In Space No One Can Hear You Snooze

Sleep No More seems to be something of an anomaly. Both in terms of this particular series, as well as Doctor Who episodes in general. After watching it I was, I admit, somewhat ambivalent. Whilst there's a lot in there to like I had the terrible nagging feeling that it was missing something important. Now though I think I'm coming around to the idea of what it was trying to go for.

Perhaps because, somewhat ironically, I've had a chance to sleep on it.

Doctor Who has had a long and respectable history of shameless homage. From Hammer Horror to classic mythology, the show has never been above stealing a good idea when it saw one. Nor was it ever particularly shy about admitting it. So whilst it come off as a perhaps slightly overambitious, it doesn't feel exactly right to criticize this episode for trying to be Aliens, The Blair Witch Project AND The Ring all at the same time.

Yeah, you might want to make sure you've actually WATCHED the episode before reading that last sentence.

The fact that it also seems to be going for some sort of meta commentary on the inherent insensability of some Doctor Who plots as well should also give it some bonus points. And yet... There's still that nagging feeling of doubt.

So, the whole thing is shot strictly from character POV (there's your Blair Witch) by a group of space marines investigating a facility that's overrun with monsters (for bonus Aliens points there's even a corporate munchkin with his own evil agenda) and narrated to us, the viewer in the form of a cursed transmission, replete with dire warnings and bursts of static.

Although I'm not sure where I might have seen that before.

This should be pure gold to a man of my sensibilities. It's got all the right ingredients. But I think the momentum towards pure nerd boner nirvana got stalled fairly early on when they revealed the true nature of the monsters, and I never quite managed to catch up again. Although unlike the first half of this series I'm pretty sure it's going to actually warrant a second watch. Anyway....

So Professor Hubris or whoever invents a machine that means you don't actually need to sleep anymore, despite the fact that this is OBVIOUSLY the sort of thing that happens at the start of a horror movie. But rather than sending everyone insane, or causing terrible mutations or demonic possession or something that would actually make sense it instead somehow turns the crap in the corner of your into some sort of carniverous colony organism that likes to wander around looking like a strange cross between a giant cancerous space vagina and those stupid fucking plasmaton things from Timeflight.

Needs more carnivorous space vagina. Also maybe put some arms on there or something.

Again, man eating space vaginas running around BBC 1 at eight o clock on a Saturday? That's BRILLIANT. But carnivorous EYE BOOGERS? Hows that supposed to work then? The funny thing is, if the machine just turned a person into one if they stayed in too long, ability to crumble to dust on command and all, I'd probably buy into it. But the eye booger thing just leaves me cold. Maybe it's the fact that there's no actual proposed mechanism for how these dead cells are supposed to come together and form a whole creature. Maybe it's just the masses involved. I mean, how long do you think it's going to accumulate that much eye crud? Do they never CLEAN these damn machines? Plus, if you're only in there for 5 minutes how does that crap even have time to form?

Maybe I'm just getting old and have been overdoing it with the Science. I dunno. But that area kinda bugs me.

Anyway, we run around in fairly typical base under siege shenanigans. People get split up, killed off and scamper about the place. Crosses are doubled and eventually the evil plan is revealed. 

OR IS IT!?!?

HE WAS THE TURKEY ALL ALONG!

Here's where we get to the fun meta stuff. The big reveal, the twist. The episodes somewhat dichotomous simultaneous greatest strength and weakness.

As it turns out the secret to turning eye crud into rampaging carnivorous space vaginas (and no, I'm not getting tired of calling them that any time soon) is an electronic signal that can be embedded into a transmission. The rampaging carnivorous space vaginas were actually only PRETENDING to be flailing, ineffectual low budget monsters because as it turns out they were just FILMING AN EPISODE OF DOCTOR WHO! Because that's the logical thing to do to propagate the signal. Complete with reverse psychology warnings not to watch.

I actually love this idea. It's a really nice deconstruction of the standard template of an episode. It works really well, giving us several different layers of unreliable narrator stuff and Twilight Zone-esque sting in the tail horror story ending. Great stuff. Except....

One thing that I couldn't help but notice is the way that everyone in the episode seems to be in on it. Notably, anyone else notice the way that the space marines never actually shoot at the monsters? EVER? They don't open fire once and then give up because the bullets just pass harmlessly through them. The only time a gun is fired in the entire episode is to gun down an unarmed civilian. Admittedly he was an evil, insane one who was really a space vagina in disguise. But they didn't know all of that at the time. Hell, even when one of the soldiers is making his last stand he doesn't shoulder his rifle and open fire. He picks it up and wields it like club!

Look, we all know that Doctor Who is not a show about violence ever solving anything. Indeed, it's generally intended to be the opposite. And maybe there are good explanations to be had. Perhaps it's intended as a meta commentary on the way that in these type of stories opposing forces will generally end up standing 10 feet apart, blazing away and doing precisely NOTHING. 

Pew Pew Pew! If nothing else, this has definitely been a good series for Warriors Of The Deep references.

Or perhaps there's an in universe explanation. The soldiers have been using less evil versions of the sleep machines, maybe that allows the rampaging carnivorous space vaginas to influence them in some way. Except for the one guy who doesn't use them of course. But sadly that's never actually addressed. So we're left watching an episode of Doctor Who with the primary thought going around our brains being "Why don't you just SHOOT SOMETHING?!?!". Again.

I'm starting to think this song needs to be on a loop for all space military forces, just to remind them.

So yeah, that's a little odd in context. The other problem with the ig twist ending is that the Doctor never finds out about it, so the transmission isn't stopped and the human race is now doomed to be eaten by rampaging carnivorous space vaginas. As a stand alone Twilight Zone type one shot thing this is great. As part of an ongoing continuity, even one as loose as Doctor Who, it's a bit of an issue. What's interesting is that whilst it looked like this might be the sort of thing that would come up in the second part, it doesn't seem like there's going to be one. Whilst everything else has been some sort of 2 parter so far, the trailer indicates that the Doctor is off to Hogwarts to meet Harry Potter next week rather than attempting some sort of re-enactment of Dead Space like he's meant to. So I guess all those space humans in the future are just doomed. Still, never mind eh? At least so is Clara.

Oh yeah, don't think I missed that. She got sucked into the machine, remember. Ostensibly so that we could get her POV shots without stretching the plot too thin. But this also logically means she's been infected with the rampaging carnivorous space vagina signal, and will soon be eaten to death by her own eyes. At which point I'm hoping the Doctor will keep the rampaging carnivorous space vagina monster on as a companion. Maybe put a little hat on it and call it George.

Alternatively they may just ignore it completely. But even if they do it's fine. Because after she's written out, even if they don't kill her off all us Clara haters can be assured that one day she'll wake up and this will happen:

That'll teach you to be a character I don't personally care much for.

Anyway, I'm really glad that although this episode had it's flaws it also had some pretty good ideas going on. It was trying to do something different, and that's always to be praised. Better to put in the effort and actually try something than just assume that whatever it is you're doing is great by default like certain OTHER episodes.

And yeah. Hogwarts next week. I really don't know that that's going to go down well. Ah well, we'll just have to wait and see.