Story synopsis
The mysterious ‘Architect’ instructs the would-be bank robbers in Time Heist (2014).
”THIS IS A RECORDED MESSAGE. I AM THE ARCHITECT. YOUR LAST MEMORY IS OF RECEIVING A CONTACT FROM AN UNKNOWN AGENCY: ME.” The Architect
Psi (Jonathan Bailey) and Saibra (Pippa Bennett-Warner).
Thhe Doctor is offering to take Clara on a new trip when the TARDIS telephone rings. The Doctor answers it – and the next thing he knows, he’s in a darkened basement clutching a memory worm. Clara is with him, sitting around a table along with a man with computer augmentations called Psi and a woman called Saibra. They have all lost their memories but recorded messages inform them that they willingly agreed to have their memories wiped.
Responding to their voice prints, a case on the table opens, revealing a screen, on which a hooded.figure appears. A modulated voice introduces itself as “the Architect”. He tells them they have agreed to rob the Bank of Karabraxos, the most secure bank in the galaxy. A team is already on its way to terminate them.
A few minutes later, Ms Delphox, head of bank security, is contacted by a member of her team. They have all lost their memories, courtesy of the memory worms. Ms Delphox decides that if they have intruders at liberty in the bank, she will require the services of the Teller.
The Doctor, Clara, Psi and Saibra run. Psi is a hacker and bank robber, while Saibra has the ability to replicate other people. She adopts the form of a man in a suit and they enter the bank reception.
Delphox enters with the Teller creature bound in chains. It has the ability to read minds. It detects criminal intent in the mind of one of the customers and turns his brain into soup.
The Doctor and his companions enter a deposit booth where Doctor opens the case given to them by the Architect. It contains a bomb, but rather than exploding, it sends the floor particles to another dimension. They escape through the hole, then restore the floor. In the basement they find another case left by the Architect, who must have broken into the bank before them.
Inside are six hypodermics. An alarm sounds and they hide in the room containing the Teller. It locks onto Saibra and the Doctor hands her one of the hypodermics, explaining that it is an “atomic shredder”. She uses it on herself and disappears.
The others escape through a ventilation duct. The Doctor finds another case by the door to a vault. The Doctor and Clara split up while Psi unlocks the vault. He hears Clara cry out as she is caught by the Teller. He downloads every famous burglar in history into his mind to lure the Teller away from her, then uses the atomic shredder and disappears.
The Doctor and Clara return to the vault but it has an unbreakable atomic seal. Then a solar storm hits the planet and trips the system. Whoever the Architect is, they’re in the future. The Doctor and Clara enter the vault but are captured by two of Delphox’s guards and taken to her office. Delphox leaves them alone and the guards reveal themselves to be Psi and Saibra. The atomic shredder was really a teleporter to a spaceship.
They enter the private vault to find Director Karabraxos waiting for them. She orders Delphox, one of her clones, to send her the Teller. The Doctor now realises that he is the Architect after all and gives Karabraxos his telephone number. She exits as her bank faces destruction.
The Bank of Karabraxos.
The Teller enters and starts to feast on the Doctor’s mind, removing the block on his memories. The Doctor remembers speaking to Karabraxos in her later years, where she told him she needed his assistance. The Doctor then tells the Teller it is free and it opens a safe to reveal a female Teller. They use the teleporters to return to the TARDIS and the Doctor delivers the Tellers to a deserted planet. He drops off Psi and Saibra and returns Clara in time for her date with Danny.
Pre-production
Intruders in the bank are incinerated.
Steve Thompson, the co-writer of Time Heist.
Doctor Who robs a space bank. What more do you need to know?” was how Steven Moffat promoted Time Heist, the series’ entry into the crime caper genre, on the BBC website. This was an idea which had been developed into a full script by Steve Thompson, one of Moffat’s writing colleagues on BBC One’s series Sherlock.
Thompson himself had previously contributed to Doctor Who during Moffat’s tenure as showrunner, writing both The Curse of the Black Spot (2011) and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (2013). “Steven has had, for years, a yearning passion to write a bank heist story involving time travel but he couldn’t work out where to go with it until now”, Thompson told Doctor Who Magazine. Knowing that Thompson enjoyed complex, labyrinthine narratives, during 2013 Moffat asked him to consider such a story for the new Doctor – prior to the announcement of Peter Capaldi’s casting in the role.
Before starting to plot, Thompson went back to Moffat with a few concepts to discuss; the first of these was the bank heist would involve the Doctor and his gang confronting company security in the form of telepaths who could sense criminal intent among customers. Developing this together, the pair devised a telepathic monster which would be the ultimate sensor for the bank’s security system. Thompson also knew that the genre generally relied upon a gang being assembled from a range of different talents and skills, and recalled particularly the 1960s/70s American television series Mission: Impossible in which one expert was a ‘master of disguise’ such as the characters Rollin Hand or the Great Paris. This translated into the requirement for a shapeshifter who could adopt the form of others via contact with their DNA. In more recent examples of the heist genre, there was also generally a ‘computer whizzkid’ figure who was able to hack into security software; this gave rise to the idea of a man who had a computer implanted in his brain.
