Directed by Justin Molotnikov Script editor David P Davis Incidental music composer Murray Gold | Written by Mark Gatiss Produced by Nikki Wilson | |
Executive producer(s) Steven Moffat
Brian Minchin | ||
"Sleep No More" is the ninth episode of the ninth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 14 November 2015, and is the only stand-alone story of the ninth series. The episode is framed around the concept of found footage, and consists of recordings recovered from the wreckage of Le Verrier Space Station.
Contents
Plot
The episode opens in medias res as Gagan Rassmussen, lead researcher on the Le Verrier Space Station in orbit around Neptune sometime in the 38th century, addresses a camera to record a message. Rassmussen warns the viewer not to watch but explains how the video, assembled from various recordings made over the last few hours, will help put together events leading to this point. Rassmussen continues to narrate through the episode as events are played out.
Hours earlier, a rescue ship from Triton arrives at Le Verrier in response to a sudden absence of communications with the station, with four soldiers: Nagata, Chopra, Deep-Ando, and 474, a bio-engineered grunt of low intelligence. The station is found empty with no sign of the crew, however, they encounter Clara and the Doctor who use the Doctor's psychic paper to disguise themselves as engineer and stress assessors. The group are chased down by humanoid creatures made of a sand-like substance (later named "Sandmen" by Clara) that are impervious to the party's weapons. Deep-Ando is separated from the others as they take shelter. As the others try to contact him, Clara inadvertently is pulled into in a coffin-like pod from which the Doctor manages to free her. Nagata identifies the pod as a Morpheus sleep pod which is claimed to compress a whole month's worth of sleep into a five-minute period, allowing everyone to work around the clock. Chopra is the only one who refuses to use it, insisting the technology is unnatural. They find Morpheus' inventor, Rassmussen, hiding in another pod. Rassmussen explains that it works by sending an electronic signal to the brain, changing its chemistry. They were testing the next generation of Morpheus devices when the Sandmen appeared. The Doctor fears the pods are related to the Sandman creatures and theorizes that they are formed from the dust that collects in the corner of the eye, and have consumed the crew from the station. Meanwhile, Deep-Ando, who was separated from the group, is killed while trying to escape a Sandman.
The station's gravity shields fail, pulling the station toward Neptune. Though the increased gravity causes the Sandmen to start to disintegrate, they manage to attack and kill Rassmussen in the chaos. The Doctor is able to restore the gravity shields, and before the Sandmen can react, Clara, Nagata and the Doctor take shelter in a kitchen cold room. Chopra and 474, unable to contact the others, attempt to make it back to their rescue ship. 474 sacrifices herself to carry Chopra through a wall of fire. Chopra makes it back but is killed by a Sandman waiting on the ship. While hiding in the freezer, the Doctor realizes the Sandmen are blind, and the three of them escape. The Doctor discovers through his sonic sunglasses that a variety of video signals have been transmitted, all depicting recordings from their points of view, except that there are no cameras to have taken these. Noticing there are none from Chopra's point-of-view, he deduces they are a result of being subjected to Morpheus and that it is the sleep in the person's eyes transmitting the recordings. The Sandmen appear to be having their visual signal hijacked, causing their blindness.
They return to the rescue ship to find Rassmussen there, along with a Morpheus pod he claims contains the first patient of the Morpheus process from five years prior. Rassmussen admits that his goal is to aid the Sandmen to leave the station and get to Triton, from where they can infect the rest of the solar system; the gravity shield failure was planned to allow him to send the pod to the rescue ship without attracting attention. Rassmussen attempts to lock the three in a part of the rescue ship with the patient, now a Sandman, but the Doctor engineers their escape, and Nagata shoots Rassmussen before he can launch the ship. The Doctor leads them to the TARDIS, realising that the events that have happened are too choreographed to seem like a real danger. As they are surrounded by Sandmen, the Doctor deactivates the gravity shields, causing the Sandmen to disintegrate, and the three escape into the TARDIS as the station plummets to Neptune.
As the TARDIS departs, Rassmussen reveals in his narration that he had been a Sandman all this time; all the events of the past few hours were engineered to tell a story that would keep the viewer enticed to continue to watch the recordings in order to transmit the Morpheus signal (disguised as glitches) to them, thus assuring that the Sandmen would spread to anyone that watched it, hence his duplicitous warning at the start. Rassmussen disintegrates into sand as the signal ends.
Continuity
When debating with Clara about naming the creatures, the Doctor mutters "It's like the Silurians all over again", referring to an old adversary that first appeared in Doctor Who and the Silurians.
According to writer Mark Gatiss, the Doctor's mention of "the Great Catastrophe" that befell humankind is referring to the collision between the Earth and the Sun described in the Season 21 serial Frontios.
Outside references
The title is in reference to the Shakespeare play, Macbeth: "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep" which the Doctor quotes during the episode.
Clara asks if the Morpheus Machine is actually named after Morpheus, the god of sleep. The Morpheus hologram also uses the term 'in the arms of Morpheus', a phrase meaning to be in a deep sleep.
The Morpheus machine theme song, "Mr. Sandman", was popularized by the group the Chordettes among others in 1954.
Those like Chopra who refuse to compress their sleep via the Morpheus process are referred to as 'Rips'—a reference to the short story "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving.
Production
The read through for this episode took place on 23 July 2015 and filming took place on 27 July to 12 August 2015. A new title screen specially designed for this episode was shown instead of the usual opening sequence, the first such instance in the show's history.
Cast notes
Reece Shearsmith appeared in "An Adventure in Space and Time" as Patrick Troughton. Tom Wilton appeared as a Zygon in "The Zygon Invasion" / "The Zygon Inversion". Bethany Black is the first openly Transgender actor to appear on Doctor Who.
Critical Reception
The episode received mixed reviews and was watched by 4 million viewers overnight in the UK, a 18.2% audience share. This rose to 5.61 in final figures, making it the lowest of any episode of Doctor Who since the show was revived in 2005. It received an Appreciation Index score of 78, the lowest since the 2006 story "Love & Monsters", which received a score of 76. The episode also received the lowest score of the ninth series on Rotten Tomatoes, reporting a 67% approval rating with an average rating of 6.1/10 based on 15 reviews. The website's consensus reads "Doctor Who's effective horror elements and unexpected cliffhanger save 'Sleep No More' from being a gimmicky found-footage episode." John Hussey of Cult Fix gave the episode a positive review, praising Gatiss's writing and the acting of Reece Shearsmith.