The Elite
BOSS
Ok, that's sort of the way I interpreted it. I felt just as confused as The Doctor by the end though.
I had a hard time buying into the monster's origins in the first place.
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Doctor Who Series 9 |OT| Let Zygons Be Zygons
- Thread starter Quick
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Ok, that's sort of the way I interpreted it. I felt just as confused as The Doctor by the end though.
I had a hard time buying into the monster's origins in the first place.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
This x1000. Interesting premise/ideas introduced, but the execution was God-awful
I liked some things about the episode. The Indo-Japanese stuff was interesting and refreshing, the Bishock/Dead Space-like atmosphere was cool and the found footage thing actually worked for me for the most part.
I understood the ending. But it takes a lot of skill to make this kind of eleventh hour twist work, and the problem with this twist is that it didn't enhance what came before it in any way. It just muddled the details to the point of making them null, which is unsatisfying.
A huge chunk of the episode focuses on them figuring out things that end up not mattering or maybe not even being true, making the whole exercise feel pointless. It leaves you with a lot of questions in a bad way.
It was clear that Gatiss had a hard time figuring out how to make the twist work and refused to drop it. The fact he went with the villain doing an awkward expository bit is telling.
This one just goes from "wtf?" to "that's it?". The twist was more concerned with the gotcha moment than being coherent. It works on a very surface level (the video was the infection), but if you try to dig even a little into reconstructing what you watched under a new light, this happens:
I understood the ending. But it takes a lot of skill to make this kind of eleventh hour twist work, and the problem with this twist is that it didn't enhance what came before it in any way. It just muddled the details to the point of making them null, which is unsatisfying.
A huge chunk of the episode focuses on them figuring out things that end up not mattering or maybe not even being true, making the whole exercise feel pointless. It leaves you with a lot of questions in a bad way.
It was clear that Gatiss had a hard time figuring out how to make the twist work and refused to drop it. The fact he went with the villain doing an awkward expository bit is telling.
Yep. A good twist goes from making you go "wtf" to "ohhh, I see", making you want to deconstruct your perceptions and re-examine the story by yourself.
This one just goes from "wtf?" to "that's it?". The twist was more concerned with the gotcha moment than being coherent. It works on a very surface level (the video was the infection), but if you try to dig even a little into reconstructing what you watched under a new light, this happens:
tonysidaway
Member
Please don't take this obsession with "spoilers" too far. The BBC officially announced more than two months ago that Alex Kingston is returning to the role for the 2015 Christmas Special.
The story is how the Doctor got outwitted by the enemy and that's deliberately peeled away in layers like wetflame describes.
Was this already posted? Moffat explains why Caecilius, Frobisher, and the Doctor have the same face.
Or how the viewer is outwitted by bad story-telling with a self-insert of the writer.
There is nothing clever about this one, and what interesting ideas were in it were lost in trying to be clever.
tonysidaway
Member
I just love it when Moffat and Davies troll the obsessive fans like this.
Thought Sleep No More was mediocre by Who standards and kind of good by Gatiss penned Who episode standards. Probably my favorite script he's done for New Who aside from The Unquiet Dead.
It had some good ideas in it, even if it did underwhelm. The found footage idea was almost a good idea. I got a distinct feeling of dread when I realized one of the perspectives I was seeing things from was Clara's and immediately thought, Oh, god. What did it do to her? Kind of ruined it by saying the cameras were in the dust though. It felt like "cheating" somehow.
But yeah, the twist fell a bit flat. I really like the image of the scientist's eye dissolving, but I felt like the audio change they made to the actor's voice as he broke down was silly and not great.
I like the idea of a zombie monster that's made of dust since dust is primarily dead human cells and who's to say it stops being a zombie just because it's little flakeletts?
I like the idea of exploring sleep because it is still kind of a great unknown. There is still so much we don't understand about sleep, which seems crazy given that every human being has done it pretty much every night since the dawn of time.
The clone soldier was interesting and seemed like it would lead somewhere and then just heroically died. A word to the wise: if you're not going to utilize a concept you have to dedicate script time to explaining in the plot for anything meaningful, don't do it. We could have that time back to be spent on better explaining the monsters instead. The solider that had conflict with her could've just not liked that solider for personal reasons and it would've been just the same.
