Doctor Who: Best And Worst Story Of Each New Who Doctor

To its credit, “Sleep No More”, written by long-time Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss, attempts to do something new with the franchise. “Sleep No More” is a found-footage style episode constructed in the style of popular films like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity”. Unfortunately, by the time this episode rolled around the found footage craze had definitely slipped into its death throes, with audiences being fed up of the shaky camera work and inevitably contrived excuses for why the characters continue filming.

The episode does cleverly work around that latter issue, with the footage coming from the soldiers helmet cams which are always recording (there is a mid-episode twist involving the helmet cams that is only part of the episode that actually works).

The ideas at the base of this story are not bad; the idea that corporations have created machines to cram a whole night’s worth of sleep into 20 minutes so that workers can work more hours seems scarily plausible. The sandmen have the potential to be interesting creatures until the episode makes several mistakes; firstly showing them off too much (those suits do not hold up well under studio lighting) and secondly by revealing they are actually creatures made up of eye gunk. WTF?

The issues with the episode are compounded by the fact that the supporting characters in the story are absolutely terrible, all feeling flat and ultimately feeling so inconsequential that you couldn’t name any of them thirty seconds after the credits roll. This is all topped off by a strange penny dreadful-esque ending that actually leaves the show with a huge plot hole.