Doctor Who season 9, episode 9 is based on an old concept of visiting a space station. Only this time there’s a bit of a new twist.
The episode started off for the first time in the series’ history without the opening theme song and titles. This was all according to plan, as showrunner Steven Moffat wanted a very The Blair Witch Project feel. He certainly achieved that goal.
Point of view
Very much like The Blair Witch Project, the audience perspective is via rough, hand-held footage. In this case, we think that (at least initially) we are observing the events via recordings done by the helmet cams of the rescue team. We are also given a narration by a station crew member, Rassmussen, who purports to be the sole survivor of whatever went down before the team got there, and in fact after the team arrived. The implication is that we are watching the footage because no one survived.
The situation
A rescue team comprised of three humans and one protection humanoid led by Commander Nagata are sent to a thirty-eighth century Indo-Japanese space station. The station went dark for over a day, and the team was sent to discover what happened to the crew. The team arrives, and the first thing they encounter is the Doctor and Clara. The team is only able to tell the Doctor and Clara the briefest outline of their mission because they are all soon under attack from the Sandmen.
The Sandmen 411
The Sandmen are similar to the Vashta Nerada from the episode “Silence in the Library.” They are comprised of the sleep dust that is found in every human’s eyes. Normally such dust is harmless as it’s whisked away each morning. In the thirty-eighth century, however, a new invention called Morpheus provides pod sleep so that a five-minute nap hooked up to its sensors gives you a week’s work of concentrated sleep. The upside to this is that humans are very productive not needing sleep anymore. The downside is the sleep dust has built up in concentrated forms that are carnivorous. They eat their human host from the inside out, and then they move on to new humans.
The idiot who invented the Morpheous pods is Rassmussen. Both the Doctor and Clara think it’s an abomination to deprive any being of sleep as all sentient creatures need sleep.
Attack, escape, avoid
A series of close encounters with the Sandmen during which much of the team is separated and then picked off one-by-one, ultimately leaves us with the Doctor, Clara, Commander Nagata in the rescue shuttle. The Doctor sense that there is more going on than he first realized. The horrifying facts are as follows: the dust has been sending the messages not the helmet cams, Clara is infected because she was momentarily sucked into a sleep pod, Rassmussen is actually alive and is collaborating to his creations, and the Sandmen want to crash to the planet where they will all swiftly devour all of human kind.
Escape or not
Nagata kills Rassmussen, and the Doctor, Clara and Nagata manage to get to the TARDIS to escape. Before they leave, the Doctor sets in motion steps to self-destruct the station, thereby averting the master plan of the Sandmen for conquest…or does he? Rassmussen isn’t dead; it was just a Sandman in disguise. The transmission we have all been watching is the real danger. A signal in it is warping our brains to start Sandman production in ourselves. The question is if it will work, and how much time we have left?
Unanswered questions
Clara is infected? Is she on the road to death? The Doctor says he is scared and asks to hold Clara’s hand. This is way out of character, why does he do this? Is this all part of our theory that Clara is actually dying or dead because of her adventures with the Doctor? Are the Sandmen coming back? What is the big disaster the Doctor alluded to?