I just don't think all this stuff necessarily goes together. Or if it does, it needs a defter hand at plot pyrotechnics than Gatiss has ever shown himself to be. Don't get me wrong, I love his Sherlock stuff. It just seems like he thrives more in worlds a little more grounded than Doctor Who. All his scripts are kind of clawing back toward the familiar. Aside from this one, I think everything else he's written is a historical set episode, something it seems like helps him with grounding his stories. And that's fine. Really, we need someone writing historicals. I actually think he'd be brilliant at writing a straight historical. No aliens, no space magic, just the doctor and companion getting embroiled in some conflict of earth's distant past that tickles Gatiss' fancy. I bet he could write the hell out of that.
It had some good ideas in it, even if it did underwhelm. The found footage idea was almost a good idea. I got a distinct feeling of dread when I realized one of the perspectives I was seeing things from was Clara's and immediately thought, Oh, god. What did it do to her? Kind of ruined it by saying the cameras were in the dust though. It felt like "cheating" somehow.
But yeah, the twist fell a bit flat. I really like the image of the scientist's eye dissolving, but I felt like the audio change they made to the actor's voice as he broke down was silly and not great.
I like the idea of a zombie monster that's made of dust since dust is primarily dead human cells and who's to say it stops being a zombie just because it's little flakeletts?
I like the idea of exploring sleep because it is still kind of a great unknown. There is still so much we don't understand about sleep, which seems crazy given that every human being has done it pretty much every night since the dawn of time.
The clone soldier was interesting and seemed like it would lead somewhere and then just heroically died. A word to the wise: if you're not going to utilize a concept you have to dedicate script time to explaining in the plot for anything meaningful, don't do it. We could have that time back to be spent on better explaining the monsters instead. The solider that had conflict with her could've just not liked that solider for personal reasons and it would've been just the same.
I just don't think all this stuff necessarily goes together. Or if it does, it needs a defter hand at plot pyrotechnics than Gatiss has ever shown himself to be. Don't get me wrong, I love his Sherlock stuff. It just seems like he thrives more in worlds a little more grounded than Doctor Who. All his scripts are kind of clawing back toward the familiar. Aside from this one, I think everything else he's written is a historical set episode, something it seems like helps him with grounding his stories. And that's fine. Really, we need someone writing historicals. I actually think he'd be brilliant at writing a straight historical. No aliens, no space magic, just the doctor and companion getting embroiled in some conflict of earth's distant past that tickles Gatiss' fancy. I bet he could write the hell out of that.
Whoa. Meta.
aHebrewMenagerie
Member
Sleep No More had an AI of 78. Not great, compared to the rest of the season.
acheron_xl
Member
2nd worst in New Who by my count - only Love and Monsters' 76 being lower.
tonysidaway
Member
She's played by a trans actor, and that casting suggests to me that the production had ambitions that exceeded their storytelling powers. Or perhaps it's just a low-effort way to distinguish this disposable cast of redshirts from every other ensemble cast in a Doctor Who story like this.
I suppose Mark Gatiss is taking the opportunity to play with ideas of gender, and the casting followed that idea a little. But this kind of world-building is often rather uncomfortable. Over time the Ood developed a comprehensive back story and a liberation narrative, but their original appearance in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit resembles somewhat this purpose-bred slave caste. So while it's not comfortable viewing, I can imagine that this is a writer introducing themes he may return to with a proper examination.
Perhaps, though, this Grunt is a McGuffin intended as a pointer to the main theme. She is along as an effective fighter but she has characteristics the humans dislike--annoying linguistic foibles, inappropriate violence, and unwelcome displays of fixation on an attractive crewmate. The main thematic menace, Morpheus, also has decidedly unwelcome and unplanned traits.
But perhaps the story is too uncooked, at least in its broadcast state, to be taken so seriously. I confess I doubt this kind of analysis would bear much fruit.
Spectromixer
Member
Anyone post the finale spoilers from yesterday?
infiniteloop
Member
Spectromixer
Member
yeah sorry about that >_<
Yeah, I see what you're getting at, but when you're writing sometimes you have to kill your children. The coldhearted truth is that the subplot does nothing. I see no reason why the character couldn't just be actually trans with regular dialog and a regular bearing about her while the "pretty" compatriot treats her as Other just the same, which would require no techno babble and you could still have the noble sacrifice moment.
They didn't hit any other themes with the character hard enough to make me think she's a counterpoint to the Sandmen. Maybe if she had somehow been instrumental in the Sandmen's defeat you could see it being somehow about science gone wrong vs. science gone right, but that loops back around to my original complaint in the first place. The character doesn't do anything of note other than saving someone who dies in the very next scene. It just seems like the character exists just to have her and that's a disservice to the character as much as it is the audience.