For the creation of Ms Delphox, the head of bank security, Thompson was thinking in terms of Lt Garber, a character played by Walter Matthau in the 1974 thriller movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; Garber led a team which attempted to anticipate the moves of a gang who had taken hostages aboard a New York tube train and were demanding a ransom.
By the end of November, the script – entitled Time Heist – had been placed as the fifth episode of the 2014 series and was to be made during Shooting Block 2.
When Draft 3 was issued on Tuesday 26 November 2013, there were considerable differences to the finished programme.
This version opened with a scene from the point of view of someone having their blindfold removed and seeing four people seated around a table. The voice of the Architect told them that silence is their only weapon. Each guest had their hand in a box containing a memory worm, and the voice told them that they had signed a contract to obey him for a single job. They were shown Fortuna- Vega, the greatest bank in the galaxy and told of its security procedures. As the Architect’s voice welcomed the four to the heist at the end of the pre-credits, two of those present were revealed as the Doctor and Clara.
The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) size up the bank they’re about to rob.
Agent 00 was a savage half-human, half- Zygon female, Agent 01 was the Doctor, Agent 02 a young cyberdude and Agent 03 was Clara. The Architect would transmit the plan once they were inside the bank. The four boarded a space shuttle; the autopilot prepared the team for sky drop with the team leaping out on winch lines… and landing in the midst of a guard patrol which opened fire on them. Hiding in a warehouse, Clara had dropped the communicator through which the Architect was to send instructions. Ms Delphox was originally in her 50s and – alerted by the guards’ report – donned a respirator to visit the Teller in its office where ‘a luminous mist pervades. Like a reptile house at the zoo – dank, steamy atmosphere. Something alien surely inhabits here’; the creature (‘a glistening exoskeleton; wriggling antennae; razor talons’) sat in a chair. Rather than go back for the communicator, the Doctor reasoned that they could deduce the plan around their talents; in the warehouse they found a suitcase marked 00 containing everything Sabra (Agent 00) needed to take somebody else’s identity and demonstrated her Zygon shape-changing skills.
The Teller (Ross Mullan) is kept in enforced hibernation.
Production artwork of the entrance hall in the Bank of Karabraxos.
In the form of an elderly entrepreneur, Sabra led the team into the bank with the Doctor pretending to be a bodyguard; their entry was helped by Psi (Agent 02) dropping an electronic bug into a gutter by the security check. In the bank, the team saw a painting of the bank director, Viktor Karabraxos III, the richest man in the galaxy. A courtesy robot took a blood sample to confirm the identity of ‘Mr Eridanus’ of the Sutrix System. As the robot told ‘Eridanus’ that there was a private call for ‘him’ there was a security alert with Ms Delphox pushing the wheelchairusing Teller into the chamber; the creature was described as ‘masked with specialist breathing apparatus, feeding him his own luminous gases. Gives him the odd appearance of an invalid. One arm and both of his legs are fastened down with restraints. His skin is grey and scaly – a shining exoskeleton. His head is huge and swollen. Long antennae protrude – cupped on the ends like little radar dishes. The antennae turn and dance as though trying to fix on to a signal.’ When the creature detected the scheme of the nervous customer, it used its telekinetic powers to hurl furniture around the room, and then wiped his brain by touching him. With the noise of the bank shielding their thoughts, the gang hurried onwards to the private call booth where they found a case marked 01 containing a Time Lord bomb to blow their way into the bank. However, in the telling room, the Teller detected the team and sent shudders through the ducting. Clara fought against the Teller by filling her head with nonsense, but the ducting was destroyed by the Teller’s powers, catching Sabra who urged the others to leave her to die. Escaping the duct, the team found a case marked 02 by a security door which contained a circuit board for Psi to disengage all the bank’s systems. Plugged in, Psi explained the security around the vault and the Doctor and Clara realised that the light inside was so excessive that they would need to go in blind. Psi guided them blindfolded through the laser beams to what looked like a normal corridor… but where the carpet absorption field sucked everything in; Psi isolated the safe path which would not dissolve their flesh. Miniature floating sentinel robots faced them next, meaning that the Doctor and Clara had to move very slowly… while Psi warned the pair that Ms Delphox had wheeled the Teller to the security corridor hatch where he was. Psi fell silent… and the Doctor and Clara escaped the robots when the chamber was hit by a telekinetic wave from the Teller.
The gang is briefed by a recording made by the Architect.
The pair developed a telepathic monster which would be the ultimate sensor for the bank’s security system.
As the pair reached the vault and realised that the Architect was a time traveller, a guard reported the solar storm to Ms Delphox. The solar flare blew the vault doors and the Doctor and Clara passed through Tech, Organics and Biochemistry… only to be captured by a telekinetic blow. Held in Ms Delphox’s office, the Doctor and Clara were rescued by a guard who turned out to be Sabra. Sabra wanted to free the imprisoned Psi, leaving the Doctor and Clara to enter the private vault… with the Teller probing their minds as they descended a shaft. Inside the vault was the hunched figure of Viktor Karabraxos III who built the bank as a refuge from law, governments and taxes. Ms Delphox entered to warn her boss of the solar flare, but the little old man fled with his money, leaving Ms Delphox and the Teller to die with the Doctor and Clara; Ms Delphox revealed that she controlled the Teller with a toxin flowing through its wheelchair. Released to attack the Doctor and Clara, the creature instead wiped the brain of Ms Delphox. The Doctor opened the safe inside the vault to reveal the second Teller in stasis… and the Doctor realised that he himself was the Architect as the TARDIS arrived in the room.
