Sleep No More, Gatiss Doth Murder Sleep

So people liked when I had a lot to say about The Zygon Inv.+ so I figured I’d say the far less I have to say about Sleep No More:

• Nosir, didn’t like it
• Does it work better if you don’t notice the Clara POV shots the first time it happens, so there’s no actual reveal when the Doctor explains that it’s recording her eyes?
• The Doctor just happily rolling with the whole “Grunts” thing left a bad taste in my mouth especially in light of the Zygon thing with the Doctor easily accepting and in fact idealizing a minority being relegated to permanent second-class status. If the Doctor really did get his face to remind him of “The Fires of Pompeii”, it’s a shame he doesn’t also remember the episode that came right after that.
  • Bethany Black was great though. It’s a shame the character wasn’t more fully realized. It seemed like the story was content to just establish what the point of the character was and assume the audience has seen the Noble Warrior Grunt Who Turns Out To Be Awesome enough to just fill in the blanks. Which, in the context of this being Ramussen’s edit, is logically valid, but that does not actually make this a good episode.
• In fact, you know what this really feels like? One of those season 2 “Tardisodes” stretched out to full length. The implied actual story isn’t nearly as bad.
• It is just about possible that the elements of this story will get picked up in “Face the Raven” in a way that will recontextualize them in a way that makes them not suck. I can imagine that happening. This episode is framed not as a “natural” narrative, after all, but is instead a deliberately constructed version of events by Ramussen, and that implies the existence of additional story outside the scope of what was shown to us. I’m willing to reconsider this story’s merits if that happens. I’m not holding my breath.
• Clearly, this episode should have ended with the Doctor receiving a phone call from Sadako telling him that he’s going to die in seven days.