(As always, there are Doctor Who spoilers in this Doctor Who first impressions writeup. You've been warned.)
Well, that's that. I've fallen through the looking glass. I am officially a dark mirror of the General Public's Doctor Who Opinions. Seriously, most of my opinions for Series 9 have been opposite to the masses. The masses loved Under The Lake/Before The Flood, whereas I thought the shit was trite and pointless and lacking in anticipation. The masses hated Zygon Invasion/Inversion, where I was fine with that brilliant speech at the end. Now we come to Sleep No More, a Mark Gatiss episode that mashes up found footage with Doctor Who, and people hate it. Whereas I, over here... well, I'm not about to call it the best episode of Series 9 or nothing, but it's certainly a very clever episode with some cute twists, neat metatextual toying, and one hell of an ending.
I can see why it wouldn't work for people. I really can. The rescue crew is your basic cannon fodder, even more so than the lake two-parter. You've got Leader Girl, Nervous Guy, Jokey Guy, and... 474. The monsters themselves are a pretty silly concept, even for Doctor Who. The plot, such as it is, probably commits that cardinal sin of Not Making Sense. I can see past that, and endure it and praise the brilliant bits. Such as they are. Like the idea of Morpheus. A machine that eliminates the need for sleep! That would probably be great and wonderful and give you more time to spend doing what you like, but there are two problems with that. The first being that the machine actually turns the rheum that builds up around your eyes when you sleep into a shambling mucus monster that kills you. So that's unfortunate, but it's the second problem that's more interesting; the intervention of capitalism! Morpheus's benefit is specifically billed in its holo-promo video as letting you work longer to get the edge to make more space bucks. The only people to object to this are Clara, the Doctor, and Chopra (Nervous Guy) on the grounds that space capitalism is literally taking away sleep in order to make people work longer to earn more money to make the rich richer. Of course, the Doctor's objection goes a little more into the "sleep is natural" thing and that leads into the sleep monsters.
Ah, the Sandmen. Clara named them! Look, the idea of monsters made out of that crusty shit that gets in your eyes while you sleep is a bit silly. Counter-point; this is Doctor bloody Who. Monsters made of snot aren't quite as silly as "literal green men from Mars" or "farting aliens who wear people suits". To the episode's credit, you don't get all that good a look at them and they shamble about in the shadows a bunch. You do get some looks at them, though, and they're imposing big things. This being a found footage episode, all you really see is OH NO ONE OF THEM IS DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AAAAAAAAARGH. It might have worked better if you saw less of them, because less is more. Especially when your episode is a found footage thing, and this genre often likes to tease the monster or threat and never show it clearly. Still, I think the main objection is just "monsters literally made of eye mucus are silly, how did this shit even evolve to be a threat?", which... ehh.
The found footage aspect is used very well, I think... and quite cleverly, also! At the start of the thing, we have that professor fellow as our narrator, and then we cut to the cameras of the rescue crew. Okay, so it's assumed and taken for granted that these soldiers have helmet cameras on them for reasons. We can roll with that, and that combined with the wide shots (presumably from cameras on the space station) gives us our premise. An attentive viewer, however, will pick up on some inconsistencies. Maybe even complain about said inconsistencies. Well, then the shoe drops. These weren't plot holes. They were clues. There are no cameras, no helmet cams, no nothing. What we are viewing is the episode from the point of view of the Dust itself. It works. If you're going to play with found footage in Doctor Who, you might as well get clever with it... and the episode gets even more clever with it in its climax. Which, let's get to. Because wow.
Righto, so the professor was behind it all along! He wants to infect everyone with the Sandmen and make them spread and eat everyone because Reasons. Then he gets shot and the Doctor, Clara, and Leader Girl run off in the TARDIS... at which point the professor comes back on screen and reveals his plan. See, the whole episode was his creation, and he edited the Sandman memories to make it more exciting so more people would stay tuned to it and keep watching. How delightfully meta. The villain created the found footage episode to make... an exciting episode of Doctor Who that people wouldn't switch off. Oh, and he also embedded a signal in the footage to make anyone watching turn into a Sandman. (That explains the video glitches.). Oh, and then he rubs his eye away and starts talking in a demonic voice about how you should show the video to everyone you know before laughing and fading away. HOLY SHIT. Doctor Who hasn't properly unsettled and spooked me like this since like... Midnight. I can't hate an episode that manages to stick the landing so thoroughly on the sheer existential horror of "you're going to become a Sandman since you watched this". Once more, the streets of London ran yellow with the piss of frightened children. Christ almighty. Hell, I did need to rub my eyes a bit after first viewing! I didn't even sleep that well! Christ! I remain impressed that this show managed to spook me so, but here we are.
Oh yeah. Clara. She might die now, having accidentally stayed in one of those Morpheus pods. She might become a Sandgirl. She might die some other way, or leave the Doctor to cure her Sandgirl problem. I'm not sure. There is one thing I noticed, which is that the final shot of the TARDIS leaving appears to be from Clara's perspective inside it, and the Sand POV stays with the station and not the TARDIS. So there is hope. All in all, I liked this one. It's not the best but it's still good and it scared me.
Next time: Hey, that graffiti kid is back! In Diagon Alley!
I'm getting terrible at judging fandom's response to episodes of Doctor Who. I thought they'd love this one, and that I'd be one of the few people saying "Eh, it's not all that." Instead the opposite's true: loads of people hated it, and I'm left saying "you know, there was some good stuff in there". Gatiss's limitations as a writer stop this from being great (it really is lacking in characterisation for the guest cast and the regulars), and I can see why people would find it confusing and boring. On a basic level, it's very drab to look at, and it could be argued that the people making the episode isn't clear about what's meant to make sense and what isn't, a bit like Colin Baker's complaints for Mindwarp. Personally, I think they have a good enough handle on the unreliable narrator trope, though: it's flagged at the beginning when the professor admits he couldn't get all the footage necessary. We know we're dealing with unreliable narration from the beginning, even if the nature of that trope shifts and becomes more unsettling. And wasn't the use of the structure just beautiful? I remember noticing that we were getting Clara POV shots, and thinking this was a plot hole, only for the Doctor to raise the issue a few minutes later, and for the apparent direction mistake to become a plot point. And that finale was just beautiful in its sheer glee.
ReplyDeleteFrom this season, I only liked "Under the Lake/ Before the Flood" less, but this episode deserves points both for ambition, and in places, for delivering on that ambition.