I vote excellent almost every week, (maybe 9/10 times out of 12 last season) and could usually be described as one of those sheep. I think I've voted excellent only 4 times this series which for me is unusually low. I've voted good 3 times, average once and this time I've handed out my first ever very bad. First time I've voted anywhere below average.

But you're not! It's an unfair, rather sneery and condescending expression in my book.You really enjoyed a series and voted 'Excellent' accordingly...good for you. It's your opinion, doesn't make you a 'sheep', obviously. (I know you know that. Bugbear of mine.) What's the equivalent animal for someone who always votes 'bad' or 'poor' or 'Worst. Episode. Evah.'

BIB Lemmings? Can only ever see the worst case scenario and are in fact also following a trend. Also are fundamentally shrouded in mis-information.

Either that or those baboons at the zoo pleasuring themselves for attention but only eliciting pity and making everyone uncomfortable.

OK, bad examples (again!). How about plastic that "comes alive"? You could say that you know for a fact that plastic doesn't come alive. Neutrons that have a polarity that can be reversed? You could say you know for a fact that neutrons don't have a charge and so don't have a polarity. Body fat that can come alive and separate? Cat people? Giant heads / faces in big jars? Monsters that look like rhinos or people transformed into humanoid pigs-slaves. Humans so thin they're stretched onto a frame like a membrane and need constant watering? A child's scribbles that come alive? Tree poeple? Green goo that turns you into an alien? Creatures that hold their brains in their hand. Yetis with silver balls in their stomachs. Cyborgs that can be killed by gold dust? Angry alien pepper pots that need to levitate to climb stairs and don't have viable limbs for building things? Ice warriors? From Mars? ("The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one", he said).

In this story it was the effect of the Morpheus sleep process that brought human dust to life. Not ordinary "sleep" on its own.

Finally, it's not our Moon - it's the Moon of the fictional Earth in the Who-niverse. The last resort of a cad and a bounder turned writer.

It's all about where you draw the line. It's another one of those pesky subjective things again.


I didn't find it dull. I felt it was genuinely creepy at times. I will say there was a bit too much of the first soldier wandering about on his own.

Oh blimey. What have I started. That's probably a mixture of generally a bit unfair and very funny. Like it's generally unfair to pull the 'sheeple' stuff. Ummm..I'll quit whilst I'm behind, I think!

I'm really not sure what lampshade hanging in reverse is, but have fun with that!

Are you saying you think it's lazy writing to have an unreliable narrator? Are you saying that "The Bell Jar" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" or "A Clockwork Orange" or "Fight Club" are all bad stories, lazily written? Are we denouncing the works of Alan Bennett as being shoddy lampshades? Are you suggesting "American Psycho" and "Catcher in the Rye" are duvet monsters?

They do remind me of a monster that was on in a recent series with the 'scream' face.
Is that the same monster you meant?

I quite liked the use of the Mr. Sandman song. It's not an original idea, but it was nice all the same.

I also thought that the sound the monsters made was pretty much the sound of somebody snoring, which was also a nice touch, anyone notice that?

Oh yeah totally, sorry I didn't make it obvious enough that I was being a bit sarcastic. I find the "sheep" term a patronizing phrase from people who think they're superior because they don't enjoy Who every single week. If I enjoy Who most weeks then I'll damn well vote excellent most week and I personally refuse to let the negativity of people who disagree with me ruin my weekend.

So after learning where the Sandmen come from I now know where the Bogeyman comes from . . .

.

Who is doing that?

Haven't watched it. (And before anyone has a go at me, I haven't commented on it either!!)

I guess perhaps it comes down to being the right sort of writer for the job. Someone could be an excellent landscape photographer, and therefore an excellent photographer... but that doesn't mean they're going to be very good at portraits.

The Unquiet Dead was a very good episode. But the show itself was essentially new at that point, there was less to compare to, less expectation to exceed, and that's without the suggestion that RTD was involved in heavy rewrites. They also say sometimes your first idea is your best idea (happy to see that challenged, but Moffat has previously said that The Empty Child remains his family's favourite contribution of his). I've enjoyed a few other of his episodes, and The Crimson Horror was a particularly good episode - but much of what made it strong were things other than the writing...it looked stunning, it was suprbly acted, and as a plot goes it was quite interesting. Again, you can come up with a good plot as a good writer should, but applying it to a certain style isn't necessarily going to be something you're good at. Gatiss is clearly a good writer - he got a namedrop on BBC One before the episode went out, and is clearly considered 'household' enough for that.

