Days of delicate hard work and now look at it… The whole plan up in smoke because you messed with my careful (and entirely suspicious) preparations.

So, The Doctor gets a job as the caretaker at Coal Hill School, on the trail of the relentless and terrifying Skovox Blitzer (it’s a sort of crab/spider/robot thing that probably would have suited an appearance in the Sarah Jane Adventures – and that isn’t a bad thing). Left unchecked the deadly robot could destroy all humanity. However, the fate of the robot has a secondary role in the episode, which has a great deal more to do with the triangle of The Doctor, Clara and Danny Pink.

I can see how some people might really dislike this episode. My wife didn’t like it much, and the fleeting glance I gave to the odd review here and there didn’t rate it.

In a series giving a lot of nods to classic Doctors, this one had Jon Pertwee‘s Third Doctor layered on thick. From the Doctor’s introduction as the new caretaker, John Smith, through gadgetry and martial arts (or was that an earlier episode) – this was classic Who. I can almost see Pertwee dressed in the classic brown coat of the working caretaker, with screwdriver in hand and pencil lodged behind one ear.

Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.

This was a good episode. I loved the fact The Doctor got the wrong end of the stick about Adrian (pictured), the other teacher with a vague resemblance to a certain dashing bow-tie wearing Time Lord. It gave us the chance to see a little more of Clara and Capaldi and a bumbling Doctor up to something that isn’t clear to everyone else. He’s trying to be inconspicuous and achieving exactly the opposite.

Yes, it is a bit obvious in places. It is trying to show the difference between Pink and the Doctor, the two ex-soldiers who seem to handle their issues in the same way and yet so differently. Clara loves them both , though one love grows increasingly strained, and the other love suffers from her wrestling heart.

The threat wasn’t a big one. It did remind me of Sarah Jane. I’m sure it’s something to do with the special effects. I love a real, physical robot more than something rendered in CGI, but you need just the right film, director, atmosphere, etc. for a genuine sense of threat. This is tea time action adventure, so you’re never going to get that.

More Missy at the close and an assistant, Seb, ‘because she’s a bit busy at the moment’. The Nethersphere – Paradise – seems to be a busy place. Whatever is she up to? I guess it grows increasingly unlikely to be River Song, as I previously supposed. Also, I doubt it’s The Rani, unless she’s swayed from her interest in the purely biological-side of experimentation. She was all about weird experiments – and Paradise seems to have more sinister undertones.

I really do like the way the current series has played with facets of the old Doctor, echoes of incarnations past in story and characterisation. I have no idea whether that will factor into the last double episode or not – or whether it just all ties back into the aftermath of the 50th anniversary story arc.

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OK – so, I don’t think that we have done a bank job before. Or done something quite so Ocean’s Eleven with time travellers thrown into the mix.

I can see the potential for entertainment value here – and, I wouldn’t rob Time Heist of any redeeming features. However, it didn’t really do it for me. Even having the delectable Keeley Hawes on-board, as the steely Ms Delphox, didn’t win me over.

At a basic level we have a Dark City scenario wrapped up with a bank job. The team gathered to complete the job have all had their memories wiped from the outset, but a message tells them what they need to do. I liked the slugs – they were kind of neat. I have a soft spot for creatures with weird defensive (or offensive) abilities that, in the hands of the ingenious, can be turned to another purpose altogether.

Anyway – we have Psi and Saibra on the team. One, a jacked up cyber-guy, the other a mutant capable of taking on any form. Both have something to gain from this job, specifically the ability to lose something, something that has hampered their existence. If they can pull off the impossible bank job, they will have their prize. However, Delphox has a pet mind scrambler in her arsenal – and she doesn’t have much patience for the guilty.

Yes, I found many aspects of the premise interesting. However, the Psi and Saibra felt just plain too shallow for me to care much about their sacrifices along the way.

I liked the basic idea of the Teller – and where that went story-wise sort of worked for me – but, I’m not sure it struck the right cord as a threat. Yes, it can turn your brain to mush when you’re found harbouring guilt, but in the end – why? Why such a heavy-handed approach to security? How do you keep up such an overwhelming profitable banking business when any customer might die at a moments notice for holding fleeting thoughts about steeling a pen from the counter, or a few credits from the vault?

