Sleep No More

Mr. Sandman. Bring me a dream...

I had made a bit of a mental note not to offer my opinion of episodes from the current season of Doctor Who; just to give them time to marinate a little bit. Sleep No More is not a normal episode though and I thought it would be best to commit my thoughts before they get too fuzzy.

Obviously this one is going to stand out since it is using the "found footage" formula. I've never seen all of any of the Paranormal Activity movies, but based on the snippets I've seen, this episode is borrowing heavily from that, especially with the so-called "twist" at the end.

Found footage has positives and negatives. It offers interesting camera work and it can also offer unique ways of providing character description and plot developments. On the other hand, you are not given much time to absorb aspects of character development and, as such, it is difficult to care about any characters that you are not concerned with.

I think that was my problem with this story. The Doctor and Clara drop in with a group of squaddies, are set upon by the monster, who then picks them off until the Doctor, Clara and the one surviving squaddie escape. It's very fast paced and action oriented, but I don't find myself caring about those that are picked off. Indeed, I had trouble fully determining who was being picked off at first, but that was also due to the dark lighting.

There were some good moments. The Doctor cracked off some funny lines and there were other moments of levity, which helped both break the tension and add to it as it rebuilt. I thought the acting was very well done and the atmosphere was very spooky and added well to the tension. Even the monster wasn't bad. It was a strange idea and somewhat oddly realized, but it was creepy in the moment and that's what counts.

I think the part that I and most other people are having a hard time with is the end. In the end, the Doctor and his companions escape with the station descending towards Neptune. But, we then cut back to Rassmussen who notes that a large percentage of what was just seen was fictionalized, complimenting the Doctor's final line of how none of this makes any sense. That line undercut my enjoyment of the episode greatly. While it was designed to be a great twist in why we were watching a found footage movie, it felt like a great dismissal of the previous forty minutes. It was like the story was admitting that it had just wasted our time and that if there were any plot holes or other things that just "didn't make sense", it could be chalked up to Rassmussen's storytelling, not the fault of the show itself.

I'm torn here. If I'm in an action or thriller mood, I could see myself watching this one again and enjoying it to a degree. But I would have to be in the right mood. I also think I would probably cut it off after the Doctor leaves just to avoid the bit of an insult at the end. Not great, but not overly terrible either.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5