Even as someone not offended by the most recent episode, I'd probably agree at this point - after nine series of which he's contrubuted to seven, that his scripts just aren't a good fit. One was very good, but it was over ten years ago - scarily enough (I feel old!). Subsequent ones have ranged from 'poorly received' to 'okay but safe'. Doctor Who should seldom be safe. It's a bold and daring show, and with only six or seven writers a year it is unfortunate to describe it as a shame that one of those slots goes automatically to the showrunner, and one is lost to a writer considered, at best, to be 'safe'. He brings back the Ice Warriors in Series 7, yet few dispute his script turned the story into a monster-of-the-week effort that was a poor imitation of Series 1's Dalek. He deals with the legendary Robin Hood in Series 8 in an idea that explores the concept of a questionable historical figure, and we get a run-of-the-mill story involving robots that skirts arounf the legendary aspect of Hood rather than embracing it. We get a found footage story in Series 9 that plays with the typical structure in what should have been an innovative, unique idea but it wrapped the whole thing in a by-the-numbers plot to deliver a last minute twist.

And that's Gatiss's scripts - monster-of-the-week, run-of-the-mill, by-the-numbers. People remember them because they're so 'safe' and interchangeable, but they don't remember them fondly. If anything they're most typically met with indifference before broadcast, and then fail to make a positive impression afterwards. It just seems, regardless of any personal opinions, he's simply not a good fit for the show. A landscape photographer trying and failing to deliver impressive portrait masterpieces. No other writer apart from Moffat has been involved in every series to this point...it would not be offensive to put someone else in the slot.

FWIW

If we have to have 7 choices, logically they should balance:

Excellent
Very Good
Good
Average
Bad
Very Bad
Terrible

But yeah, I think 5 is enough!

Lampshade hanging is the technique of flagging up to the audience that you know there's a big plot or logic hole coming up, basically asking for forgiveness in advance. "In reverse" just referred to the fact that they did it in the end



No not at all. I'm saying that in this case it was used as an excuse for the fact that the story was badly written



Are you really claiming this writing was comparable? Really? Sorry I give up

I like your post but I am not sure about equating Gattis to a landscape photographer trying to create a portrait. If looking at some of his comedy stuff (e.g. LoG) then I would see that but he does the business with Sherlock. I also liked the adaptation he did of The First Men in the Moon. Neither of these is exactly like Who (what is after all?) but they are probably still in the same general area. In other words these other efforts could be seen as him successfully creating portraits. Also his writing for AAISAT was superb albeit that is certainly a different type of show (but still with the Who link obviously). I have liked some of his episodes but because he has had quite a few now it just feels like he misses more than others, in proportion anyway. He does well with other shows that are not entirely different which is part of why it confuses me.

I wasn't comparing the quality of the writing, just the device, so chill out. The very first scene of the episode is Rasmussen explaining what has happened, therefore the device is already in play. He tells us not to watch and that he's pieced together what's happened in order to tell the story. At the end he reveals it's more fabricated than we thought and a trap to turn us into Sandmen. I think you're using your own personal dislike of the episode to unfairly attack its narrative qualities. And before your turn this back on me and suggest I'm using my love of the episode to defend it, I didn't love the episode.

Sad to say but apart from the first two episodes, this series has been BORING, and I have watched every series since 1963.

I'm not a fan of 'found footage' - I remember searching for the cinema manager to get my money back after watching The Blair Witch Project (IMO worst film ever to make a huge profit) so I didn't expect much from this episode.

On first viewing I was rather underwhelmed and thought it average at best but as I was shattered when watching I decided to give it a second go (not something I often do with 'meh' episodes) and was pleasantly surprised as I now rate it as good.

It was not perfect by any means and on second viewing I picked up on a few things that didn't register fully first time round. I can understand how it has generated such differing opinions.

The concepts within the episode such as the work culture driving the need to reduce sleep were well realised and the ending and use of an unreliable narrator was executed with aplomb. However, the paper thin development of the supporting cast and the running from one room to another to break up the exposition-laden dialogue did not help engage the audience for much of the runtime.

One thing I will say is that to judge this as the worst episode ever is overly harsh. It had some great concepts, a neat twist ending and will have,no doubt, made some younger viewers wary of going to sleep that night. It is perfectly valid to say that you found the episode boring or not engaging or confusing or the monsters rubbish-looking but within it I think there was a potentially great episode to be had and to dismiss it as having no redeeming features whatsoever (as many have) when it clearly did is unfair.

If you don't believe me watch it again back to back with Fear Her which I do not think has a single redeeming feature whatsoever! - actually on second thoughts don't watch Fear Her again unless you are masochistic!

I think the very telling thing though is that, as you say, what else is exactly like Doctor Who? It's a very rare breed of show that can go from rompy period drama with aliens one week, to intense contemporary social-issue story the next, to base-under-siege under a dying sun in the next...and that's the norm! Doctor Who's norm is that is barely has a norm. It cannot be easily likened to any particular genre, with even its sci-fi elements being extremely loose, delving into fantasy much of the time.

