Series 8 Script Analysis: Time Heist

Richard Forbes is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Richard Forbes concludes his study of Doctor Who Series 8’s leaked post-production scripts. Past articles from this five part series include:

Series 8 Script Analysis: Deep Breath
Series 8 Script Analysis: Into the Dalek
Series 8 Script Analysis: Robot of Sherwood
Series 8 Script Analysis: Listen

For the final installment of this series, I took a look at the post-production script for Time Heist. Lucky for Time Heist, it doesn’t live up to its rather unfortunate choice of name; rather, I found it to be a fast-paced caper and a hilariously fun-filled adventure to pass the time and, most importantly, a script full of curious and insightful direction. You never know what you might find, dear readers, when you take a peek into the private vaults of Karabraxos…

Time Heist

Like with the Into the Dalek script, it’s unclear where Steven Moffat’s contributions begin and Stephen Thompson’s (called Steve here) contributions end – that’s one challenge in writing an analysis on a co-written script; also like the Into the Dalek script, the co-authorship does not appear on the cover page and must have been a late decision on the part of Steven Moffat. I have a pet theory that Steven Moffat assigned himself co-authorship especially for Episodes 2, 5 and 6 chiefly because he may have contributed the scenes featuring Danny in full – but alternatively, he may have simply re-written so many of these scripts that he felt a co-authorship was warranted.

What I will say is, although Time Heist’s plotline takes on the form of a traditional ‘Moffat Loop’ (with the later events paradoxically inspiring the causally-linked events which run previous) and features a monster that torments people psychologically (like the Dreams Crabs and the Clockwork Droids forcing Clara to pretend to be dormant) and has a motivation the audience can sympathize with, the script does, at a technical level, feature some idiosyncrasies in its language that suggest another writer besides Steven Moffat did work at great length on most of the script, even if the story is very much like what we would expect from Steven Moffat (I’ll discuss those idiosyncrasies later…).

One question which I have is whether Time Heist was intended for Series 8 or even Peter Capaldi’s Doctor for that matter. It seems to me that Time Heist’s plot as a bank heist would have made the episode especially suited Series 7’s blockbuster theme, fitting alongside the season’s westerns and horror genres as a non-traditional take on the ‘bank heist’ genre. However, in at least one moment in the script, its authors do acknowledge that the new Doctor is different in some regards from the Eleventh Doctor; perhaps some clever editing on their part-?

PSI

There’s an escape ship in orbit.

(Tosses the hypo in his hand)

Takes you right there! Oh, and there’s this big blue box, is that yours?

And an explosion from THE DOCTOR. Pure joyous, leaping-about madness: the first time we’ve seen this DOCTOR this way – a lightning flash on a darkling plain.

This signals that the happiness that the Doctor shows here is unlike anything we’ve seen from ‘this’ Doctor – the kind of exposition that only makes senses in Doctor Who, I suppose. But it does make me wonder for whom the script has been written for, Capaldi or Smith? Speaking this past January for the 150th anniversary of the London Mathematic Society, Steve Thompson (a former mathematics teacher himself) told the audience that he had been approached ‘a few years ago’ about writing a bank robbery story for Doctor Who – whether we can glean from that, I’m not sure. At the very same speaking event, however, Thompson had some very interesting things to say about the structure of the episode which according to him was based off, remarkably enough, a logistical puzzle – a mathematical problem – called a river crossing puzzle, which Thompson explains:

“We approached the problem a different way, quite mathematically actually. We approached the problem from the point of view of the bank: what would be the safest, the greatest bank in the galaxy?

So these are our two sides: the Doctor with his TARDIS, convening his way into the safe, but they have a telepath and they can stop him. At which point you have to work out a very delicate game between the two of them.

