A crew of soldiers are preparing to head onto a space station, Le Verrier, to help the stranded crew. As they're introduced by a man in a video message. He tells people not to watch cos "once you watch, you can't unwatch it." We've seen it all before along the lines of the Angels and 'don't blink' etc. As Nagata (Elaine Tan) Chopra (Neet Mohan) Deer-Ando (Paul Courtenay Hyu) and cloned grunt 474 (Bethany Black) board the ship, they hear voices. It's Clara (Jenna Coleman) and the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) as she talks about him bringing her to a Japanese space restaurant. He says the word space should be used by itself and they shouldn't put anything in front of it. Nagata confronts them and the Doctor shows his ID, they're here to inspect the stress and structures of the station. Unbeknownst to them, they're being watched and it's something that Clara mentions. As before they arrive on the ship, we see a message or code flash onto the screen contain amongst other things, 'Clara Oswald.' Assuming that's something to do with her then or what will happen to her over the next few weeks to the finale.
They hear noises and run as they're chased by something which looks like a white creature. They try to barricade the door, but the creature manages to get an arm through and then disintegrates to fine particles, like sand. Ending up in an area with pods. Nagata mentions Morpheus and entering a pod and being asleep for a short while and then being able to stay awake for longer. Clara gets drawn into the pod and the Doctor isn't able t find her. Until they open up the pod, she's hooked up to some wires and she tells him she was drawn into it and it just grabbed her. What about those miniature singers with 'Mr Sandman' which was a clue. The doctor explains the pod sensed she needed sleep and drew her in. She should be refreshed now. They then listen to a woman hologram talk about how humans need sleep and by entering the Morpheus state they can have little sleep and function for hours making them competitive. Chopra and Clara say that's disgusting and the number of times the word 'disgusting' was used in this episode.
Ando goes missing and he tries to hide in a chamber but the computer tells him to sing to enter. He doesn't know what to sing and we get the few notes of Mr Sandman again, which he then sings. He does get into the chamber, but he's killed. The others come across Rassmussen (Reece Shearsmith) in the pod next to Clara and he tells them he invented Morpheus. They are here to rescue him and so they should. As we continually get more playback of his message. The anti-gravity thrusters give way and the station heads for Jupiter. The Doctor manages to bring them back online as Rassmussen is swallowed up by one of the creatures. The manage to hide in a cold store.
Clara calls them Sandmen and the Doctor is upset cos she named the monsters. She asks what they should call them, Dustmen. And he says, "it's like the Silurians all over again." As he's worked out the Sandmen are the sleep from their eyes that they wipe away every morning. Only cos of their heightened sleep stage they have built up the sleep dust and become into that, being devoured by the sleep. He also says that Clara has become like that too cos she went into the pod and Chopra was the only one who refused to go into the pod. The Doctor making references to dying and to Clara, but she thinks he'll be able to fix her when they get back. The Doctor also mentioning they're being watched and Clara picked up on it. But if they're all in the picture and Nagata says they don't have helmet cams then how are they being watched, since the station has no cameras, said that. He surmizes they're being watched by a particle of dust, planted to keep an eye on them.
Another Sandman tries to get in and the Doctor says they can't see but they're sight is being taken over, so they sneak out of the cold store. Ending up in the engine room, he finds something was hooked there and it was warm. That being the pod which is heading towards their ship. Chopra and 474 can't reach the others so Chopra assumes they're dead and will head for the ship and then blow up the station. But they're met by Sandmen and 474 protects Chopra. That's what he's meant to do, he's a soldier, grown to fight, which Clara also called disgusting. Anyone think Dark Angel here? And they're were also numbered.
Chopra heads to the ship and is followed by Rassmussen who kills him. Obviously it had to be him and as they also head to the ship, they find that out. He aims to send the Sandman down to the planet and spread his spores infecting everyone on there as he tries to start the ship. Nagata shoots him and Clara asks if that was all she could have done. Well, she is a soldier. The Doctor sets the station to self-destruct as the Sandman escapes from the pod. They run towards the TARDIS and manage to get in. As the Sandman approaches and runs into nothing.
Rassmussen appears again in another message and says that he's not really alive. There was no spores as he pulls at his eye and his face revealing he's a Sandman too. He had wires and technology but the only way to make this interesting was if he could talk about the story and telling everyone to watch. By talking about the Sandmen and tells us to make sure we tell our family and friends to watch as well.
Guess that was meant to be the twist at the end. Though in some ways, couldn't help but feel it's been done before with the running around in the corridors as in Under the Lake eps earlier on and being chased by monsters/zombies and the crew taken out one by one. That we were being watched and we know if from the corner of our eye, it was meant to hold out fear and scare us but didn't really work. For Rasmussen's messages to work, it's either that he' still alive or those were just recordings, either way he is alive when they meet up with him.
This was Mark Gatiss writing something akin to "Blink" but that was more interesting and could it be done again in a a Doctor Who ep, well yes, anything's possible, but this just somehow wasn't that breathtaking or scary. There's been a tectonic realignment of the earth and it is now the Indo-Japanese who are in power, which took a huge number of centuries to achieve, which explains why Nagata wanted everyone to follow her, she's leader. Leading to more competition between workers and the need to sleep less but work more efficiently, as if the ethics of the Indo-Japanese is nothing but work. Thus Rassmussen invented Morpheus. Little realizing it was a flawed concept.
The Doctor once again mentioning death quite a lot and even in reference to Clara, so is she going to become one of those Sandmen too and meet her doom. He was also thinking of all the poets and playwrights from before and quotes, from MacBeth, "sleep no more...MacBeth doth murder sleep..." Was that meant to be some sort of foreboding. Brought back memories with that having studied it. The Doctor revealing to Clara, "even I sleep, when you're not looking."
His use of licking his finger and holding it up again to find they're in the 38th century and more use of the sonic shades again. As well as Clara telling him they can use 'space' as a prefix in front of words, like Nagata refers to space pirates. They don't have to be words by
themselves, like just restaurant or pirates.
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