As you know, I watch on Saturday night for ratings (and because it's fun to watch with mum, whom we label a mostly-We as she watched back in the day and is catching up now...actually looks forward to the show on Saturday nights, so I think I've got her mostly converted!), and then I watch again Sunday morning in HD so I can hear more clearly, verify opinions, and get this written. It is by nature spoilerific, so there's that. If you haven't watched, I don't recommend reading till you have. I'm not responsible for spoilers and your broken heart.
Let's go.
 |
| Oh wow...special credits screen for this episode that fits the theme. Very cool. Didn't see that coming. |
We've had 8 very good to excellent episodes in a row. While not a Dalek fan, the opening 2 parter was some of the best Dalek writing in 5 years. The Lake 2 parter was part excellent, part heartbreaking, and all cool. Our first two episodes with Maisie Williams were quite enjoyable as well, showing the true 'gift' of immortality. And the Zygon double shot...I swear the cheese and rice, all these conservative assholes need to watch this Ludovico Treatment style and maybe they'd learn something.
This brings us to our first standalone episodes of the series, Sleep no More. It's a strange title, and well, its obvious why with the episode, but the wording is weird. Until the Doctor reveals it...
MACBETH
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
LADY MACBETH
What do you mean?
MACBETH
Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house.
“Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
This Doctor...fan of Beethoven and Shakespeare. I love him more and more every week.
(And as a side note? For the love of something worth loving, Shakespeare is NOT difficult. You do not need it translated to modern English...I'll stop the world and melt with you...really. It's fine, and beautiful, and without the cadence it just becomes covered in normal goop and the truth struggles to shine through. Sad Julie is sad.)
 |
| This is Gagan Rassmussen. He's a prick. |
Our antagonist is Gagan Rassmussen, the lead researcher on the Le Verrier Space Station in orbit around Neptune sometime in the 38th century. He urges people not to watch the video, but then explains how the video came to be. He also introduces our cast of characters...Nagata, Chopra, Deep-Ando, and 474. Nagata's our CO, Chopra's the militant political member of the rescue party who is against something called Morpheus, Deep-Ando is the joker of the group, and 474 is a clone bred Grunt...low intelligence, loads of muscle. 474 is also played by our first ever trans actress (Bethany Black) to appear in Doctor Who, which obviously elicited a cheer for me (and tears later, about which more later).
They've been sent to find out why the base fell silent 24 hours ago. And as they search the base, they finally do find two people...stress and engineering investigators named Clara Oswald and the Doctor. They are conscripted into the party, and the fun begins.
 |
| Welcome to Morpheus. Please keep hands and legs inside the pod at all times. |
Through a series of 'found' footage (apparently shot from helmet cams that aren't really there...I'm not sure, but I think I got that right...because the truth is far more sinister) and Doom/Quake style first person footage, we get a real sense of the place. It's grotty, even for being shut down for a day. And in a laboratory, where our group (save Deep-Ando) is chased by one of the weirdest and most id-disturbing monsters I've seen in Who, we find a series of pods. Clara is pulled into one and gets to experience the Morpheus effect personally.
What Morpheus does is sends an electronic signal to the brain to mimic the effects for a full 8 hours sleep. In this new works, where the earth has been affected by The Great Catastrophe, India and Japan have merged under one massive political powerhouse, profit and efficiency are everything, and Morpheus gives that edge.
In the Doctor's words to Rasmussen, 'Congratulations. You've revolutionised the labour market. You've overcome nature. You've also created an abomination.
In a perfect example of calling things out (where the last two weeks were so subtle), Rassmussen's dressed in a weird black suit and his hair is all Zorg or vague Hitler comb over. Se we know he's the bad guy even if the monsters seem to be the bad guy. It's an interesting, if ham-fisted, element, and it will pay off some near the end of the episode.
 |
| This is not Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Neither is it Mr. Sandman, bringing a dream. |
The rest of the episode is a combination of The Running Game and a murder mystery, with a 'what are the monsters really' on top? Deep-Ando is eaten by the monsters, which have been called Sandmen by Clara first, then the Doctor. The Sandmen are created by the dust in the corner of your eyes, conglomerating like a colony until they reach sentience and bipedal form. Sleep is the only thing that keeps them from forming, so Rasmussen's defeat of sleep has caused these creatures to evolve.