You know: you’ve got a wolf, a goat and some cabbages on the side of the river, and only one of them can go in the boat at any one time. You can’t leave the goat with the cabbages and you can’t leave the wolf with the goat because it would eat it, so you go through this very long, painful process of rowing the boat backwards and forwards until you get everyone where they need to be. That is precisely the mathematical problem we were faced with in creating Time Heist. “ – Steve Thompson.

To solve the problem that the Doctor faces in Time Heist and break a bank never meant to be broken, the Doctor must, like the farmer paddling back and forth between the river banks, take an extended, tedious route through time, first breaking into the bank, but only to prepare for his second approach after first wiping his own memory and recruiting a team capable of assisting him on this very dangerous heist. It’s a testament to Thompson’s genius that a bank heist could, like an ancient puzzle, force even the Doctor, fully loaded with his own TARDIS, to have to work backwards to move forwards and in doing so, Thompson has created an action-packed puzzle of an episode which is chock-full of surprises for audiences and carefully layered with precision and shrewd forethought.

What forces the Doctor to play this difficult river crossing puzzle is, of course, this episode’s monster, the Teller – an amazing design as far as the production team is concerned, but the authors of Time Heist spare no less extravagance in their descriptions of the misunderstood creature and his ghastly image. Our first look at the Teller was a ‘slow drip’ of an introduction as far as visuals are concerned – we are invited to read portions of what makes a fuller description of the monster later in the script; here though the few lines we receive with regards to the creature’s image serves as a way of indicating to the production team that a proper reveal will occur later in the episode – this is, basically a tease – and what a tease it is!

10:05:28 INT. OFFICE – DAY

MS. DELPHOX hangs up the communicator – useless man!

She clip-clops over to a side door. Breathes into a sensor, it recognises the moisture in her breath, opens –

CONTINUOUS

10:05:35 INT. THE TELLING ROOM – DAY

A shadowy chamber.

A pair of GUARDS stationed on the door – same SWAT team livery – but these two also have close-fitting helmets with visors.

MS DELPHOX

(To the Guards)

Unwelcome guests. We’re going to need the Teller.

GUARD goes over to unlock the cage. Out on MS DELPHOX watching this, coolly.

MS DELPHOX

(To the cage’s occupant, blows kisses as though to a cat)

Are you hungry boy?

There is a Perspex cage in the centre of the room, reinforced with steel, big enough for a man to walk around in. A steamy atmosphere inside – like a reptile cage. Jungle plants – We can see a murky figure inside – just glimpses:

A glistening exoskeleton;

Wriggling antennae;

Bound in a straightjacket;

Beyond the jungle mist and past the wretched moisture, we see glimpses of what makes this creature one of the most impressive monsters featured in Series 8 – its shiny, ‘glistening’ skin, tough and muscular, like an organic exoskeleton, with these antennae that wiggle and move fluidly. The scene at the top of that excerpt is linked with the one that follows – the use of ‘CONTINUOUS’ indicates that while Ms Delphox has entered a new room (aptly called the Telling Room here) which requires a new slugline to indicate a change of scenery, for the purposes of editing no time should pass between Delphox’s exit and her entrance – it’s a continuous scene, she’s simply walking from one room to the next.

Continuous scenes are often useful for screenwriters tackling long action scenes where the characters are dashing from location to location with the audience following their every move. In Doctor Who, especially, the ‘continuous’ marker is often used to indicate when the script has us following characters into the TARDIS that the locale that the TARDIS is situated at, and the TARDIS interior, while different locations, do not necessarily interrupt the continuity of the previous scene. I also especially like how this script (above), however, chooses to express Delphox’s frustration with her inner thoughts (‘useless man’) and directs her to kiss in the Teller’s direction like one would do with ‘a cat’ – that kiss would later appear in virtually every promotional clip or trailer for Time Heist… ever!

Door swishes open –

MS DELPHOX enters, surveys the banking floor. Behind her a strange little entourage –

A monstrous creature in the centre – THE TELLER.

He is bound up in a bright orange straitjacket and surrounded on either side by a GUARD.