When it comes to writing for that, you have to be a specific kind of writer who is capable of hitting a multitude of different ideas if you ever hope to have more than one successful script. Variety is key, and it's not found in by-the-numbers, run-of-the-mill or monster-of-the-week ideas...even when the show often indulges in those ideas, it's success is in its quirks.

The same applies for the role of the Doctor. There are capable actors out there who are revered, there are quirky actors out there who are widely praised. But they wouldn't necessarily be a good fit for the hard-to-pin-down beast that is Doctor Who. The problem with Gatiss is that he is so frequently pinned down in one set of ideas or styles (as I said, even the more gimmicky, novel episode we just had wrapped its ideas around a by-the-numbers, base-under-siege story) that regardless of how good a writer he is, I just don't think his writing is any more a reliably good enough fit for Doctor Who.

I happened to love AAiSaT but I can see the problems that it has, and they come from the writing. It's structurally unsound...unsure if it's telling the story of Verity or William Hartnell much of the time. It managed to pick itself up on the basis of fantastic actors, and looking superb. It was one of Gatiss' strongest works and it was undeniably very good, but hints of the issues he brings to the table frequently are still there... and they become more prevalent in the main show itself, in my opinion of course

Just wondering if the gay dr who fans appreciated it a bit more than others as it seemed to me Gatis must have a preference for gay psychiatrists or something, such a bad story, so badly written and no one in this whole universe could have turned in a good performance, how bad was the show, it stank.

It would have been better if the 'stages/scenes/backdrop' had been produced digitally as they looked bad, half backed, they could even have borrowed a scene from blakes 7 and brought in Orac, it would have been better.

In fact, they should have used something like the back drops in alien trilogy (play station i) and then green screened the players in, it would have been more 'cogent' (new word for me so I thought I would use it).

How bad was it, it was terrible, stupid, dumb, boring, nauseating, uninspired, thin, drab, supercilious, dull and tedious.

A waste of time, sand monsters that looked worse than any b movie, really ?

Dr Who's classic cult status is in danger, no, in fact it has gone, it is no more, it is not pinning for the fjords, its pushing up the bleeding daises.

Just try imagining Matt Smith, performing that crap script . . . . . . Go on,, imagine . . . .

There you go, Matt Smith May have been able to pull it off because he is genius.

Well, he was but then he left to be a Terminator but his film dived . . . what a shame,

Capaldi, is a Joke but Gatis is the real butt of the joke, what a joke yet so unfunny.

Perhaps Gatis might try to write a sexy love scene between a hetero couple sometime, you never know, he might just learn something . . . .

Hugs and kisses to you all !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko_dVuK0r-A

You don't think very much about budget do you?

Hope you feel better now you've got that splurge of bile off your chest...
I disagree with pretty much every single word you've written but hugs and kisses to you too.

I think we can probably best be pleased that the whole thing was a fantasy from the deranged mind of a Buggles tribute act that didn't get enough sleep.


Maybe the whole episode was made up of a hybrid of footage from different sources and this is what the previous episodes were warning us about?

I'm only half way through the thread, and usually I wait until I've mostly caught up before posting but this post is so exactly the way I feel about the episode that I have to big it up now.

I was actually enjoying the episode until the basic premise of sleep dust monsters was mentioned and after that the whole thing was just too ludicrous to bear. It's just fairy tale magic, it's not something that should exist in the Doctor Who Universe. It makes no objective sense that an organism could even function when made out of that material. There's no skeleton to support the structure, no muscles to move the limbs, no digestive mechanism to generate energy for movement, no material for nerves or brain, no membrane to hear with. Even the show itself showed they lacked enough cohesion to even maintain their form under g-force. A swift kick should have crumbled them to dust!

They were a ridiculous idea.

The idea that the dust accumulated because of the lack of sleep made no sense since the material accumulates during sleep so the less sleep someone has the less sleep dust should be generated!

Except that, then it turned out that they were actually formed through the electrical signal to the brain. But that made even less sense. How could the human body even accomplish such a metamorphosis just because the brain tells it to?

There's pseudo science and there's patent fairy tale nonsense and we've started seeing far too much of the latter, IMO.

I'm also unsure if that episode is going to be resolved or not. As it stands, Clara has been infected and will shortly turn into a dust monster as will all the people who watch the video but do we know if anyone will watch the video? Was it being broadcast or was it just destroyed when the station crashed (I assume the station was in the process of crashing?)

I still find it hard to believe that blind shambling mounds of dust can actually pose a huge threat to a human colony though even if the message got through. The story just doesn't feel finished.

One thing I'm sure of. If Clara's ultimate fate is linked to this nonsense then I'm going to be really annoyed.