So, I still think if it were up to me, I'd cut the whole thing or just have the character be a legit trans character instead of your standard weak sci-fi TV show metaphor for something actually meaningful in the real world. It's 2015. I'm pretty sure a modern audience could handle that.
I would argue that having her be a woman rather than a "trans character" is a meaningful statement in and of itself.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
That could also be achieved without requiring a vat grown clone explanation that takes up intellectual real estate that could and should have been used for developing a monster around which the plot revolves around and currently makes little sense.
Alternatively, they could keep the character as-is, but make her actually important to the story. That would also be satisfactory in my eyes. Maybe they could sacrifice the stuff with Clara getting taken by the pod and figuring out the dust as cameras thing since that was dumb anyway to make more room for the character. My whole problem is that this character is interesting, but ultimately pointless in the larger scope of the story. I'd love to have her, but I don't want to have her just because. Like I said before, something needed to be cut because as is it really just doesn't hold together.
Come to think of it, I think that's my biggest problem with this episode: it's mostly cool scenes that don't dovetail into each other. The information provided the audience in one scene does not widely inform them about anything of importance in the next. Like, I really like that scene where the soldier has to sing Mr. Sandman into the computer console to get through the door, but it doesn't lead to anything. It's just a tense scene and that's fine, but when you've got so many high-concept ideas in a script if a scene can't be tense and informative, it needs a rewrite.
To condense my ramblings down even further TL
R - script needed a rewrite, don't really care what they changed, just needed tightening for focus.I won't do a big review for this one; the long and short of it is that I thought it was not particularly bad, but not particularly good either. 'Interesting' is a word I'd use.
Generally though, what I'm constantly bothered by with Gatiss' writing is how black-and-white it is. I'm not talking about characters or stories specifically; what I mean is how he always tries to write either super dark "scary" stuff or very, very light-hearted humorous stuff. There is no in between. Episodes like Night Terrors, Cold War and Sleep No More are not only utterly dark in their settings to the point of barely seeing anything, they are also almost entirely devoid of any charm. You may catch glimpses of it, like the old guy singing Duran Duran from Cold War, or the Mr. Sandman-song in Sleep No More (I liked that), but in general the characters, locations and stories just end up being drab and boring. You're not scared enough, and you're certainly not humoured enough.
It is said that comedy is some of the hardest writing you can do, but for Gatiss making something actually scary and atmospheric seems to be a lot harder, because he's way better at comedy. Robot of Sherwood is one of the few pure comedy episodes of Doctor Who I really enjoy, and it's probably my favourite Gatiss-episode. It's an exception (an exception on the other, moodier spectrum would be Dark Water; so atmospheric and chilling, but so good), because most of the time I think Doctor Who is at its best when it successfully mixes horror and comedy; episodes like Blink that I think has some good funny moments with charming characters and locations, as well as some spooky/scary moments with the Weeping Angels. I think Gatiss is too fixed on one particular feel for his episodes, as if he says "let's make a funny one" or "let's make a scary one" instead of "let's make a funny and scary one".
Generally though, what I'm constantly bothered by with Gatiss' writing is how black-and-white it is. I'm not talking about characters or stories specifically; what I mean is how he always tries to write either super dark "scary" stuff or very, very light-hearted humorous stuff. There is no in between. Episodes like Night Terrors, Cold War and Sleep No More are not only utterly dark in their settings to the point of barely seeing anything, they are also almost entirely devoid of any charm. You may catch glimpses of it, like the old guy singing Duran Duran from Cold War, or the Mr. Sandman-song in Sleep No More (I liked that), but in general the characters, locations and stories just end up being drab and boring. You're not scared enough, and you're certainly not humoured enough.
It is said that comedy is some of the hardest writing you can do, but for Gatiss making something actually scary and atmospheric seems to be a lot harder, because he's way better at comedy. Robot of Sherwood is one of the few pure comedy episodes of Doctor Who I really enjoy, and it's probably my favourite Gatiss-episode. It's an exception (an exception on the other, moodier spectrum would be Dark Water; so atmospheric and chilling, but so good), because most of the time I think Doctor Who is at its best when it successfully mixes horror and comedy; episodes like Blink that I think has some good funny moments with charming characters and locations, as well as some spooky/scary moments with the Weeping Angels. I think Gatiss is too fixed on one particular feel for his episodes, as if he says "let's make a funny one" or "let's make a scary one" instead of "let's make a funny and scary one".
