Doctor Who Sleep No More Reviews 

Five Thoughts on Doctor Who’s “Sleep No More” [Review]

By | November 15th, 2015
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

“You Must Not Watch This.”

That’s the very first sentence of this episode. Well, that was short, kinda anti-climactic. Oh well. See you all next week!

…Ok fine….

1. Found Footage

I have this up and down relationship with Found Footage. On one hand, it can show a unique perspective, shown from a person’s eyes or from camera angles from, say, security cameras. On the other hand, a lot of found footage movies will also implement shaky camera which can be, at best, annoying to me. And credit where it’s due to the episode, it doesn’t indulge in the shaky camera to a massive degree and, as such, it makes watch the episode and see what’s going on more coherent. Which I guess is “good”… because… well…

2. ….WHAT?!

The Monster-Of-The-Week is… I kid you not… evolved, carnivorous eye boogers.

……

You know, I hope everyone is having a great time over at Thought Bubble in Leeds!

3. Aliens Aliens ALIENS

I think writer Mark Gatiss is a fan of the movie Aliens.

The dark, claustrophobic, mutated atmosphere of the space station. The space marines. Even the designs of the monster are pretty good and, especially around the mouth, invoke the famous Xenomorph in really good and fun ways. Combining this with the aforementioned found footage concept, it does create a great deal of creepy moments when the Doctor, Clara and everyone else are on the run…

You know, until I found out that the monsters were evolved, carnivorous eye boogers, which just caused me to stare into the abyss and think “This is what I’ve been doing with my Saturday nights.”

4. Making the Mundane Scary

Look, I know I seem to be harping about this, but there really wasn’t that much more to this episode. Turns out the scientist that created the sleep pods that gave birth to… these things… is actually evil and that they are the next step and that humans will be their food and blah blah blah blah!

Doctor Who can make the mundane and ordinary terrifying. It has done so in the past. One of the highest regarded episode in New Who is “Blink” and rightly so. It’s creation there, the Weeping Angels, brought a terrifying new element to the Who canon and even that episode utilized interesting camera work to bring out another layer of terror. In fact, “Sleep No More” seemed like it wanted to be a new “Blink” and while it did get some good atmosphere, one of the big things about the Weeping Angels is that we didn’t know where they came from. Here though… it just kills the creepy factor.

5. Clara

Okay, I got to be blunt about this: This is Clara’s last season, right? Why is it that she seems to be doing so little throughout these episodes? Don’t let that above picture fool you, she really just seemed there in this episode. Like, anyone could’ve been in that sleep pod and it wouldn’t have changed anything. Sure there’s some banter between her and the Doctor in this episode. But we now have three episodes to go with this season and it just feels like so… little… amount of fanfare for her.


//TAGS | Doctor Who

Ken Godberson III

When he's not at his day job, Ken Godberson III is a guy that will not apologize for being born Post-Crisis. More of his word stuffs can be found on Twitter or Tumblr. Warning: He'll talk your ear off about why Impulse is the greatest superhero ever.

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