Doctor Who 9x09 Sleep No More
From the various reactions of people, I was expecting this to be as bad as Victory of the Daleks. But it wasn't as bad as that.
Mind you, it didn't make sense. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. It makes even less sense than the Christmas Special, which wasn't supposed to make sense.
Usually when I'm watching Doctor Who, I let my questions rest until the end, because I do expect the monstery or villainy to be explained by the end. Not necessarily explained very well, but explained in an internally consistent way. The problem with this story is that not only does the story within the story not make sense, but the story around the story doesn't make sense either.
I mean, it started off well, and it had a lot of bits that were good separately, but taken as a whole, it's just a mish-mash of things thrown together with no cohesion. Which... if I recall correctly, was one of the things I'd seen people complain about. Well, now I understand what they meant.
Look, there were a lot of exciting things:
* starting in media res with all the "live footage" stuff
* raving on very eloquently about the evils of not having sleep
* monsters made of dream-sand
* killing people off one by one
* your eyes are cameras!
* the computer has been reprogrammed to require the Sandman song!
* the Grunt saving Chopra's life and dying
* the bit at the end with Rassmussen falling to bits (that was very creepy)
But it was like Gatiss was throwing them all at the screen hoping one of them would stick. Now, yes, the feeble in-universe answer is that Rassmussen is a terrible storyteller. Problem is, the plot idea of "make a compelling transmission so that people will be infected with sandman-monsterness" doesn't make sense either. Why not just make a short transmission which contains the infection? Or put the infection at the start, not at the end? And if Sandman!Rassmussen crumbled into dust before sending the transmission, he couldn't send the transmission. And if the Sandmen could take the form of a human being, why not just take the form of the crew and pretend nothing is wrong? And then ship off the new version of Morpheus which would then be used to take over everybody much more efficiently? Or take over the rescue crew etc etc.
So... this utterly fails in the internal consistency department.
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Mind you, it didn't make sense. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. It makes even less sense than the Christmas Special, which wasn't supposed to make sense.
Usually when I'm watching Doctor Who, I let my questions rest until the end, because I do expect the monstery or villainy to be explained by the end. Not necessarily explained very well, but explained in an internally consistent way. The problem with this story is that not only does the story within the story not make sense, but the story around the story doesn't make sense either.
I mean, it started off well, and it had a lot of bits that were good separately, but taken as a whole, it's just a mish-mash of things thrown together with no cohesion. Which... if I recall correctly, was one of the things I'd seen people complain about. Well, now I understand what they meant.
Look, there were a lot of exciting things:
* starting in media res with all the "live footage" stuff
* raving on very eloquently about the evils of not having sleep
* monsters made of dream-sand
* killing people off one by one
* your eyes are cameras!
* the computer has been reprogrammed to require the Sandman song!
* the Grunt saving Chopra's life and dying
* the bit at the end with Rassmussen falling to bits (that was very creepy)
But it was like Gatiss was throwing them all at the screen hoping one of them would stick. Now, yes, the feeble in-universe answer is that Rassmussen is a terrible storyteller. Problem is, the plot idea of "make a compelling transmission so that people will be infected with sandman-monsterness" doesn't make sense either. Why not just make a short transmission which contains the infection? Or put the infection at the start, not at the end? And if Sandman!Rassmussen crumbled into dust before sending the transmission, he couldn't send the transmission. And if the Sandmen could take the form of a human being, why not just take the form of the crew and pretend nothing is wrong? And then ship off the new version of Morpheus which would then be used to take over everybody much more efficiently? Or take over the rescue crew etc etc.
So... this utterly fails in the internal consistency department.
This entry was originally posted at http://kerravonsen.dreamwidth.org/1052950.html. (Comments
) Respond here, or respond on the Dreamwidth post, as you prefer. You can use your DW login or OpenId there.