Doctor Who: Sleep no More

Err that was ok.

I’ve never been 100% on board with Mark Gatiss; his work on Sherlock is pretty good, but his Who scripts have been largely unfulfilling. He’s a good writer, but I’ve never really seen why people have him pegged as the next Executive Producer of Doctor Who.

This episode is the first hint that he might be up to the job. It’s a bit like Moffat creating the Weeping Angles or the crack in time out of something that crops up in every day life; namely, sleep.

The monsters are made of sleep dust…ok. Once you get past the initial silliness of that principle, the episode is alright.

I had no love for the found footage method of shooting, until Gatiss worked it into the story, both with the explanation of why it was there and the twist at the end. That was neat; it stopped it from just being a gimmick.

The supporting cast are fleshed out and not and Capaldi and Coleman are on usual form, particularly when they have to talk directly to the camera.

It’s not without fault; the basic principle is that anyone who has been inside the Morpheus machine gets a point-of-view camera installed in the corner of their eye. That’s all very well, but I’m fairly sure we see plenty from Chopra’s perspective, when it’s made clear that he’s never used the machine. They do make an effort to make his perspective more of a helmet cam than a point of view. But why would he have a helmet cam when none one else in the rescue team did?

Also, the twist at the end kind of just rips off The Ring, without any explanation of how it works and the episode in general is quite slow until about ten minutes in.

Aside from that it’s perfectly serviceable; a nice improvement from last week.