Doctor Who series 35, episode 9 – Sleep No More

‘Congratulations, professor. You’ve revolutionised the labour market, you’ve conquered nature. You’ve also created an abomination’

Just as Clara Oswald is now so sure of her life with the Doctor that she’s starting to take risks, so the production team are steady in their groove and comfortable in a purple patch, they’re starting to do the same. No opening titles or theme music here; as Doctor Who tackles a “found footage” episode.

Now, risks are always, always better than the easy route. But if there’s a problem with Sleep No More it’s that the scale of the concept can’t help but be undermined by necessities of its execution. Having Reece Shearsmith’s Professor Rassmussan hold your hand all the way through it with his commentary takes away something of the nervy uncertainty that made found footage staples such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield such classics. You know who’s assembled this from the start. Difficult to see how that could have been avoided; a Saturday-night family show such as Doctor Who needs to hold your hand to a certain extent, and the conceit itself turns out to be the whole point of the Sandmen’s plan in the first place, and so on. And that final sting in the tale is the nightmare fuel that gives Mark Gatiss his Blink moment. But for me, it felt like an experiment that only half works, and it’s a good job we like Gatiss, or Rassmussan’s mentions at the end of “compulsive storytelling” and “a proper climax with the big one at the end” would be calling for some serious side-eye. Nobody likes a show off!

But there’s a terrifically chilling premise underpinning this political satire. A corporate efficiency drive pushed to disastrous extremes by a mad scientist might have come over heavy-handed, but for all the technical accomplishment (and it is very accomplished), the exquisite beats of Gatiss’s imagination see him deliver Doctor Who at its most Doctor Who-like. Monsters made out of sleep in your eyes? That is good. As if insomnia wasn’t enough of a bummer as it is.

‘We live in a time of unparalleled prosperity. A golden age of peace, harmony, industry. But every shift must come to an end. Every working day must stop’

The other big talking point this week, of course, is the League of Gentlemen quasi-reunion, as Gatiss’s old colleague Reece Shearsmith turns up for a guest turn as Rassmussan. The collaboration of those two is always infectious, and who doesn’t love a mad scientist? But in a series that has already given us Missy and Davros and Evil Clara, he’s unlikely to go down as a classic villain.

What I found most impressive about Sleep No More, though, is the level of backstory and context Gatiss that packs in. A far-flung future where a Great Catastrophe (more on that below) has caused a tectonic realignment on Earth and the Indo-Japanese power bloc is now the planet’s dominant superpower; a polytheist society with armies of clone soldiers, and deep political divisions between the “wideawakes” and the “Rip van Winkles” who appreciate their sleep. You can see how he first envisioned this as a two-parter, and while two hours of found footage would have been way too much, it’s a fertile ground for more stories and I wonder if we shouldn’t visit this world again.

Fear factor

It’s looking neck-and-neck between this and Under the Lake for scariest of the season. Where Toby Whithouse’s story played with ghost story conventions in an underwater base, Sleep No More riffs on classic horror aboard a space station, and the Sandmen are easily as scary as those ghosts. Even though he has never written a space-set story before, it’s an undeniably Gatiss episode, his affection for the genre and lyrical language shining through the claustrophobia. Certainly, the Doctor’s speeches bleed into the Shakespeare-quoting beautifully.

Meanwhile, there’s a reason we get to see 474’s bloody demise. This the first series the show has been allowed to use blood, as it has been going out after 8pm. Which may prove a counter-productive benefit given the whole conversation about ratings.

Mysteries and questions

As we approach endgame, by this point even the most throwaway line is capable of driving us mad with potential significance to Clara’s long goodbye. Meanwhile, this week Rachel Talalay, director of the final two episodes, told DWM: “[Steven Moffat has] layered in all these things from earlier in the series, which you never even thought were important. You have no clue what the series arc is, or how Clara leaves, until … well, until you do! It makes this finale so exciting – all these mysteries, numerous questions, some questions you hadn’t even realised were questions! It’s mind-blowing how well Steven has constructed this. At the end of this series, you’ll want to go back and watch it all again, ‘Now I see!’”

Theories more bonkers than what’s actually going on, did someone say?

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Progress and such

Undeniably, there’s something of a transgender “moment” happening in TV, within the “moment” happening within the wider community. And that maybe shouldn’t need to be a talking point, but it will be until it isn’t. At the start of this year, Bethany Black, who plays 474, became the first trans actor in a recurring trans role on British television. Since then, both EastEnders and Hollyoaks have cast trans actors in trans parts, and now stand-up Black shows up in only her second acting role (the two shows share a casting director in Andy Pryor). Perhaps most notably, here she is apparently playing a cis character – a warrior clone cis character, but a cis character all the same. Which is definitely a sort of progress. Incidentally, I doubt I have ever seen anybody more excited about anything than when I ran into Black at Manchester Pride shortly after her casting was announced. The lifelong Who obsessive apparently asked Gatiss whether this episode was linked to the 1974 story The Sun Makers, because that was also set in the 38th century. He had no idea.

Continuity 109

One of the joys this year has been the sheer number of Easter eggs thrown in for the more “devoted” among us. This week, we get a reference to the “Great Catastrophe”, presumably the same event warned of in 1984’s Frontios, where the citizens of a doomed planet Earth would flee from the “imminence of a catastrophic collision with the sun”.

And when the Doctor complains that, “It’s like the Silurians all over again” and insists on doing the naming, he is of course referring to the “controversy” over the naming of Doctor Who’s classic Homo reptilia, who would more likely have originated in the Eocene period.

Deeper into the vortex

“Cuts, pet.” Austerity is still going strong in the 38th century.

As the Doctor notes, the title is taken from a line in Act II of Macbeth, as the Scot laments to his wife:

“Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep” – the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”

(There’s a fun “translation” into modern-day language here, for anyone who’s interested in that sort of thing.)

It’s also the name of a “promenade theatre” production based on Macbeth, from London’s Punchdrunk theatre company, currently playing in New York.

And another nice pop song plug-in, with the Morpheus machine using the Chordette’s 1954 classic Mr Sandman as its theme tune. Shall we have a listen?

Gatiss, as ever, has done his homework. Morpheus, the god of dreams, also provided the basis for the Laurence Fishburne Morpheus character in The Matrix; and, in turn, the Wachowskis instructed Fishburne to base that performance on the character Dream from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

Two uses of “bloody”… Never mind scariest, is this Doctor Who’s sweariest episode ever?

Next Week!

Jovian Wade returns as friendly scally Rigsy, and Maisie Williams returns as troublesome immortal Me. It’s time to Face the Raven.