The bank’s ornate logo.
Saibra, disguised as suited businessman Mr Porrima (Trevor Sellers), the Doctor, Clara and Psi enter the bank.
The Doctor examines the sleeping Teller.
The Doctor opened the safe inside the vault to reveal the second Teller in stasis… and the Doctor realised that he himself was the Architect.
Production artwork of Psi’s USB connector upgrader.
Production artwork of the atomic shredders.
The TARDIS travelled to a lush green planet where a space suited Doctor met an even older, dying Karabraxos who thanked him for being his deliverer; his regret had been the death of the alien species so he sent the Doctor back in time to save them. The Teller carried its prone mate out onto the planet to start a new life. Back in the TARDIS, Clara was glad that she hasn’t told the Doctor too much about Danny… yet.
In Draft 4 – dated Wednesday 11 December – the script now opened with the Doctor bothering Clara before her date with Danny, but him persuading her that she could see the dark nebula before the rendezvous; the pair left Clara’s flat and entered the TARDIS, to find a masked man waiting for them… who shot them. They recovered from the tranquilised bullets to be briefed about the raid on Fortuna-Vega by the shadowy Architect in a darkened room. In an office, the Doctor and Clara then met the young alien girl Sabra and the cyberdude Psi. The team discovered each other’s powers and escaped from the room by lift before the guards broke in. Ms Delphox – now in her 40s – was alerted by her guards to extra CO2 in the main sector. The gang approached the bank along a subterranean corridor. When the Teller – now held in a straitjacket and wearing breathing apparatus – attacked the man in the main banking area, the Doctor realised that it needed line of sight to read minds and wipe brains.
Having entered the ducting below the call booth, the case discovered next contained a manual transporter allowing one person to escape. Psi told Clara that he had been tagged by the police for hacking cash machines and had lost the memories of his family by error in his last upgrade. Sabra could now transform because of a mutant gene, which made her very lonely. The ducting took the team past the Teller which detected them, trapping Sabra; the Doctor gave her the transporter device and activated it. Psi then guided Clara and the Doctor to the vault where they were captured; inside the vault, the pair found the neophyte circuit that Psi wanted and the mutant suppressant for Sabra. This time, when Ms Delphox left the Doctor and Clara prisoners in her office, they were released by the two guards who turned out to be Sabra and Psi. The script then followed the previous draft with Viktor Karabraxos III abandoning the Doctor, Clara, Ms Delphox and the Teller, but with Clara now summoning up her memories of Danny to block the Teller’s advance. At the end, Clara left for her date with Danny.
Production artwork of the Architect’s attaché case.
Clara listens to the Architect’s instructions.
Douglas Mackinnon, the director of Time Heist.
On joining production on Block 2 in late December, director Douglas Mackinnon read the drafts of Time Heist and knew that this was a script which he wanted to turn into a fun and enjoyable instalment, very different to the dark minimalism of the block’s other entry: Listen (2014). “What we wanted to do was a heist movie for Doctor Who”, Mackinnon told the Daily Record, “I’ve watched virtually every heist movie there’s ever been, and it incorporates things into it.” During his research for the pre-production of Time Heist, Mackinnon studied techniques and styles – such as slow motion, editing, scene transitions and camera angles – which combined to create the sense of tension and anticipation in the best examples of the genre.
Draft 5 – dated Tuesday 7 January – opened with a sequence of Psi being released from prison and immediately hacking a cash machine with his powers; he was then picked up by a taxi cab and gassed. The young alien Sabra – with runic markings on her face – was then using her powers to become a shop worker and steal from a van in a slum market… before being similarly gassed at her hideout.
The Doctor and Clara were also gassed when they entered the TARDIS before Clara’s date. The Architect briefed the quartet about Viktor Karabraxos when they came to in a warehouse. The Teller was now held in a Perspex cage and no longer required breathing apparatus. The bank was now mainly automated and almost devoid of staff. The gang used the bomb to enter the ducting via the deposit booth rather than the call booth. When the gang was detected on entering the telling room, the Doctor gave Sabra an atomic shredding device when she was caught by the creature’s telekinetic force. Psi took a shredder when he stayed behind to guide the Doctor and Clara – now without blindfolds – through the lasers guarding the vault; Psi entered the corridor to attract the lasers towards him rather than Clara and activated his shredder. When the dying Karabraxos met the Doctor on the green planet, there was now a series of flashbacks to the Doctor setting up his plan.
Production artwork of a marble unit in the reception room of the Bank of Karabraxos.
Clara and the Doctor prepare to enter the vault.
Production artwork of the dimensional shift bomb, and the finished prop.