His skin is grey and scaly – a shining exoskeleton. His head is huge and swollen. Two long antennae protrude – cupped on the ends

like radar dishes.

Everyone on the bank floor stares in a terrified silence.

PORRIMA/SAIBRA

(Hisses)

What is that?

THE DOCTOR

I don’t know. Hate not knowing.

Gotta love how the script comes to describe the Teller – almost hammerhead like – this reveal paints a terrifying new breed of monster: greyish, rubbery skin, a ‘swollen’ head, tumbling along in chains, imprisoned in an orange jumpsuit to do the bidding of Karabraxos. Thompson colourfully calls the response, a ‘terrified silence’; he also, if you hadn’t noticed, chose to note Saibra’s ‘shapeshifted’ form using dashes where her in her transformed state is indicated as PORRIMA / SAIBRA to help reduce any confusion among readers. Later in the script, Clara and the rest of the gang also come face-to-face with the Teller – the script, like the episode itself, leaves its readers on edge. The slow anticipation, the sheer dread of it all is enough to raise the hairs on the back of one’s neck; it begins with a simple camera direction to widen the shot and, piece by piece, reveal just how much trouble our heroes are in –

SAIBRA

(Whispers)

Where are we?

Camera pulls back –

Reveals a huge cage.

This is the room where the TELLER is housed. Oh dear. THE DOCTOR inches close, peers through the gloom and sees the cage – filled with a dense mist, obscuring the occupant.

And then a grotesque antenna cuts through the mist – wafting lazily –

It’s inside!

The scene escalates as the Teller ‘locks’ onto Clara’s thought patterns –

THE DOCTOR

Keep your mind blank. Block everything. Once it locks onto your thoughts it won’t let go.

On CLARA’s face! Screws her eyes shut. Face twists with effort.

POV CLARA –

CLARA’s face, contorting with effort. Don’t think of what’s in the case, don’t think of it!!

The antennae locking on to CLARA now, even though the beast is dormant –

THE DOCTOR [CONT’D]

(Softly)

It’s waking up. Keep blocking your thoughts! Don’t think! Keep the suitcase shut tight in your mind.

On CLARA’S face – twisted with effort –

CUT BETWEEN CLARA’S contorted features as she struggles not to think about their mission –

THE TELLER wakes in its cage and screams – sensing her thoughts –

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

We’ve got to get out of here. Everybody, run!

PSI

This way!

PSI yanks the grating off the wall to escape into the corridor –

They dart through the shadows to get away.

And then they hear a piercing sound.

Objects start to vibrate and rattle. The room flooded with telekinetic power. The furniture shakes with a mighty force.

They rush to get through the grille in time.

But SAIBRA can’t reach them –

She darts behind a cabinet and hides there, trying to shield herself from the vast telekinetic force. Knees up to her chest like a little child playing hide-and-seek.

The cabinet above her rattles with the terrifying invisible energy – like being at the centre of a hurricane –

– here the authors make special use of camera directions to put the focus of the scene on various elements and raise the tension. First they use Clara’s Point of View (POV) to show the inner confusion, the mental torture that Clara is experiencing. Next, the script requests that the scene cut between Clara’s various contorted faces to show, perhaps, the futility or the difficulty she’s experiencing. In the previous analysis (for Listen), we introduced these kinds of edits as a ‘Time Cut’ – the script is expressing something similar here but through a more extended explanation. The scene also pays special attention to what it considers the sounds of telekinesis – that sonic fury, a piercing frequency, appears throughout Time Heist’s screenplay but here the exposition has put it on full display for its readers.

The horrors of the Teller continue with the story, serving as more nightmare fuel for children if nothing else. In one scene we come to see what a victim of the Teller looks like, perhaps to raise the ‘threat level’ with regards to the bank’s killer teller and unnerve viewers even more –

Crying can be heard. Moaning again, closer now.