ClivePwned
Member
Gatos came from League of Gentlemen. If anyone could balance scary and humour, it should be Gatiss. But it isn't.
Exterminieren
Banned
I'd argue that The Crimson Horror did a great job of marrying a comedic tone with the horrific elements.
It's far and away the closest Gatiss has come to the tone of the League of Gentlemen on the show, and it rather baffles me why it took him so long.
Ouch. Gatiss should stick to the more light hearted episodes.
Jest Chillin
Member
Davies used a similar explanation for Gwen from Torchwood and Gwyneth from DW's The Unquiet Dead.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
So even with this weeks episode being "meh", I've come to a realization over the last few weeks.
Capaldi is now my favorite Doctor.
Capaldi is now my favorite Doctor.
BrokenFiction
Member
I think I've liked some episodes better than most people, but this is a very true statement - Capaldi is the best Doctor. Imagine what he could do with a proper showrunner.
We can all dream about Capaldi being blessed by the screenwriting and editing of Series 1-4. We can dream.
Hcoregamer00
The 'H' stands for hentai.
At least for the new doctors, he has displaced David Tennant for me as my favorite new who doctor. Capaldi is half the reason why Series 8 had amazing moments, and he is basically carrying series 9, which up to the last episode has been amazing.
The spoilers also makes me think Series 9 finale will be the greatest thing ever
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
This last episode is the weakest of Capaldi's run for me. Not everything in S8 was great, but there was nothing I outright disliked. And even this episode didn't hit the lows we saw in Tennant's and Smith's runs for me.
ClivePwned
Member
The only remotely interesting thing about this week's was the space restaurant gag.
"what about space suits?"
I see Mark Gatiss was going for something outside what people expect of him and not stacking it with jokes, but sleepdust was just stupid and just undercut the scariness. Ok, I'm not 7.
Reece Shearsmith made it tolerable.
That photo of Shearsmith, Gatiss and David Bradley as The Three Doctors from AiSaT makes me wish that, if Capaldi or Moffat want a year off, they should do an athology season with recast versions of earlier Doctors. Let Gatiss do his Pertwee. Let Shearsmith to Pat Troughton, etc. Even let McGann do a 50 minute as the 8th Doctor, etc.
"what about space suits?"
I see Mark Gatiss was going for something outside what people expect of him and not stacking it with jokes, but sleepdust was just stupid and just undercut the scariness. Ok, I'm not 7.
Reece Shearsmith made it tolerable.
That photo of Shearsmith, Gatiss and David Bradley as The Three Doctors from AiSaT makes me wish that, if Capaldi or Moffat want a year off, they should do an athology season with recast versions of earlier Doctors. Let Gatiss do his Pertwee. Let Shearsmith to Pat Troughton, etc. Even let McGann do a 50 minute as the 8th Doctor, etc.
Hcoregamer00
The 'H' stands for hentai.
The sad part is that the concept of a machine that stops people from sleeping has so many implications that had they angled it differently, it could have been absolutely amazing. If it was angled as people being overworked to death or people losing a sense of time because they got sleep in a manner of minutes would be far more interesting than what we got.
Conceptually, it could have been special, but had they changed a thing or two, it would have moved from terrible to awesome.
Conceptually, it could have been special, but had they changed a thing or two, it would have moved from terrible to awesome.
R_thanatos
Member
Instead of sleeping 8 hours, they went into the machine 5mins each day..and each day the dust accumulates.
That's the rough idea.
APZonerunner
Member
They've said time and time again - Moffat, RTD, Gatiss all - that they would not recast old Doctors for anything within the actual show/universe, even the ones no longer with us, at least not for any speaking part. Obviously they've used body doubles here and there like in Episode 2 this year and Name of the Doctor. It'll never happen, at least not under the current team. It's taboo to them, which is fair enough, I think.
That aside, I think the show also should keep moving forwards. If, for instance, the team can't hack it and want a year off, the solution is not to (as many fans suggest) do a mini series with the 8th Doctor and a Big Finish companion made flesh for instance, but... probably that it's coming to the time for those who can't continue to commit to Who's (admittedly gruelling) schedule to move on.
tonysidaway
Member
This could be described as the "How does Batman use the toilet if he's wearing tights?" problem. It's fiction, it doesn't have to be particularly truthful or accurate. Search rather for some internal logic. You will have a more pleasant life that way.
ClivePwned
Member
I'd agree to the first paragraph if the BBC would say "yes, we are doing a full season for broadcast in 2016, and another full season in 2017."
