Which was fun. You could tell Moffat and Thompson always wanted to write a heist movie. And the purpose-of-heist-twist made it very Whovian indeed.
The guest charactes, Psi and Saibra, were both very likeable - Saibra's mutant power as a mixture between Mystique's and Rogue's made me distracted for some moments because of X-Men related speculation -, and though I should have known they were safe (this being a Moffat-co-penned episode, and he never kills off the guest stars he bothered to make likeable, at least not permanently; "nobody dies" being his thing, for good (mostly) or bad (occasionally, but not here)), I didn't guess ahead of time and thus was pleasantly surprised. I also liked that both got what they originally wanted from the mission.
Keeley Hawes as the other guest star (in two variations) had a less defined character beyond "campy villainess", which she played with relish, but the concept - Kalibraxos (spelling?) employing and burning her clones - fit with the overall themes (as did Saibra's power with its obvious implication re: the Doctor's psyche) -, and thet time travel twist made it into something refreshingly new. I mean, it was obvious someone at the highest level of the bank had to be in on the heist to place all the macguffin there, and it wasn't the clone, so it had to be the owner. But what, again, really surprised me and yet made sense in retrospect in terms of the Moff's tropes and use of time travel was the why. Which the Doctor figured out upon meeting Kalibraxos before she - present day her - did. That she (over the top soullless banker villain extraordinaire) should come to regret her life and try to use the Doctor to redeem at least one of the crimes she comitted strikes me a very humane, optimistic idea, unrealistic perhaps, but very Whovian. As was the reveal as to why the Doctor and Clara signed on to the heist to begin with and what the purpose of it was, i.e. to save the "monster" (and its mate). Along the way pointing out that the "monster" had motivations of his/her (forgot which of them was the female) own instead of just being a scary prop. (Though the true monster was Kalibraxos anyway; though at the same time she was the lynchpin that made the story possible.)
This was the first episode of the season in which Clara didn't have that much to do - possibly because of the narrative room given to the guest characters, with one of whom, Psi, she had a scene both moving (Psi's backstory) and possibly future-foreshadowing (that's what Psi's remark that one could tell Clara had been with the Doctor long because she'd gotten good at making excuses for him felt like, anyway). The Doctor's last scene showed that his supposed cluelessness at the start re: dating importance for Clara was faked, which I'm in two minds about; on the one hand, regeneration or no regeneration, the Doctor hasn't lost his memories of earlier regenerattions and hence SHOULD know/recognize Clara is in the early stages of aquiriing a boyfriend, otoh, it implies he's seeing her date as competition for her time at least, and could we just skip this plot device and go straight to the Doctor getting to know Danny as a person?
Between Saibra's "who could trust a person looking at you with your own eyes?" and Kalibraxos burning her clones, plus the "I hate the architect because he obviously resembles me to a t", the Doctor's issues were prominent, and yet it didn't feel like it, possibly because the heist concept meant the story was moving fast, or maybe because the angst scenes were given to Psi (with Clara) and Saibra (with the Doctor) , and Capaldi didn't play the Doctor's awareness of said issues as brooding, just as very matter of factly and not wanting to dwell on it while knowing it's there.
Trivia: what happened to the brainsucked customer was gruesome, but the ridiculous visual ruined the impact for me and took me straight to Spock's Brain territory whenever it was shown. (Otoh I totally bought Saibra and Psi not wanting to end up brainsucked and preferring to be dead, one reason why I didn't twig on the teleport plot twist and them being alive.)
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