The Doctor and Clara ended up on the Le Verrier space station, only to find that the crew were dead, a rescue mission had landed and there were a bunch of creepy-ish looking creatures that Clara decided to dub Sandmen for fairly obvious reasons. I neither love it nor hate it and technically that's how I feel about this episode, compared to some of the less favourable reactions to it online. For me, it's a genre in which I don't particularly have strong feelings for. Mark Gatiss for his efforts genuinely tried to do something out of his usual comfort zone for this show and while that alone is almost admirable, it was a venture that did not pay off.įirst of all - found footage isn't exactly a new concept and it's certainly one that can seriously divide audiences too. If there were ever an unwise set of words to end an episode of well, anything on, it would be those ones. And we finally did it.Rassmussen (to audience): "I did tell you not to watch." Because all you see is the breath, and it’s logistically not impossible. I had the idea years ago – what a great place to have a set piece scary thing. There’s a section in there, where they hide in the cold store in the kitchens. Not far off! But actually, it would be nice sometimes to think you don’t have to have those constraints, you could just go for it. But I suppose in the end, it’s pitch black, and you also have to remember that fundamentally a Saturday night show, and it’s not going out at midnight. But there are also things, almost always… What I genuinely did with this one was I was going to write this as if it was a horror movie, and then I’ll pull it back. I’m really pleased with it, I think it’s come out really well. īut I think Justin’s done a brilliant job. And I suppose it’s an appealing idea, but it’s pretty terrifying. But to be honest, it was quite enough to do this episode. I did Ghost Stories a couple of years ago, and I’d love to do some more. On whether he was tempted to direct it himself, given how prescriptive his script was: But at the same time, I’ve written that this has to be Sara’s POV, Rasmussen’s POV or whatever, it’s very important, because that’s part of the storytelling, and what we’re trying to do. We want to keep reminding people it’s not like an ordinary episode. We want to get as many POVs as possible, as much coverage, as much of an unusual feel. I had a long Skype conversation with Justin, the director, and I was saying for goodness sake, don’t ignore your own instinct here. Cliffhanger! But it’s actually done in a minute, and that’s very exciting, and what we’ve become used to, I suppose. You have this set up, a submarine, here they are, they’ve found something in the ice, and then the ice smashes open and an ice warrior comes out. In some way, particularly with Cold War, that is absolutely a haiku version of an old episode one. The thing is in terms of new grammar, that we all learn very early on, is that the pre-titles is essentially episode one. On how a lot of modern Doctor Who tends to start at what would have been episode two of the old series: That would normally be a series of things, but you could just cut in. There’s a bit where Reece was talking to the camera, and he just said “we had our own troubles”, and it just went straight into that the spaceship is crashing over Neptune. There are lovely narrative leaps you can make because it doesn’t have to be sequential. One of the things I love about doing Doctor Who is the chance to do something unusual, and to keep pushing the format after 50-odd years. But I think in the end it really benefits the episode.Īs I said, found footage is familiar in films now, but it’s never done in TV. It was initially quite hard to unpick that mindset. The show’s been back on for ten years now, and we’ve become much more used to that. But weirdly, once I made the decision to just be a single, it really helped.
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