Well… That was… Interesting, I guess? Not gonna lie folks, this one has me quite perplexed. I liked it. It was good. But I keep asking the same question of Sleep No More:

What was the point?

What Mark Gatiss has written here is a very intriguing concept, with a fantastic directorial style (big-ups to Justin Molotnikov, survivor of other BBC prime time show; Atlantis and Merlin) and some truly creepy villains but ultimately… It just doesn’t go anywhere.

The found-footage angle is intriguing and very early on, as soon as Clara’s viewpoint becomes a thing, you start to question it (or, at least I did) and you start to try to second-guess the episode. I was thinking nano-bots and I was kinda right. Kinda.

Nothing is as it seems with this episode and I think that’s by design. Mark Gatiss has often played his Who and Sherlock writing fairly straight but let’s not forget that this is one of the twisted minds behind The League of Gentlemen and a writer for the reboot of Randall & Hopkirk. Mystery and weirdness are second nature to this guy.

The best way to describe the episode is dream-like. It has an other-worldly, ethereal feeling to it, like it’s not quite real and that ambiguity plays into why I think many are unsure how to take this episode. It’s got some amazingly strong ideas but the overall vagueness is so unlike every other episode in this season so far that I think it’s alienated more than a few viewers.

It’s a great episode but it’s definitely an odd one that requires deeper analysis than this humble reviewer is capable of. Someone more attuned to psychological tropes might be able to do something astounding in terms of analysis.

That’s all I’ve got for now folks but be sure to come back next week as we greet some old faces and say goodbye in Face the Raven.

Fear and Loathing in Soviet Russia

Obviously this episode draws heavily from the Big Three of awesome alien movies; John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien and Predator. The atmosphere on the tight, cramped sub is thick with tension with the world in the balance as the Doctor plays mediator between the Russians and the Martians, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write. Something I found very surprising in this episode was that the sub is a model, which one this episode soooo many points.

Where’s a Stark when you need ’em, eh?

The cast, as stated before, is stellar with Game of Thrones stars Liam Cunnigham and Tobias Menzies and Captain Zhukov and Lt. Stephashin, respectively. They’re also joined by the brilliant David Warner, he of Tron, Time Bandits and Quest of The Delta Knight fame (That last one will get the MST3K fans hyped) but in the only real let down of the episode, none of them sport Russian accents. None of the Russian characters sport a funny accent and that’s a damn shame. Some of the dialogue that includes Russian words sound silly in London accents. Nicholas Briggs provides the voice for Skaldak and gives him a lot of pent up rage and sorrow which is brought out in his CGI face. We found out a lot more about the Ice Warrior culture in this episode, which I don’t think has been touched on before really, nor have we seen what they look like under the armour.

“And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!”

Something I neglected to bring up in the last episode but I’ll bring up here since there seems to be some allusions cast in this episode too toward who or what Clara is. In Rings of Akhaten, Clara tries to enter the TARDIS on her own but is refused entry. Yes, the door was just locked but Clara concludes that the TARDIS does not like her, which is similar to what happened when Captain Jack returned and the TARDIS tried to throw him off the exterior as it bolted into the timestream. It might be nothing but it might something, much like an allusion to a past idea in this episode when Clara sings to calm her nerves. What song? Hungry like the Wolf!
Now, again, this could mean absolutely nothing but given Clara’s anomalous nature in time and the lyrics “I’m lost and I’m found, and I’m hungry like the wolf” could be seen as very telling, especially given the return of Ten and Rose in the 50th Anniversary.

Cold War gets a very high score from me, it’s damn near flawless! The Russian accents aside, this episode is entertaining, gripping and extremely watchable. The next episode sees the return of the writer of Rings of Akhaten, Neil Cross, so let’s see if Hide can hide from my scorn.