Well, tonight ought to be an easy night to get to sleep. It's not as if I foolishly watched an episode of Doctor Who all about dreams an hour before I was due to go to bed, knowing full well that I have regular bursts of hypnophobia (fear of sleep). That would be a very stupid move indeed.
So I'd forgotten that Last Christmas is all about dreams. It's not that I'd forgotten that the episode existed, it's just that there were bigger things that drew my attention away from it, such as the ending which was created specifically in case Jenna Coleman decided to leave at the end of this series (by the way, I think that this ending is far more beautiful than the departure that she ended up getting, but I wouldn't trade away the stories in Series 9 just so that this ending should be kept intact - Clara's story arc is definitely worth her staying). Also worth mentioning is the wonderful re-appearance from Danny Pink which added some much needed emotional closure to his story arc, giving Clara one last moment with him before she can accept the sad truth of his death. It makes the episode serve as an excellent coda to the series finale, and serves as an excellent conclusion to series 8's character based story arc.
But that's all dancing around the main issue here, which is that this story is all about the frankly terrifying notion that you can never realise whether you're in a dream or whether you're awake. It's a thought that I'm surprised more people aren't worried about, because it's completely disconcerting and, much like the Dream Crabs in this episode, once the thought enters your mind, it eats away at you until you're a husk of your former self. I mean, you could be dreaming right now as you read this, but you wouldn't be aware of it. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is one of the best concepts ever used for a Doctor Who story, and I'm truly glad that it was used in such a way where it was one of the clear focuses of the episode as something scary (unlike in Amy's Choice where it was just used as a plot device). So, props to Steven Moffat for doing that, he's certainly ensured that I'm going to be having trouble sleeping tonight.
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