Doctor Who 9x9 'Sleep No More': Well, We're obviously gonna watch.

Doctor Who 9x9 is a balanced, chilling, and surprisingly cerebral exploration of the thing everyone loves to do... sleep.

Reviewed while remembering how amazing and hilarious Portal and Portal 2 are.

So are we Sandmen now? Or carriers of the Sandman virus? Is this the price of extending our hand just too far?

In 'Sleep No More,' the Doctor makes it very plain on more than one occasion that humanity is impertinent to the nature of curiosity. Time Lords are a comparatively ageless species. And they've learned the responsibility that comes with knowledge and wonder and innovation. With exploring the deeper, more fascinating aspects of life. Like sleep. 'The balm of hurt minds.' But we mere humans just run around trying to make money and gain the advantage on our competitors. At the expense of what the Doctor makes a very good case for being the most romantic part of the living experience. When we sleep, we dream, we escape, we explore the unknown crevasses of our mind. Juxtaposing all of the Doctor's poetic dialogue (AND COLBERT-BUMPING MACBETH YES!!!!) are the clunky, highly deformed Sandmen, quite literally the stuff of our nightmares. Embodiments of a distorted world where sleep is no longer valued. When we remove sleep from our experiences, there is only that hurt mind, and the ugliness of waking life. That might sound incredibly cynical, but the Sandmen were constructed from an invention meant for a truly terrible purpose. If the future of humanity only cares about the bottom line ('Time is money') and growing humans only to be weapons, then sleep may be the only reprieve left from the horrors.

'Sleep No More' is a glimpse into a truly desolate and unforgiving future that the show seems to believe is a very real possibility, made in the familiar Alien-like realm of a dark, creaking spaceship. The metal walls are rusted and stained, shadows lurk and the only people we know besides the Doctor and Clara have guns. Which they shove into the Doctor's face the moment they meet him. Because that's always a great idea. His immediate reaction is to go into full sass mode, which was a solid way to soften the anxiety of the plot every time he had a quip. Just as his poignantly poetic reflections on sleep provide the somber moments of cerebral analysis. And there is a surprising amount of that in yet another base-siege horror story. Because the episode comes off as a sort of warning piece for the future. Not simply to stop studying the unknown and inventing, but to study and invent and explore with extreme caution, and to never forget the values of our most basic programming, like sleep. The Doctor is merely the personification of that warning.

It's another reason to love Capaldi's incarnation. Whereas Smith and Tenant's Doctors often found pleasure in trying to fit into the simplicities of human life (see one of my favs, 'The Lodger'), Capaldi knows he's always the smartest and most experienced being in the room, and relishes in it. This episode might be the most blunt example of that, when he repeatedly says 'You lot' and openly separates himself from the human race. Sometimes this makes for uncomfortable viewing of Doctor Who, especially when the Doctor becomes cruelly patronizing and almost chauvinist (see: last week's episode). And the best companions are the ones who can take him down a peg. But his superiority has its advantages at times. Even in 38th Century human society, he's still more evolved than us and can be the check on our carelessness, making sure we don't throw ourselves off a cliff. This is critical, because if the show is trying make a dramatic discourse on human nature and/or society, we need at least the illusion of someone outside and seemingly more advanced than humanity to guide the discourse. Peter Capaldi is human. His Doctor most certainly isn't, and we must have the illusion of the latter to truly buy into the lessons of episodes like 'Sleep No More.'

Of course, on its simplest level, 'Sleep No More' is also a nicely chilling episode. Especially in the final shot of Rassmussen (played eerily well by Reese Shearsmith), and in the very jarring and disturbing voice of the ship's computer interface when it toyed with the crew (which I'm pretty was... was...). The monsters are not especially frightening on their own, because they look too absurd to be taken seriously. But the concept of them, added to Rassmussen's delusions, makes them formidable and scary. As does the first person POV camerawork. Often this camera style can be misused or too jarring, especially if you're swtiching constantly from one person's POV to another as this episode did. But there was enough of a purpose and clarity to make it work and allow us to follow what was happening. And indeed it was an intriguing opportunity to observe the Doctor from the viewpoints of people who actually have to interact with him, best emphasized when one moment we are Clara and he's studying us, and then suddenly he's switching off and focused on something else, as the Doctor is like to do in his apparent aloofness (That really must be insulting and aggravating. Imagine having to deal with that all day, like Clara).

Ultimately, what we get is a stable balanced episode, if not necessarily a particularly memorable one years down the road. It's competent, and has a lot more going for it than we first notice on the surface. As Rassmussen reminds us, we have to pay close attention to what's actually happening. What's in the corner of our eye. Very rarely is Doctor Who as simple as it appears. Which is why, if a character tells us we must not do something, like watch the episode... well, we're obviously going to do it.

Plus, anything that pays homage to Macbeth is automatically amazing and I'm going to enjoy it.

Grade: A-

When I got sidetracked

-The ship's interface was quite obviously a cameo appearance by GLaDOS, which is just... frightening.

-'So what happened?' 'From the beginning of time? That's a very long story.' Bill Bryson would definitely agree.

-I almost cried in joy when the Doctor quoted Macbeth. I mean just how AWESOME IS THAT!! #Goseethismovie.

-'What are you doing here?' 'What are you doing here?' Oh, sassy Doctor, how I love you.

#review #TV #DoctorWho