CUT TO:

SAIBRA herself again. They step forward, and now they see –

– a small aperture in the wall – a tiny cell with a mesh front.

Inside –

A victim of the TELLER.

He is the SUITED CUSTOMER from the banking floor – now with the half-made skull where the TELLER liquefied his brain matter.

A drooling, brainless vegetable – cowering on the floor, neck and arms chained.

And there is a camera right outside the cell, trained on him... someone watching him constantly.

SAIBRA and THE DOCTOR, staring at him, in horror. Beyond them we see CLARA and PSI arriving to join.

CLARA

My God. Why is he even still alive?

THE DOCTOR

I don’t know. But someone is watching.

And they can hear a chorus of moaning coming from other cells.

Human debris all kept here, unseen.

PSI

Doctor. However this goes, whatever happens ... don’t let me end up like that.

CUT TO:

– the victim looks as blankness as the milky-eyed survivors of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; the description is compelling, shocking even – especially in terms of the language used… ‘drooling, brainless vegetable’ … ‘chorus of moaning’… ‘human debris’… (and no, the script isn’t describing the House of Commons) … the sight the exposition paints is one that ought to haunt and disgust viewers. The victims of Karabraxos may be thieves, but the torture they’ve been put through could make any tough-on-crime advocate uneasy; the sheer horror that the characters in Time Heist have witnessed here is enough to underscore any future encounter with the Teller as a date with a terrible fate far worse than death: the eternal loss of mind, freedom and dignity. However, the story’s first signs of these prisoners – distant moaning – comes as a shock with a tinge of irony for an overconfident, assured Doctor.

THE DOCTOR

Why not? There’s no immediate threat.

Right on cue:

A strange feral moaning up ahead in the shadows –

They all freeze, listening.

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

Probably I should stop saying things like that. Clara, stay with Psi. Saibra, let’s go and investigate.

THE DOCTOR, already striding off into the shadows.

SAIBRA follows.

PSI, crouched on the floor next to the power cable. He sticks a screwdriver in his temple and removes a diode. Blows dust off it.

PSI

Storm-dust.

He takes the diode, which trails a cable back to his head, and puts it in the socket in the power cable. CLARA staring at this extraordinary routine.

CLARA

You can delete your memories?

PSI

Yeah, it’s not as much fun as it sounds.

CLARA

I’ve got a few I could lose.

PSI

I’ve lost a few I wish I hadn’t. I was interrogated in prison. I guess I panicked – didn’t want to be a risk to the people close to me.

Takes CLARA a moment to understand.

CLARA

You deleted your friends?

PSI

My friends, anyone who ever helped me – my family ...

CLARA

Your family.

PSI

Of course, my family.

CLARA

How could you do that?

PSI

Well, I don’t know, I suppose I must have loved them.

Distantly, we hear the feral howling again...

CUT TO:

The conversation above, primarily between Clara and Psi, highlights what could be considered the emotional centre of Time Heist – the sad, desperate misgivings and failings of its characters; Psi, a man who cannot remember his family, desperate to retrieve his memories… Saibra, a woman destined to never experience human contact without an appropriation of appearance, longing to be ‘normal’ and free from her curse… Karabraxos, a banker so regretful, her crippling regret is what precipitates the robbing her own Bank of Karabraxos and the events of Time Heist, in a weird, loopy way where, of course, her regret matched with the Doctor’s invitation causes her to request the doctor’s presence which in turn leads to him making that very same invitation to her for help which prompted his attendance in the first place.

Motivation, it can be said, plays an extremely important role in a traditional bank heist story and Time Heist is no different in making it clear why every participant is participating in the heist. It’s always a part of the set-up. A bank heist is never just a bank heist for its characters. Danny Ocean of Ocean’s Eleven robs the casinos owned by his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. In the Thomas Crown Affair, Crown’s final act of grand larceny is meant to test the true feelings and loyalties of his lover, a detective assigned to his case. Time Heist, like any good heist story, is about the people, and what they personally have at stake with the heist – it’s never simply about the money or the spoils of a successful robbery, no matter how elaborate or extraordinary the heist.

