DWO’s spoiler-free preview of episode 8.5 - Time Heist:

One of the greatest strengths Doctor Who has, is its ability to tell wildly different stories from week to week. Right back to the very earliest episodes, it’s a programme that can show us the stone age, before whisking us off to a dead city in the far future, or trapping us in the time machine. Season Eight is showing this ability off wonderfully, and Time Heist is as different to last week’s Listen as that episode was to Robot of Sherwood the week before, or Into the Dalek before that.

This episode takes The Doctor and Clara, and drops them in to a bank heist movie. Everything you’d want from such a tale is present here, and it’s always good fun to see how our characters react in scenarios we all know from an entire genre of film and television. 

It also presents us with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor slightly out of his depth, having to put his trust in others, and work it out along with the rest of us pudding brains. There’s enough twists and turns in the plot to keep you guessing right up until the end. Why are they breaking in to the bank? Who sent them here? Where’s the TARDIS? And why do they have to go about the break-in like this?

Time Heist may come as a disappointment to people going in expecting something as deep and creepy as last week’s story, because it’s not in the same style at all. That’s not to say that this isn’t an entertaining episode, but it’s a story to be enjoyed more simply expecting an entertaining 45 minutes.

There’s plenty of visual spectacle on display, with director Douglas MacKinnon returning for his second story of the season, and a great monster design in the Teller - a creature able to detect your guilt and remove it from your mind. As prosthetics go, it’s one of the strongest that Doctor Who has seen in a while.

On the whole, Time Heist serves its purpose as a good episode for the middle of the season. It’s never going to grace the top of ‘best story’ polls, but it’s sure to win over fans and warrant a repeat, to watch everything unfold once you know what’s been going on behind the scenes of the adventure…

Five things to look out for:

1) “Are you ready for your close up?”

2) Soup

3) “Have you got to reach a high shelf?”

4) Characters from The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip!

5) “Time to run”

[Sources: DWO; Will Brooks]

As many of our regular readers will know, DWO is a spoiler-free site, and we very rarely post news items based around rumours, but we're hearing from several sources about some possible episode titles for the upcoming Eighth Series of Doctor Who.

We would of course like to remind fans that these titles are unconfirmed at this stage and are not official until the BBC states so, but we encourage discussion on them either way, in the DWO Forums thread link at the bottom of this article.

8.1: [Untitled] - written by Steven Moffat
8.2: [Untitled] - written by Phil Ford
8.3: Robots Of Sherwood* - written by Mark Gatiss
8.4: Listen* - written by Steven Moffat
8.5: Time Heist* - written by Stephen Thompson
8.6: [Untitled] - written by Gareth Roberts
8.7: Kill The Moon*
8.8: Mummy On The Orient Express*
8.9: Flatline*
8.10: [Untitled]
8.11: [Untitled]
8.12: [Untitled]
8.13: [Untitled]

* Unconfirmed

+  Series 8 of Doctor Who will air in August / Early September 2014.

[Source: DWO]

The man who put The Doctor aboard a cursed pirate ship and took us to parts of the TARDIS we’d never seen before has been confirmed as a writer on the forthcoming 8th series of Doctor Who.

Steve Thompson will write the as-yet-unnamed fifth episode of the series to be shown later this year (which DWO believe *could* be titled Time Heist).

It’s the third time the writer has penned a Doctor Who story, following last year’s Journey To The Centre of the TARDIS and 2011’s pirate adventure The Curse of the Black Spot.

Steve Thompson has also provided scripts for BBC1’s Sherlock such as The Blind Banker, series two finale The Reichenbach Fall and The Sign of Three which was broadcast in January.

Filming is underway on Peter Capaldi’s first series as The Doctor. He’ll be joined by Jenna Coleman as Clara and a new recurring character, Danny Pink played by Samuel Anderson. 

The new series, to be screened on BBC1, will also feature episodes by lead writer and series producer Steven Moffat.

+  Series 8 of Doctor Who will air in August / Early September 2014.

[Source: BBC Doctor Who Website]