On the level of sci-fi drama drawing uncomfortable analogies, as sci-fi often can, about where we - humanity - may be headed in this technological age, "Sleep No More" is a fantastic episode. As an episode of Doctor Who I'd have to say it's lacking. The Doctor is on our tellys every Saturday night to save people. He's not there to be tricked or manipulated. He's there to win through over villains seizing the day. And here, it very much appears as if he doesn't. Then again, Gatiss and Moffat do make it rather clear that whatever we are about to watch it's not Doctor Who.
You didn't blink and miss them. There are no opening titles on the front of this adventure. Not that we're watching an adventure. What we are watching is a drama, as told by an unreliable narrator, with more than just a tinge of horror edited in for frisson.
Doctor: "Hold my hand"
Clara: "I'm OK."
Doctor: "I'm Not."
Reece Shearsmith plays Gagan Rassmussen, the inventor of the Morpheus machine, which can apparently condense a night's sleep (and its benefits) into five minutes, saving an individual from losing the thirty percent of his or her lifespan usually spent asleep. Rassmussen is the narrator of this episode, his v-log to camera a bookend both at the start and the end, though he also interjects throughout. But, what we're given isn't simply his rendering of events. By the end of the episode his message is revealed as an interstellar advert containing the Morpheus code, much like a virus. The broadcast a Trojan horse to reconfigure the neural network of every human watching and eradicate humanities need for sleep, so that we can all keep "Working, working, working."
Watch this as an adult, and the possibility that what you've just watched has subliminally programmed you is a truly horrifying thought. Watch as a child and the idea that the sleep crust which gathers in the corner of your eye will somehow kill you, turning you into a sandman, is probably truly creepy. But the get-out clause children will have registered is that in order for the sandmen to exist, people have to not sleep longer than five minutes at a time. Child viewers won't have lingered over the inconsistencies in the tale Rassmussen / Gatiss weaves, simply agreeing with the Doctor (as the tale nears its end) that events don't make sense, thus giving the episode an excuse for what it isn't.
Sleep No More isn't an adventure with a mystery to solve, no matter that it presents itself as such.
If you Google the title one of the first things which pops up is a link to Punchdrunk's 2011 production of the same name. Given that was heavily inspired by Macbeth and that Macbeth is quoted here, by the Doctor, it's likely Punchdrunk's work served as primary source of inspiration. This, despite nods to movies which present themselves as 'found footage' such as "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" being more obvious.
On Punchdrunk's website the theatre company describes themselves thus:
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"Since 2000, the company has pioneered a game changing form of theatre in which roaming audiences experience epic storytelling inside sensory theatrical worlds. Blending classic texts, physical performance, award-winning design installation and unexpected sites, the company's infectious format rejects the passive obedience usually expected of audiences".
I would suggest Mark Gatiss has taken a leaf out of their play-text and created something which is less 'found footage' and more the closest thing to immersion theatre possible on television. Here the Doctor and Clara may be standing in for the audience, the actors of the piece the rescue team, sandmen part prop, part special effects, in a production staged aboard a space station. The Doctor does realise a story is being told:
The Doctor: "...And why power down the grav-shields when he did? It's like this is all for effect..."
Clara: "Look, can we maybe have this conversation when we get off this thing"
The Doctor: .. "like a story".
Both he and Clara are trapped within an experience that does exactly what Punchdrunk's advertising claims. Only neither know that all the space station's a stage. And filming that immersive performance for broadcast - a la N.T. Live? I'd say it was arranged by whomever the real Rassmussen is, or simply by the company behind Morpheus. For I fully believe that within this storyverse there was a Morpheus project.
Weaving in and out of Gatiss's nods to Shakespeare and Punchdrunk, we can also clearly see nods to Stanley Kubrick's work. Rassmussen is presented as the eccentric, or possibly insane professor, in the mad scientist trope - for all that he eventually has to be read as a highly canny advertiser. He's a nod to Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, and there's also a nod to Kubrick's 2001. Gatiss barely touches upon it in his writing but the space station does seem to have a central computer: one that may or may not be sentient, like HAL in 2001. The station's computer system probably recorded the footage not taken from the rescue teams helmet cams. Footage then edited into the program we watched, by someone other than Rassmussen.
Was he a scientist?
Or an actor playing a scientist?
Amusingly, it's possible that Reece Shearsmith could be an actor, playing an actor, playing a scientist.
The layers in this episode are fantastic.
On a straight-forward reading Reece Shearsmith's Rassmussen is a compelling, unreliable, narrator telling the world (or multiple worlds) what occurred on the Le Verier Station. Read the narrative in a straightforward fashion and his Morpheus machine dreams a little nightmare, five minutes at a time. Sleep dust first accumulates in the corner of an accelerated dreamer's eye, then conquers the space station and multiple words, conglomerating into sandmen: lumpy, ill-formed, bipedal monsters. Carniverous. Famished. As seen on screen they are the stuff of B Movie horror films from the 1950's or 1960's, lumbering and a little scary but not too scary. Just right for younger viewers. Until the final moments of the episode, when Shearsmith rubs his eye, like a young, tired child and rubs his eye out, his entire face turning to dust.