The whole explanation for why… well, guilt and such is all well and good. We have had the Doctor haunted by guilt since the start of the new series 9 or so years ago. Even given the stakes involved, would the Doctor really have any cause to get involved like this?

Highlight of the episode for me remains the security check where you see a pile of faces of known criminals – and they include the likes of Abslom Daak, the Dalek Killer, and Captain John, from series 2 Torchwood. I love a knowing and appreciative nod to the wider continuity.

In the end, however, I didn’t really enjoy this so much – especially given how great the episode Listen proved to be the week before.

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By no means redeeming Moffat for the first three episodes of the new Doctor, Listen, in my honest opinion, has been the best of the series so far and shows that despite evidence Clara and The Doctor can work together.

I did have some sneaky sense that something was just terribly wrong and that they simply didn’t work as Time Lord and companion. I can now see they still have a fighting chance – and I almost warmed to Danny Pink as well. Almost. It still might take another story or three to get me really bedded into seeing him as a viable character.

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, you would be unwise to read any further.

On the other hand, if you’re still reading – it was interesting to watch an episode that really didn’t have a villain. The Doctor has fear as a companion and that fear gives him his strength. Without that fear, that voice that keeps talking even when no one else is around, when silence hangs heavy – without that, the War Doctor could not have stood the test and did what he did. Without that ever present companion, the Doctor would not continue to soldier on.

What was under the blanket? Was that Clara? If she’s under the bed, then was she under the blanket as well? I guess, in some ways, it’s interesting to leave that one unanswered. When you lie awake at night and you hear something in the house. When you settle yourself and the pipes creaks, or you can just catch something scuttling across the roof tiles. That isn’t Clara… What it is, well – like I say, best not to consider it.

That was an interesting character piece, grappling with the past and the future. The Doctor ended up at the end of the Universe again. This time, he seems to have gone even further than the last, when he disturbed The Master and the Toclafane. At the end of time, something lurked outside the door. Clara again, perhaps? Or, just the threat of something, the fear of something made real. A manifestation of that dependable companion?

Yes, Listen might have been a turning point for me. I saw a Doctor before me. I didn’t see Peter Capaldi. I felt I was watching the same old Time Lord I have followed so avidly before and he had a new face. This was not simply another actor playing a role in a way that left me feeling slightly uncomfortable. Here, Capaldi did his bit and he stepped into those big Gallifreyan shoes. I saw The Doctor and I found myself comfortable with it for a moment. I saw a little of the darkness, and I saw the touch of age making him something different. The Doctor that shies away from hugs, who questions existence, who struggles to accept that he doesn’t know everything.

And then the episode ended. I found myself watching the clock, wondering what might happen next. In the end, we discovered another facet of Clara, the Impossible Girl. Clara, who would be at the side of The Doctor from the start to the finish, watching over him. Even before he became The Doctor we know, blankets pulled tightly over his head in the dead of night. Sleeping out in a barn – a barn that would one day be a ramshackle place to think over the future of his homeworld and his greatest enemy.

In those wee hours when the monsters lurk everywhere and we’re certain, if only for just a moment, that we might not make it through the night.

I liked that rather a lot.

Almost as much as I liked the trailer for the next episode. That made me squeal.

Midway through the trailer, we catch a glimpse of a Police database with several brief mugshots.

We see:

• Androvax, The Veil – Who appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures, a destroyer of worlds and the last of his kind, a Prisoner of the Judoon
• A Sensorite – I’d be guessing if this was the City Administrator from The Sensorites, met by The First Doctor
• Captain John Hart – Nemesis of Captain Jack Harkness and the Time Agency, who first appeared in the Season 2 Torchwood episode Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
• Abslom Daak – The Dalek Killer, who featured in classic and more modern comic strips, as well as getting brief mentions in books, like Happy Endings
• A Slitheen – Could be almost any of the flatulent troublemakers
• The Terileptil – Responsible for the Great Fire of London and convoluted plans in The Visitation, with the Fifth Doctor
• The Trickster – Who has been behind plots against Sarah Jane, The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble across various stories

Brilliant. Daak made me squee. I squee’d out loud in front of my whole family.

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