I def agree, If Moffat can't do Sherlock and Who at the same time, then he needs to make a tough choice, as exemplified in the movie starring Meryl Streep, "Steven's Choice."
tonysidaway
Member
I'm not complaining. I found the long series arcs of Matt's tenure as Doctor gripping enough that I'd often find it a bit of a wrench to look back at the earlier years with Chris and David. Peter is enough to make me forget Matt. And looking at Peter's stories so far, the only ones that don't work so well for me are Kill the Moon and (possibly) Sleep No More. If you made me choose a particular period of NuWho I'd probably go for Matt's. He had great scripts and a huge array of supporting characters. I think Matt raised the level for the whole production.
Agreed. Perfect characterizations on The Doctor, Amy and Rory and some true stand-out stories (The Eleventh Hour, The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone, Amy's Choice, Vincent And The Doctor). Matt was basically pitch-perfect from the start; erratic, but not overly cartoony. Alien, but equally warm and "human" when fitting (example 1, example 2).
The problem is that the characters were so perfectly made for this fairytale-esque feel that when they wanted to go grimmer with series 6 it didn't quite mesh. Amy and Rory got quite boring (especially Rory who they tried to make "cooler" from The Big Bang and onwards, which really didn't work for me), and 11 got increasingly exaggerated. At times he got really dark and moody, and when the time came to do something light-hearted they overcompensated by making him really eccentric. I think Matt was still mostly good, but they didn't hit the right balance like in series 5. By the time series 7 rolled in the chemistry between 11 and Amy and Rory was very strained and weary, and it botched the whole blockbuster adventure feel a bit in my opinion. We were quite a long way from the warm, genuine vibe of series 5 at that point, I feel.
The difference here is that Batman going to the toilet is never a focal point of his stories. It's a tiny detail that if focused on becomes nitpicking.
But in Sleep No More, deducing and understanding the way the monster functions and where it comes from is absolutely a focal point of the story. It's only fair that people would want it to make sense within the show's universe. And by the end of the episode, like the Doctor himself says, "it doesn't make sense!".
I personally don't think 40 minutes of nonsense plot detais is a satisfying way of making an episode. Even if the twist explanation by the monster is "it was nonsensical on purpose so you'd keep watching and get infected".
tonysidaway
Member
It's nonsensical because Doctor Who, like most SF, isn't about science. I prefer to call Doctor Who a fairytale. The way Doctor Who plots work are closer to fairytales. I think it's a waste of time looking for science in Doctor Who, Star Wars or Star Trek. You may as well look for forensic science technique in a Sherlock Holmes story.
Another way of putting it is the twist wasn't "I see dead people!", it was "That was all bollocks!".
Whatever you think Doctor Who is, or however you see it, it was a shit story. That's all there is to it really.
peanutbutterlatte
Member
Wow. Longer combined running time than the 50th. Really looking forward to the finale, even if I have read the stonking big synopsis spoiler floating around.
Which by the way is on wikipedia too.
Which by the way is on wikipedia too.
I wish I could do that, but I have no such willpower when it comes to Doctor Who. My friends know the score: if they want to see it with me, they damn well better show up as soon as it's available or I'm watching it without them. I mean, I usually watch every episode two or three times as a result of this policy, but somehow I'm mostly ok with that.
tonysidaway
Member
I watched it again this evening. It think it's quite good. I don't expect the premise to make much sense, but I do expect watchable television. I never watched Blair Witch Project and only sat through Cloverfield as a dutiful parent, so I had few preconceptions. In fact the technical standards were reasonably high, but convincingly enough daubed to make it look like found footage.
Doctor Who quoting Macbeth seems like an insertion intended to foreshadow future events. Clara taking over the initial communication with Rasmussen seems to be underlining the "Clara becomes Doctor Who" theme that others have noted. The final monologue is rather well done. The premature departure of Doctor Who is ominous. This was fun to rewatch and I'll be revisiting it again.
Having said that,I have found Doctor Who very watchable overall since the 2005 revival. So good that I can list only a few episodes that I don't revisit much with great pleasure.
The only main series episodes I'm ever reluctant to revisit are Father's Day, the Impossible Planet/Satan Pit pair, 42, Love and Monsters, Night Terrors, The Rings of Akhaten, and Kill the Moon. I also have problems with a couple of 2009 specials, Planet of the Dead and Waters of Mars. It's been a remarkable run. Those episodes I don't care for much aren't bad. They're just not the kind of television I enjoy watching again and again.