Special effects in this veer from the slightly dodgy to the dramatically brilliant, as in Rassmussen's (and the episode's) final scene. Interesting use of light and shadow, and intercuts between colour and black and white film, give a clear sense of the difference between footage caught on helmet cam and that recorded by the station. And, the sound effects of groaning monsters are suitably creepy. It can even be said they resemble the sound of metal creaking, the station itself groaning, giving credence to Commander Nagata's belief that the Doctor and Clara are aboard Le Verier as stress testers.
In my opinion though the creepiest effect isn't caused by shadows, corridors, monsters, or even by Rassmussen's horrific plan. The jingle had my hair standing on end by the third time it was played. Oh, not because Mr. Sandman's an iconic song used in horror films such as Halloween II, but because the overtly saccharine song, used as an advertising jingle, masks such a twisted sales push. And then there's the fact that Mr. Sandman as seen (both the conglomerating sandmen and Rassmussen) is the nightmare inversion of the dream man sung of originally.
Holding up his psychic paper, Peter Capaldi has a wonderful expression of surprise on his face upon hearing what Commander Nagata thinks the Doctor's reason is, for being aboard the station with Clara. It's an utterly brilliant moment of performance. So too the few times Capaldi plays directly to camera and almost takes the role of narrator from Rassmussen / Shearsmith, such as when the Doctor licks his finger to determine temporal locale instead of wind direction. And later, hiding in a frozen meat locker to avoid being dead meat the Doctor reflecting on the nightmare sandmen, we're gifted with a gorgeous speech on the death of Sleep:
"the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast."
Rassmussen is, of course, the character walking in Macbeth's footsteps. He may not have murdered a king but he has murdered sleep, or in the prophetic words of one of the rescue crew, Chopra, colonised it. To continue with Chopra's metaphor, there's been a widespread 'migration' of people on Triton who no longer sleep. Morpheus use has replaced innocent sleep, for the benefit of conglomerates. Business turning humans into robots, rather than fully replacing a human workforce with a mechanised one. Chopra represents what is probably a small wave of resistance to the co-opting of sleep. Odd man out. Luddite.
Sleep, the final bastion of privacy. The last place where we are not connected or plugged into a machine, by choice or necessity.
With a light touch Mark Gatiss creates an interesting plausible future: the world of the 38th Century, where rescue crews are military, and a hierarchical, polytheistic, society clones disposable beings in a hatchery. Clara's right to say it's a repugnant practice, but it is a believable one. I assume that while grunts are grown for military work, there would be other forms of clones grown for other sorts of work. The grunt is probably so called from the military slang for infantry soldiers, slang predominantly used during the Vietnam war. Given Gatiss' familiarity with the Whoniverse I do wonder if the mention of hatcheries might not be a nod to the idea of Time Lords being loomed, rather than born of a woman.
Adventures in the Doctor Who verse usually take place from the point of view of either Clara or the Doctor. Here, we're given an edited viewpoint which truncates both their experiences. A viewpoint quite literally hacked into, code sliced into the program to be broadcast. It's the hack, the splicing in of the Morpheus code that purportedly alters the viewer, just as the editing of footage both alters and shapes the events being recounted. Rassmussen, or whoever is behind this broadcast within a broadcast, denies the viewer the satisfaction of having the Doctor figure out what's going on, of saving Clara, Triton, the day… The footage is broadcast. The Doctor thus fails.
Acting-wise, I adored scenes in which Capaldi was most central and warmed to both Elaine Tan's performance, as Commander Nagata, and Neet Mohan portrayal of Chopra. But, the episode belongs to Reece Shearsmith who was fantastic, partly thanks to the strength of the monologue written for him by Mark Gatiss.
At the start of the episode the coding (red against a black background) which appears on screen clearly has Clara's name embedded within it. Although we later learn that she's been exposed to Morpheus, I wonder if her name appearing in such a way has more meaning as regards the myth arc of the show, and Clara's journey overall. Also, given that the Doctor bemoans humans as 'filthy', a sentiment much closer to his mood last series, I wonder if Gatiss might not have originally written the script for Capaldi's first series and seen it's production postponed for a year?
Finally, amusingly, Wikipedia tells me that Matt Smith is the lead in Patient Zero which was filming this spring (for release in autumn 2016) It's a horror film in the zombie mould, in which humans infected with a mutated form of rabies turned into a highly intelligent new species re-named "The Infected." The human survivor with the unexpected ability to communicate with this new race? Matt Smith. His quest? To find patient zero in order that he can find an antidote with which to save humanity, and his infected wife.
Sound similar to any other role Smith might have had? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?