 

Every heist film worth its salt has a few fundamental ingredients that by being included, raise the stakes of a given heist, encourage audiences to be emotionally invested in the story’s characters and the challenge they’re embarking on, and most importantly: confound viewers, pique their interest as far as how the participants are expected to complete what looks ever increasingly like an impossible, insurmountable task ahead of them.

It’s all a part of the story’s set-up, we learn: the motivations of the participants, then, what they as individuals bring to the team and finally, we get a glimpse, an exaggerated, dramatic overview of just how wildly impossible the mission they’re embarking on truly is. Time Heist touches on these three classic elements but, in true Doctor Who fashion, inverts their order. In doing so, it’s effectively telling a bank heist story backwards. We learn the personal motivations of those involved last; the characters pursue a robbery before they even know why they (apparently) agreed to rob the Bank of Karabraxos voluntarily. First readers are, instead, greeted with a classic kind of montage with a mysterious voiceover, which, not unlike similar scenes from Mission Impossible or Ocean’s Eleven, prefaces what is a rather impossible, daunting feat: robbing the Bank of Karabraxos…

10:03:48 EXT. PLANET – DAY

Image on screen –

A brilliant red sun – a fiery sky – a magnificent desert planet.

Wow!

[From now on, we intercut with the basement and images on screen, as required.]

The planet surface is desolate, lifeless. EXCEPT – there’s a single city rising up on its surface.

In the centre is a massive building – a glittering ziggurat of glass and metal, difficult to discern in the glaring sun.

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

This is the Bank of Karabraxos.

The most dangerous bank in the galaxy –

TIGHTER IN – logo: ‘BANK OF KARABRAXOS’.

CUT TO:

10:03:57 INT. SCHEMATIC – DAY

A schematic of the bank, cross-sectional diagram.

The pyramid is built above the planet’s surface BUT the bank stretches down into the planet’s core, tapering like a diamond.

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

A fortress for the super-rich. If you can afford your own star system, this is where you keep it –

CUT TO:

10:04:01 INT. SECURITY CHECK – DAY

A CUSTOMER arrives at the bank security check-

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

No one sets foot on the planet without protocols –

CUT TO:

CUSTOMER registers on a computer screen, a sensor checking his exhalation level –

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

All movement is monitored, all air consumption regulated –

CUT TO:

CUSTOMER still in the security entrance –

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

DNA is authenticated at every stage –

A security computer speaks –

10:04:09

VOICE

(OS)

Please exhale so we can verify the moisture in your breath – Intruders will be incinerated.

CUSTOMER exhales. Beep! Oh dear – he’s an imposter.

A dozen slits open in the walls and flame throwers gush – he is incinerated – turned to ash.

CUT TO:

Safety deposit booth –

THE ARCHITECT

(OS)

Each vault, buried deep in the earth, is accessed by a drop-slot at the planet’s surface –

A drop-slot opens and the CUSTOMER deposits valuables inside it – a priceless painting – slams shut!

The vault door – vast and forbidding –

THE ARCHITECT

(OS, CONT’D)

– the vault below is atomically sealed: an unbreakable lock – the atoms have all been scrambled.

Note the use of ‘intercut’ at the beginning of the excerpt. An instruction to intercut in scripts is common with phone conversations where a conversation goes back and forth between two scenes with the characters both speaking their part of an ongoing dialogue; here an intercut saves space, eliminating the need for a writer to continue to write a new slugline or scene heading for each line of a phone conversation by just saying that the scene should simply be intercut between these two (clearly marked) scenes as the script focuses on them. Here the script is to be intercut between the images on the screen and the awe-struck faces of those watching it from the basement. The ‘glimpse’ at the Bank of Karabraxos’ security that this scene permits is quick, terse and paced at a deliberately overwhelming speed meant to intimidate its readers and its (deeply anxious) main characters.

