Day 823: Face the Raven

This was a hell of a lot tougher to watch than I was expecting it to be. On first viewing, it's a fairly nice and unassuming episode, up until Clara's death, of course. It's an episode with an interesting premise, a fairly non-threatening plot (sure, one character's life is constantly in danger, but the danger is a known quantity that can be prevented - contrast this with Sleep No More where the danger is ever -present and could take out any of the characters at any time). But then Clara makes a mistake which costs her her life, leading us into a very emotionally charged finale as the Doctor seeks to get his vengeance. So it's a fairly nice and interesting episode to watch for the first tine, and certainly one of my series highlights.

On repeated viewing, however, it becomes so much more difficult to look at. Every time Clara smiles, or does some dangerous activity just for that rush of adrenaline or because she knows that it's what the Doctor would do, your heart sinks ever-further into that state of dread as you know that we are rapidly approaching her end. The scene that I found particularly hard to watch was that when she took the burden of the death sentence away from Rigsy, cementing her death in the story out of some desire to do what the Doctor does, but a lack of understanding as to how the Doctor operates. It's an uncomfortable scene, and hangs over the rest of the story like an unwelcome shadow.

And when Clara's death does come around, it has the potential to be awful. A cheap death would undermine the character, and make the story seriously not worth watching. But, instead, what Sarah Dollard does is write a death that feels perfectly real for Clara. It's a death that is based entirely on a decision that she made, and one that she's made whilst trying to emulate the Doctor (as she's done previously in stories like Flatline or Under the Lake/Before the Flood). Doing this also means that her death doesn't feel cheap, it's perfectly integral to the story and the way in which Clara's character has been developing, meaning that it works better than, say, a scene right at the end where Clara is shot, out of nowhere, by some leader out of spite for the Doctor.

And more than allowing for the death to feel real for Clara in terms of where it fits in the story and her character arc, it also allows for her to accept the death with dignity. We get her saying goodbye to the Doctor and telling him not to get angry (which is, of course, an instruction that he'll follow to the letter) and then she goes off and faces the titular raven. There's no crying from Clara about her dying in her prime, she doesn't desperately run away from her death, she just accepts it with a quiet dignity. It makes the death feel more powerful and real, and adds to the weight of the story. It means that it's a difficult episode to watch, but is ultimately very satisfying because of it.

Day 822: Sleep No More

OK, I've got to be honest: Sleep No More does nothing for me. The gimmick of the episode, i.e. that it's all based around found footage, isn't something that particularly excites me; I'm not a big fan of horror, and I'm even less of a fan of found footage movies. I'm also not that interested in the setting either; the low lights and minimalistic design just makes me feel a little bit bored rather than allowing me to get excited in the plot. And the story's not something that I'm a fan of either, it just doesn't gel for me. So, weirdly, when I saw that this episode was getting a bit of a beating from the fan community, I was incredibly angry. Because even if I don't like Sleep No More, I am very willing to defend it for what it is.

Even though there are plenty of things that I don't like about this story, there's quite a bit that I do appreciate as something really fantastic. For instance, I love that the viewer can deduce the story from the camera alone, because of the shifts in POV to Clara (and to a lesser extent Professor Rassmussen). When I first watched it, I put it down to directorial incompetence on behalf of director Justin Molitnikov, and decided that I would try to ignore it. But then, as the story progressed, I began to question whether Molitnikov could really be that incompetent, and it dawned on me that it was done on purpose, due to Clara being infected by the Morpheus machine. And that's kind of a fun thing to experience as a viewer, the ability to figure something out before any of the characters can, just because you've received vital information that they don't have yet.

But, beyond that, I think the reason why I'm so keen to defend Sleep No More is that every criticism that I have about it boils down to "It's not my cup of tea". I may not be a big fan of this episode, but I don't think it's particularly bad. And beyond that, I'm very sure that there are plenty of people who watch this episode and think that it's fantastic, and all power to them, they're allowed to think these things. And I guess what this comes down to is to ignore 'received fan wisdom' and to just go out and experience Doctor Who for yourself and try to love as much of it as possible. That attitude has certainly made the last 800-odd days all the more bearable.