Sunday 15 November 2015

Review - Doctor Who: "Sleep No More"

On this week's episode of Doctor Who, we get one of the most ambitious episodes yet, with a found
footage episode set in the 38th century. 
"Sleep No More" is a drastically different episode of Doctor Who and plays like a current found footage film, the episode didn't even feature the Doctor Who opening credits!


The episode has a lot of the Doctor Who tropes, the episode is set on a space station in the future and there are a group of soldiers trying to find out what happened to the crew aboard, very reminiscent of Ridley Scott's Alien, the soldiers also have the classic traits we expect from the random character in a Who episode, there is the unexperienced leader, the grunt, the comedian and the normal one that audience gravitates too. All of the found footage has been edited together by Dr. Rassmussen, who is narrating over the footage telling the audience what has happened, saying that all the soldiers have died. The story of the episode is rather mysterious, using the narration smartly giving us hints on what has happened but not the full story. Another interesting point in this episode was that in the 38th century there have sleep deprivation chambers, in which you only need to sleep for 5 minutes and then you won't need to sleep for a month, so that you can continue to work at nights, this honestly feels like where the world is going, where we wouldn't even care about things like sleep anymore because we want to be doing other things.
 The monsters in the episode, The Sandman, were intimidating and gross when revealed what they really are. The ending of the episode was incredibly confusing mostly because this is a single episode story yet it is left on a rather dark cliffhanger, which makes me wonder if they will come back to this story.

Dr. Rassmussen (Shearsmith) in "Sleep No More"
The standout performance of the episode was Reece Shearsmith, who plays Dr. Rassmussen, who is arguably the main character of the episode, with him telling us the story throughout the episode.

"Sleep No More" was a brilliant and ambitious episode of Doctor Who, with a rather crazy ending which will hopefully impact the story of Doctor Who going forward.

8.8/10
What did you think of "Sleep No More"?
Comment and let me know!


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