The ‘formula’ for a good heist story is not only present here and expertly implemented but it also does a superb job at setting up the challenges facing our heroes this week!

Intercut isn’t the only technique that is applied throughout Time Heist’s script; in fact, this script is positively teaming with illustrative terminology, cinematography and the quirks of its writers.

For example, Thompson has a habit of making use of dashes to cut down on superfluous camera direction; during some short exchanges, he might depict an exchange like he has below.

10:39:47 INT. DARK PLACE – DAY

ECU –

WOMAN

You gave me this number.

WIDER –

She’s on the phone in a private hospital bed – surrounded by drips and machines. Futuristic, bleak, hi-tech.The WOMAN is KARABRAXOS.

But now she is old and frail – soft face, grey and lined –

CUT TO:

10:39:48 INT. CLARA’S HOUSE – DAY

THE DOCTOR and CLARA –

KARABRAXOS

(OS)

My name is Madame Karabraxos.

CUT TO:

Here, the author cuts down the need for writing ‘on the Doctor’ or ‘close-up on the Doctor’ by just writing ‘THE DOCTOR and CLARA –‘; when he does use camera direction however, Thompson often abbreviates and economizes, as he has above: ECU stands for Extreme Close-Up – a very tight, obscuring shot – and ‘wider’ simply indicates that the view pulls back from that ‘ECU’. Thompson’s love for pacing through dashes also appears in his flashbacks, where we can see nearly every line bookended with two dashes to signal a beat in relation to this montage of flashbacks which are to be zipped through at (according to the script) a ‘lightning speed’. The scene begins with the slugline indicating a montage:

10:40:20 INT. TARDIS/BANK/WAREHOUSE – MONTAGE – DAY

FLASHBACK –

Running through the next beats of THE DOCTOR’S life. Setting up the heist. Play these beats at lightning speed.

-- THE DOCTOR meeting PSI, handshake --

-- THE DOCTOR meeting PORRIMA and stealing his DNA by shaking

his hand --

-- THE DOCTOR fixing the DNA to the slide --

THE DOCTOR

(OS)

The bank of Karabraxos, has never been breached.

-- THE DOCTOR meeting SAIBRA, handshake --

-- The four of them arriving in the warehouse, sitting in the circle of chairs, and each of them lunging forward to pick up a memory worm, Psi fitting the chip --

-- The Doctor recording and altering his voice.

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

Architect...Architect...Architect...Architect...

He repeats, as the computer replays the message –

Setting up the heist, infiltrating the bank to store the clues.

The Architect lifts his hood – revealing The Doctor.

THE DOCTOR

(OS, CONT’D)

You will rob the bank of Karabraxos.

And back to –

The ‘back to –‘ is also a key element to this montage and any montage, for that matter, since it signals the end of a montage for readers. A very important note!

I’m not sure what drove the authors to begin Time Heist with its unusual introduction – the confusing ‘fake out’ of the pseudo title sequence turned washing machine or the castle of the lagoon of lost stars which, disappointingly turns out to be the lagoon of Clara’s lost goldfish (which, if The Caretaker, is any indication is lucky to still be alive and fed amidst the raging inferno of its owner’s hair). Perhaps the introduction was done simply out of fancy or a way to pique the audience’s attention in a way that Clara’s flat at first glance couldn’t – the authors may have also felt that a non-conventional episode like Time Heist which breaks from the show’s formula of a weekly adventure slightly may have needed a common touchstone to preface its story – a little hint of misadventures to remind viewers, ‘yeah, you’re watching Doctor Who.’ Whatever the reasoning however, the first page certainly is an entertaining read:

10:00:00 INT. CLARA’S FLAT – DAY

A swirling dark vortex, almost like THE DOCTOR WHO titles.

