12/23/2023 0 Comments Dr. who sleep no more![]() Things start to fall apart a little bit when you start to think of it: Why does everyone assume halfway through the episode that being a Sandman can be caught like a disease or infection? Then wouldn’t they all be infected, since they’re walking around a space-station full of Sandman-dust?Īnd if the episode is all made up of found footage filmed and staged by the evil dust specks as part of their plan to escape the space station, then how come the first few minutes of the episode is found footage of the rescue crew on their space ship before they even get near the space station? Wait, so the evolved specks of dust can connect to a wireless network and record footage and audio? Did they evolve the power to do that? Or are they all carrying tiny video cameras with them? If so, who made the tiny video cameras? It’s just questions all the way down… So part of the big twist is that it turns out that the found-footage helmet-camera scenes of the Doctor and everyone wandering around the base isn’t being filmed by cameras at all, but by specks of dust that are following them.īut…the Doctor hacks into, projects and rewinds that footage, and in the end the creepy inventor guy/ lead sandmonster is able to stream that footage out to everyone in the galaxy… And millions of those sentient dust-motes can stick together to make a killer Sand-monster, like a gooey, melted-looking Megazord. As far as I understand it, the Sandmen are the specks of dust you get in the corner of your eye while you sleep, but an experimental electric signal has made them self-aware and carnivorous. It doesn’t help that their origin story and powers are kept pretty unclear and undefined (which is necessary for that final big twist to work). God knows the Daleks and the Cybermen look ridiculous, and Missy is like evil Mary Poppins. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong, Doctor Who’s a family program and most of the bad guys are pretty goofy if we’re being honest. There’s a really great visual around the midpoint where we see a quick shot of one of the creatures emerging from flames and stumbling at the soldiers.Īfter a couple too many well-lit shots where the camera lingers on them just a little too long, showing that they are very much just men in rubber suits, they start to feel a bit goofy. They’re more effective and threatening early in the episode, as howling monsters glimpsed in dark corridors by quick cutting point-of-view cameras. ![]() The Sandmen themselves are… okay as villains. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’ve a bit of a soft spot for some of the goofy earlier base-under-siege stories – Shout out to “Mummy on the Orient Express”! ). getting chased around some dark corridors by a rubber-suited monster. ![]() ![]() This is an interesting stylistic trick that adds a bit of new value to the old clichés of the Doctor and co. The twist on the old formula is that the episode is all presented as Blair Witch Project-style found footage from the satellite’s security cameras. The episode follows the well-established “base under siege” formula we talked about with “Under the Lake” – Clara and the Doctor wander onto a satellite in the far future, and find that they and the soldiers on board are being hunted by…sand monsters. Mix all those ingredients together, season with some Macbeth quotes, and you get “Sleep No More”. Oooh, and someone’s also recently watched Aliens… Someone’s also apparently decided that “having dust in your eye” is the next on the program’s list of Mundane Things Doctor Who can make creepy – right after statues, shadows, the space under your bed, and walking into a room and forgetting why.Īnd that someone also remembers all those found footage horror films that blew up the box office the last few years, like Paranormal Activities 1-120 or REC. Someone on the Doctor Who writing staff has obviously been paying attention to all those recent internet thinkpieces about the value of sleep, how modern life is degrading our sleep, and the stories of people trying to “hack their sleep habits” using micronaps or neurotropic drugs.
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