Lovely guy.
 |
| Or 474/Bethany Black...you deserved so much more and so much better. |
474 bravely presses through a wall of fire to rescue Chopra, and dies/gets eaten in the process, after having one last chance to tell Chopra he's pretty in her broken, low intelligence way (and that kicked me in the gut, and is doing so as I type this). She then charges the sandmen to give Chopra time to escape, but Chopra is trapped by the Sandmen and is eaten even as he plans to blow up the station to stop the contagion.
Clara is infected as a result of her 5 minute stay in a chamber, and the Doctor promises to save her life. Nagata is infected because she's an avid user. The Doctor promises to save her. And they finally catch Rasmussen in what looks like an escape ship with one bio-pod in it, which contains patient Zero...the first Morpheus client, awake for 5 years, and very angry when he comes out of his pod. Rasmussen is far from lucid explaining how the Sandmen convinced him that they were superior and needed food...they saved him in order to be brought to Titan (one of the moons of Neptune) to feed and then spread. The Doctor, as is his wont, tries to reason with him; Nagata reasons with her gun.
 |
| I am the Sandman King...I can do anything. |
With the King of all Sandmen chasing them, the only thing for it is to run to the TARDIS, which it turns out is surrounded by Sandmen. The Doctor shuts down the grav shields, which cause the Sandmen to decay, and the three survivors make a break for it.
In a sort of epilogue Rasmussen reveals all of this was his plan, and hopes the viewers enjoyed his little video. He then reveals his true plot...the video has been encoded with the Morpheus signal, so by watching it, the infection spreads to anyone who watches it. He then begins to shift, revealing that he is also a Sandman, and crumbles before our eyes as the grav shields fail.
Well.
As I fell asleep last night, I thought to myself that this was probably the Ghost Light of the series...the episode that was impenetrable and required additional viewings to tease out the meaning. I don't feel that way this morning, and that's why I wait 24 hours before writing, so I can parse everything. Here are some pros and cons:
PRO
1) The monsters were weird and neatly designed
2) The idea of sleep as a life preserver, literally, is a good one
3) Another political statement about the wrongness of a purely profit and efficiency driven system is appropriately leftist
4) I cared about 474, hated seeing her bullied, and liked her heroic arc at the end
CON
1) What happened to the ship?
2) What happened to Clara?
3) What happened to Nagata?
4) Did that broadcast get broadcast?
5) What happened to Triton?
6) Is everything we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?
And then I look at the author.
Mark Gatiss.
Mark Mark Mark...you've done such good work. You have. The Crimson Horror, Cold War, Night Horrors, The Unquiet Dead...some very good to excellent episodes. But we get to blame you for The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks and Robots of Sherwood, and now this one. A .500 average would not only get you in to Cooperstown, it'd label you the greatest hitter of all time in baseball. In TV writing, it is...less than average. It's a shame, because I wasn't paying attention to the opening credits and had I realised it was a Gatiss episode, my expectations would have been tempered. At one time I wanted him to be head writer after Moffat left the position...anymore I am less than sure.
Is this the setup for Clara's exit and possible death?
I don't know.
I know we have 3 eps left, and next week features Maisie Williams again, as well as our buddy Riggsy from last year's Flatline. I know after that we have the series finale 2 parter. Ad I hope (even though hope is expectation and expectation is a prison) that this was a momentary dip and we rise back up again. While Sleep No More was dark like the rest of the series, and I can definitely see it being terrifying to young kids (and heard as much last night), in the end, this episode disappointed.
No comments:
Post a Comment