THE DOCTOR

The Satanic Nebula!

Quick pull-back to reveal we’re looking into a washing machine!

CUT TO:

A castle against a green and stormy sky!

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

Or....The lagoon of lost stars...or we could go to...

A giant goldfish flies past the castle – we’re looking into a goldfish bowl.

Whip pan to THE DOCTOR pacing up and down outside CLARA’s bedroom door.

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

Brighton! I’ve got a whole day worked out.

And now CLARA emerges from the bedroom. Dressed up for a night out – full make-up, heels, killer outfit.

CLARA

Sorry, but as you can see, I’ve got plans.

THE DOCTOR

Have you?

CLARA

Look at me.

THE DOCTOR

Yeah, okay.

He looks at her, blankly, not sure what to expect.

CLARA

No, look at me.

THE DOCTOR

Yep, looking.

CLARA

(Can’t he see??)

...Seriously?

THE DOCTOR

...Why has your face all coloured in?

CUT TO:

Besides wondering when viewers will finally get to visit the Satanic Nebula, I also was deeply impressed with this scene’s use of camera direction. First we get treated to a ‘quick pull-back’ reveal which plays a crucial role in the shot’s humour – screenwriters oft try to limit their use of camera directions but here is yet another example of a direction which plays a crucial part of how the author wishes to tell the story. Without the tight shot on the washing machine, viewers would never be fooled and without the wider reveal, they wouldn’t get the joke. Comedy and storytelling, especially in a visual medium, can be directly dependent on the use of clever editing and shrewd framing. We’re also party with the excerpt above to a use of a ‘whip pan’ – a lovely use of camera work which brings energy and often comedy to a scene – the whip pan is a sudden jerky kind of swing of a camera from one side to the next, panning so quick it all comes across as not much more than a fast-paced blur.

As the scene continues we get even more interesting choices of direction, here a call for a horror shot catches the eye –

Panning fast to SAIBRA – a shadowy alien – gloved hands (one glove off) – every other inch of her skin covered apart from her face. She has just cast aside the memory worm, which wriggles on the table, and her gloved hand covers her face –

– and she now lowers it.

HORROR SHOT: For a flicker of a second, SAIBRA’s a leathery, oily, fanged mess (the “face” of a memory worm in fact) but almost before we can register that –

– it flickers to a normal, human face. An attractive woman.

– sadly though, I’m not familiar with the phrase, ‘horror shot’ except to speculate that it might simply just be the author’s own casual expression to mean a particularly horrifying, brief shot, accompanied by the usual musical stings and screeching cacophony that unnerves folks. The transition from Saibra to a memory worm and then back again is done here smoothly and expertly by Time Heist’s writers In fact, the whole screenplay is full of gags and interesting little production notes which make the whole experience of reading the post-production script worthwhile for, if anything, its author’s voice. For example, as the Doctor passes by an open ventilation shaft, lampooning their oversized nature and hilarious overuse in Science Fiction, the vent is labelled with an obvious gag in the excerpt below.

Turn, turn, turn.

THE DOCTOR leads them down the veins and arteries of the bank.

Passes a metal access grille: ‘NO ENTRY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’.

THE DOCTOR

Now this says ‘Place to hide’.

THE DOCTOR sonics it open and squeezes through.

CUT TO:

And an excerpt, like the one provided below, demonstrates how the authors of Time Heist play with the expectations of audiences to generate comedy and surprise. Here each stated omission admits what could have happened, but didn’t – each line is a further slide towards the genuine (and pleasant) surprise of the scene’s main characters who expect the worse.

PSI looks resentfully at THE DOCTOR.

PSI

Still don’t understand why you’re in charge.

THE DOCTOR

Basically, it’s the eyebrows.

THE DOCTOR flicks a switch. The bomb starts to pulse. They flatten themselves to the walls but the space is so cramped that the gesture is meaningless.

