All this is wonderful, of course. It's a new type of emotional journey for The Doctor, but the downside of the concentration on this overall arc is that we're still seeing some shoddy writing. Once again, I have to point out that Steven Moffat has written or co-written seven of the last eight episodes. Most shows don't do that sort of thing, to say nothing of something like Doctor Who, where the mix of writers has always been one of the keys to keeping it fresh and original.

So while I have plenty of faith in Moffat's Master Plan, his individual scripts are leaking like a sieve.

The heist plan itself is a convoluted mess that would make The Joker cringe, full of a dozen badly interlocking pieces that I have a hard time believing would succeed even with the foreknowledge of time travel. The glory of a good heist film like Die Hard With a Vengeance is that you should marvel at how the criminals outwitted an unbeatable system. In "Time Heist," all I wondered about was why the system in place was considered "unbeatable" when clearly a fairly mediocre plan could get you through it. The script even forgets its own security measures like the genetic coding trackers and measurement of respiration.

Then there's the fact that Moffat simply will not let us have any monsters. That's a long-running problem when you examine his run on the show. The terrifying new beastie that's unveiled turns out not to be all that bad. In the end it's just a slightly scarier replay of "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe," and almost identical to last season's "Hide." To be fair, that was a Neil Cross script.

"Listen" might have been nothing at all. Rusty in "Into the Dalek" was treated more like a mental patient than an antagonist, something he also did in "Asylum of the Daleks." Even his most terrifying creations, the Weeping Angels, don't usually kill you so much as throw you back in time and have you get married and have a lot of grandchildren. Where are the monsters? The unknown thing from "Midnight" or the deviant hatred of Solomon the Trader or even the egotistical malevolence of the Great Intelligence?

They seem to be on vacation. All The Doctor gets to fight these days is his own fear of himself about what is good and what is cruel.

Jef has a new story, a tale of headless strippers and The Rolling Stones, available now in Broken Mirrors, Fractured Minds. You can also connect with him on Facebook.