Responses to "The Bad":
The pacing wasn't perfect, but I felt it worked well enough and wasn't distracting. Also, the reason why we didn't get a grand escape in the TARDIS was because their grand escape was to the ship in orbit since the TARDIS was unable to be accessed at the time. I didn't notice/care that we didn't get a "jumping away from the explosion" moment, and honestly I enjoyed the fact that the Doctor wasn't able to utilize the TARDIS at all in this episode.
I thought it did a solid job of building the mystery. What I liked in particular is that it didn't make "Who is the Architect" the end-all-be-all of the story, because I think most of us knew pretty quickly it was the Doctor. What they were trying to steal drove the story more, I felt, and that was a good choice.
The Teller didn't kill Clara because Psi distracted it before it could get her. This works on it's own, but especially once you know that it's not hunting people because it's "hungry" but rather eating perceived threats to the bank. The larger threat would clearly draw the Teller. As for the Doctor, it starts to, but once it realizes what the Doctor is doing (rescue mission), it stops. Recall that in other instances the Teller scans before it feeds.
Yeah, a lot of the technical "heist" details were a bit glossed over. I would have preferred a more realistic environment overall, but I guess that stuff doesn't bother me a ton as long as it's entertaining. Leeway for being a tv show that has to work within a budget/location, I guess.
I agree there were no "great" scenes in Time Heist, but there were less bad ones. I would also note that the scenes you listed I wouldn't call great either. So when it comes to "3 great, no bad" scenes...I feel this was still a step in the right direction.
The Doctor did say he hated himself, though I think "hate" was used as a bit of hyperbole (as people tend to do these days). I wish they hadn't made it such an exuberant exclamation, but his dissatisfaction of himself has been a running theme. He's a self-aware curmudgeon and seems hesitant to believe he's a good man. I like the curmudgeon aspect, but I'm not fond of the self-loathing aspect. That said, it does fit with what they've been doing so far.
It's a sort of semi-time loop thing, but Who has totally done that before. As time loops go, this one is rather unoffensive in my view. It wasn't a time loop to save his own life or for the sake of hi-jinks. The loop itself (bank owner's phone call) was just about kicking off the story. I will concede that I don't think it needed the time loop to work and unfortunately I don't think it's "lazy" writing so much as the writers thinking it's "clever". Lazy is when you have to do it to make something that would otherwise not work without it. The Who writers seem to shoehorn things like that into the show to make it more clever or twisty-turny...which is actually worse.
Yeah, I'm a huge Matt Frewer fan, but Headroom was never my bag either.
Eh...I mean, unless the expectation is that whatever level of technology that had existed could predict massive solar storms far in advance, I'm not sure why this would be a major issue.
Yeah, there was a lot of memory wiping in this episode. I thought the Teller was more of a "thought" eater and memories just kind of went with it, but that's just a distinction without a difference. Looking at it critically, it's mainly Psi. That character was used for 3 things: A map, to unlock the vault, and to sacrifice himself for Clara. Basically 2 of those things are easily replaceable, but they kind of needed that extra player to "kill" off. Without him, I don't think the memory stuff would have been too overloaded and the "thought eating" would have felt more different. They probably could have used that 4th person slot for something better.
The Teller scans first then eats. He scanned the Doctor's thoughts, found out what his plan was, so he stopped before he hallowed him out. Also, it's worth noting that the idea of a thought-devouring monster doesn't preclude that the Monster can put back what it takes. Also, it's The Doctor. He's special. lol
Well, that goes back to the time-loop aspect, but it's pretty clear the bank owner told him about the endangered species. He didn't remember them until they get into the private vault because of the memory wipe/lock (which that's a distinction that should have been made clearer, now that I think about it). I mean, I'm not a fan of time-loops in general, but this was a minor offense. The time-loop aspect is used to set up the adventure and that's about it. The Doctor leaving stuff for himself is not a direct part of the "loop" aspect.
Yeah, I think most viewers (I hope, at least) assumed the architect was the Doctor pretty early on. I'm pretty sure I just assumed it by default. I think the "twist" of it didn't connect all that well, but luckily as I said before it wasn't the major focus of the episode. I would have liked it more if they had dropped hints that the Doctor realized it was him earlier on, then had him react to everyone saying how much they hated the guy -- because he would semi-agree with them. That would have been some interesting character work for Capaldi to mine. But, they went more traditional.
