themselves. Sure, it could be argued that it was justified as the alternative was having your brain turned into soup, but still... chills were had up and down my back.

I've been trying to work out what it is about Clara that I now like in this series but wasn't too keen on in the last one... I worked it out this week. I like Clara and Capaldi together. They make more sense than Clara and Smith. With Clara and Smith, we ran the risk of just another girl having a crush on the Doctor and being boring and mundane... now though... she bickers with him, all the time, and I love it. What I'm adoring is the back and forth between the two. Even when he takes her advice, he doesn't do it without arguing with her first. They've got an awesome chemistry and it's really working.

I don't know if anyone's seen it, but BBC have brought out a short clip of a scene from tomorrow's episode 'The Caretaker.' It's basically yet another one of Clara and Capaldi's bickering sessions but I have to say, it might be one of their bests. I have seen that clip about 20 times now and have laughed each time. I'm very excited about tomorrow.

But I get ahead of myself, back to this week's episode. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, Steve Thompson, as awesome as he is in all things Sherlock, has seemed to just miss the mark when it's come to writing good Doctor Who episodes. His previous episodes have been "Curse of the Black Spot" and "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS."

Curse of the Black Spot might be one of my least favourite Matt Smith episodes. Although it does contain one highly amusing 'breathing on shiny surfaces' performance from the Smith, outside of that, I do tend to get the teensiest bored whilst watching it. This is something that, as an obsessive watcher of all things Who, doesn't happen all that often. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was better and has some really good moments, but it still seems to fall just short of a successful episode.

Time Heist though... I loved it. I laughed more in this episode than I have in any of Capaldi's episodes. I will say this, as much as I love Capaldi's doctor, I do miss the laughs that Smith's Doctor gave me. Although, I've recognised that Capaldi has said something funny, I haven't out loud laughed until this episode. When talking about his clothes and he said the line "I was going for minimalism, but I think I ended up with Magician", I flat out cackled.

(Also, in an entirely girly and OMG moment... Clara's outfit in this episode... a-ma-zing. I want a suit like that and Danny Pink is a very lucky guy.)

I've heard a lot of mention about this taking on a bit of an Ocean's Eleven vibe. I get that, but if I were to go down that route and assume that that was what they were attempting to do, I'm not going to like this episode as much. The whole concept of Ocean's Eleven is that they've all got this plan that you try and work out whilst you're going along and then there's this big reveal of how they did it and you clap your hands and say "Brava!" This episode did not do that at all. Apart from the fact that none of them even know why they're there, so little planned cleverness can be made on their part, it was all very predictable to me. The Architect is The Doctor... yup. Kinda the most obvious choice they could have made. He places all the clues down and they follow blindly... not exactly a clever heist idea. Also, you're going to guess it's something that was set up from the future as the episode is called Time Heist.

The bit that made me tingle the most however was the conversation between Clara and Psi (and no, not for the reasons I mentioned above about Psi, this was a different kind of tingle). Clara is defending The Doctor's actions like the dutiful companion she is, and Psi questions it, and for once I found myself falling on the side of the person unsure of The Doctor. For once, I couldn't, hand on my heart, say that he would always do what is good. When I realised that, the afore mentioned tingles began as I had no clue where the characterisation of this Doctor would end up, which excited me a hell of a lot and I realised I was exactly where the Moffat wanted me.

I.cannot.wait.for.this.next.episode. Hell, I can't wait for all of them. I am well and truly hooked... once again.

Well played, Moffat. Well played.

Peace out my lovelies