Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 9 : Sleep No More
A chilling story, assembled from footage discovered in the wreckage of Le Verrier Space Station.
[SPOILERS WILL BE REVEALED IN THIS REVIEW]
This is a Doctor Who story like no other we've seen this year. It's written by writer Mark Gatiss and is told through the character of Professor Rassmussen who is played by 'Reece Shearsmith' who is very good friends with Gatiss.
This story isn't really about the Doctor and Clara going off on an adventure for a change, and this is what makes 'Sleep No More' a very different story compared to something like the zygon two parter for example. The story is set on a space station, the Le Verrier which is in orbit around Neptune around the time of the 38th century. In the introduction part the character of Gagan Rassmussen is introduced and Rassmussen is the lead researcher at the space station. He warns viewers basically ' do not watch this, its going to terrify you!' and thats what draws you in to the story in a way, we as the audience are compelled to watch because we want to know what's so terrifying about what's happening here on this space station that is not going to make us watch.
I think what this story does so well is it demonstrates to an audience how creepy space stations can be. The production design on this episode is brilliant, the colours and backgrounds are very atmospheric, not many bright colours its very doom and gloom which of course helps convince the audience that they are where they are. It reminded me a bit of 'The Ark in Space' which was nice.
In all honesty in terms of actually following this story, I personally thought it was a little hard to follow with everything that happening all at once, it was a bit slow at times and was also really boring in places. Maybe its just me an my attention span, I just don't see what people find compelling about this story as people have said "Oh it brilliant!" "So gripping" and all this and I'm just like "really?, not much happens in it" not really, apart from a lot or running around, opening and closing doors, being stuck in rooms, and taking absolutely ages to work out the problem which could have solved in 20 - 25 minutes. Its one of those starting and stopping stories like 'The Ambassadors of Death' the difference being I actually quite like 'The Ambassadors of Death'.
There were some clever ideas in it though, like the concept of the sandmen, sleep or dust in your eye from sleeping. That's a great idea for a monster, and they were actually quite creepy and a great horrifying side effect to the Morpheus machine.
I like the idea of the morpheus machine. five minutes in there is the equivalent to 3 months of sleep. It's great for work ethics and as Rassmussen says in the episode 'time is money' so I get why its useful on that respect. It some ways its very good, but due to the side effects of the sandmen I probably wouldn't use it. After a while the floating head intercom of the woman's head that became annoying.
No opening title sequence which I felt was odd, I kept watching thinking 'when are we going to see the opening credits' and 20 minutes in I gave up and was like 'nah, we're not going to get it' which was disappointing seeing as there was a good point in the story which you could cut to have it in, they missed a trick there. I guess they just wanted to have the audience interested in the story from start to finish. But for me, who's watched this series week in week out, being so used to having it, to then not have it is quite strange.
I loved the twist at the end, when you find out that all this time Rassmussen is nothing but dust... really spooky stuff and I wasn't expecting to see that. Usually I'm quite good at predicting what's going to happen in Doctor Who but not on this occasion so well done to Mark Gatiss for surprising me.
However to give this a mark now, it's just not my cup of tea really. I'll give it a 5/10.
NEXT WEEK: It's time to Face the Raven!
