Doctor Who: Sleep No More (2015) - Written Review

Mark Gatiss is a writer whose work on Doctor Who I've always respected, even if it hasn't always been the best in terms of quality. The Unquiet Dead is brilliant, chilling and is the best Doctor Who Christmas special never made as a Christmas special, but then The Idiot's Lantern has some great ideas but the execution is poor and is one of the few episodes of Doctor Who where I genuinely find both main characters incredibly irritating. Then again, I don't like the pairing of Rose and The Tenth Doctor anyway, so I could put that problem down to Russell T Davies. Victory of the Daleks was good, if a little inconsequential now in retrospect, while Night Terrors was a really enjoyable episode despite some flaws. Then last year we had Robot of Sherwood, which was good, but really didn't quite work and is a watchable fluff episode of the series.

Then we have Sleep No More - an episode with some really great ideas, but with absolutely no idea how to execute them. Now, when I was at the Doctor Who Festival at the weekend, Steven Moffat spoke about how Mark Gatiss had been planning the episode for years but always hit dead ends and couldn't get it to work properly until recently, and to be honest, as soon as Moffat said this I realised exactly what was wrong with Sleep No More: it has no idea what it wants to do with its ideas.

What I do want to say first though is that I respect Mark Gatiss for trying with this episode. It's a unique episode in Doctor Who history for its found footage style, and he's playing around with a lot of new ideas in a familiar base-under-siege Who formula. Also, he's written great stuff for Sherlock, so I don't dislike him at all, which is probably why I'm just so disappointed with this episode.

The plot follows a group of...soldiers of some kind...tasked with finding out what happened to Le Verrier Space Station and the Professor on board, who has invented the Morpheus machine - allowing humanity to carry on working without the need to sleep. However, it turns out that the Morpheus machine has caused sleep dust to become carnivorous creatures intent on devouring people, and with the help of The Doctor and Clara the soldiers must stop them and escape the ship.

Oh, and yes - I did just say that sleep dust became carnivorous monsters intent on devouring people. You can't fault Gatiss for thinking outside the box.

Firstly, the Sandmen - as the sleep dust creatures are called - are rather dull designs that don't really stand out against a plethora of other Doctor Who monsters. They're very similar to the Time Zombies from Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, and just as forgettable.

In addition to this, I would love to mention the supporting characters, but can't remember a thing about them, so I think I'll leave them. Didn't they all die? I honestly wasn't that interested.

Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman were very good - as always - although they didn't get anything particularly new or interesting in this episode. Reece Shearsmith was...you know what, I have no idea what he was. Shearsmith was good, but I'm really not sure about his character. Multiple twists seemed to be thrown around about him, but nothing really stuck in the episode - he was another one of the episode's ideas that wasn't focused on.

I suppose I have to mention the elephant in the room - that being the found footage style of the episode. It was quite creative at first, incorporating security cameras and helmet cameras from the soldiers, but as soon as the episode came up with the twist that it was the sand who were recording the whole thing...I just sighed. I understand why Mark Gatiss wanted to do this, but it doesn't add anything to the episode, and just creates more problems and one fairly big plot-hole that wouldn't have been there otherwise. For such a unique directorial style to be ruined like that was very disappointing, although I was very happy with how it was all shot. I didn't really believe that the camera was attached to the helmets, but the wonderful lighting about the ship combined with the found footage element made the episode very atmospheric and quite engaging at points.

However, I did notice how the episode was building to the found footage twist on a second viewing, even though The Doctor specifically mentions that the spaceship has no security cameras, even though there are many shots taken from security cameras throughout the episode, noticeable because they are the only static, black and white shots in the entire episode, so can't in theory be the dust. Also, given how many security cameras there are in everyday life nowadays, I couldn't imagine the 38th Century not having any security cameras at all. In addition to this - how did Rassmussen edit together what the dust particles are seeing to make the full film? Or maybe I'm over-thinking this.

That being said though, the moment when Rassmussen revealed that the events of the episode had been staged by him and the Sandmen to make it really engaging as the video is in fact part of Rassmussen's plan to spread the dust to humanity. It's a really good way of ending the episode, and combined with Rassmussen falling apart into dust makes for a really chilling end that will probably give younger viewers some pretty terrifying nightmares.

Overall, Sleep No More is a very experimental story, playing around with some unique and new elements that the show hasn't explored before. While I don't think that the found footage style completely worked (thanks to some regrettably easy-to-notice plot-holes), Mark Gatiss has provided a very unsettling story with some great horror moments and some interesting monsters. There are many elements to the story that only Gatiss would include - Rassmussen's character, the creepy use of the Sandman song and the constant picking off of the supporting characters one by one.

Not everything here works, but I do appreciate the story more with a second watch to see all of the elements set-up early on, and I see what Mark Gatiss was aiming for. It's just a real shame that it doesn't quite work.

I give Sleep No More a 5/10. So, what did you think of the story? Do you think it's the worst episode of the series so far? Or did you enjoy it more than most? Let me know in the comments section below and I'll see you all next time when The Doctor, Clara, Rigsy and Ashildr Face the Raven...