The pulsing becomes one single sustained beep. Everyone recoils, ready for the explosion – and then –

No explosion.

No earth-shattering noise.

They look down.

The floor has simply disappeared. There is a gaping hole in it that wasn’t there just a moment ago.

THE DOCTOR

(CONT’D)

Nice. Dimensional shift bomb. Sends the particles to a different plane.

A victory for ‘Team Not Dead’, I suppose.

Especially enjoyable is Time Heist’s occasional jaunt into deeper prose; sometimes going as far to explain settings, for example, with quite a lot of clarity and depth, especially in cases where such descriptions are helpful and serve a purpose as far as storytelling is concerned. In the excerpt below, the author takes some care in describing the contents of Karabraxos’ private vault.

10:33:51 INT. KARABRAXOS’ PRIVATE OFFICE – DAY

Squeezing through the hatch at the base of the shaft, opens out into –

A private office.

Cool, elegant, tasteful.

On display – a handful of priceless artefacts: an original Shakespeare folio; a Turner; a Ming vase; a Faberge egg. One of everything – the finest example of each.

At the far end of the room – an antique desk.

KARABRAXOS sitting at it, turned away from them, dwarfed by a huge chair. Mozart plays.

Behind THE DOCTOR, the others climbing out.

Not only is the detail here worth sorting through to muse about what Thompson had chose to fill Karabraxos’ private vault with, but I also found it interesting that the authors went to the special length of requesting Mozart as a backdrop for the vault.

While in the previous Robot of Sherwood analysis I was quick to point out that copyrights are often religiously avoided by screenwriters, Thompson may have bucked that trend here because classical compositions are not copyrighted, only the various recordings of these compositions may be; interestingly enough, Murray Gold chose to use Mozart’s Overture for The Abduction from the Seraglio – a story about a lover rescuing his long lost love from imprisonment – which parallels well with Time Heist which ends too on a, perhaps, happier note that even the story’s most violent, scary creatures can have regrets, can feel pain, love and sorrow – and that breaking down barriers and subverting, nay, undermining the institutions of a common oppression which Doctor Who does cheekily and yet so casually, makes people of its monsters.

The Doctor is no exception to that; my favourite scene in Time Heist comes near the end of the episode with a casual scene which shows the Twelfth Doctor as we’ve never seen him before: entertaining guests, laughing, telling a good story – a far cry from the cold hearted, professionally detached monster that he had been accused of being earlier in Time Heist by the same folks, now considering him a good friend.

10:42:54 INT. TARDIS – DAY

The bank heist team, all having a last laugh together. There’s a Chinese takeaway spread all over the console, and THE DOCTOR is telling some mad, funny story, and they’re all laughing.

THE DOCTOR

...scary hombrey, says to me, what do you think of our Leaning Tower of Pisa, it looks okay to me!

CUT TO:

This series on the leaked post-production scripts began as an idea in the spur of the moment – it seemed like a rather fun way to look back on Series 8 – to review the leaked scripts that I once had avoided like the bubonic plague, now determined to dissect their every tick and technique. What I learnt was that these scripts were far more than just technical documents, they were well composed acts of storytelling that could be at times compelling and even captivating. They’re filled with prose and the unique voices of their authors and production notes that can surprise or confound.

Once more, I’m left with a conviction that these scripts are a fateful gift to fans and the budding writers among us, even if as gifts they were initially disguised in a cloak of ill-will, the product of a failure of duty, marked permanently with the name of its original sinner, Marcelo Camargo. But it’s my hope that this analysis has helped to turn what, in many eyes, was a sordid affair (the leaks) into a positive learning experience that could bear fruit for its readers for a very long time to come even as we move forward past Series 8 and onto Series 9 and beyond.

We’ll now always have an early testament to the genius beyond the madness: Series 8 in their own words.

The post Series 8 Script Analysis: Time Heist appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.