It occurred to me the other day when I was talking to someone about this that one of the reasons this works so well for me is the structure. Because it sounds and feels exactly like an episode of Doctor Who would be like if it had been written by ChatGPT (and this was, of course, years before the LLMs became a big thing.)
So it has to be superficially convincing as a 'real' episode, but to become less and less so as it goes along as whatever ('morpheus') that is constructing it loses track of the details. Hence I actually like the fact that the guest stars and the monsters are basically so rubbish - because that's what a machine without imagination but excellent auto-complete would generate.
And I love that idea - that on the meta-meta level we as viewers are being convinced to watch the episode as though it were a 'real' episode in series 9 when it's actually supposed to be a transmission vector. (Consider also that it's the one single part story in a season that is otherwise all multi-parts.)
I have a suspicion Gatiss was influenced by ETA Hoffmann’s romantic/gothic novella The Sandman (1817) in certain ways here - not only the antagonists, but it’s a deliberately fragmentary epistolary novel in which we never quite know the truth of what’s going on. And it has a lot to do with eyes, and perception, and horror associated with both. And it has a rationalist heroine called Clara!
Sure, he could’ve read the Gaiman comics, but I know which sounds more up Gatiss’ street.
It occurred to me the other day when I was talking to someone about this that one of the reasons this works so well for me is the structure. Because it sounds and feels exactly like an episode of Doctor Who would be like if it had been written by ChatGPT (and this was, of course, years before the LLMs became a big thing.)
So it has to be superficially convincing as a 'real' episode, but to become less and less so as it goes along as whatever ('morpheus') that is constructing it loses track of the details. Hence I actually like the fact that the guest stars and the monsters are basically so rubbish - because that's what a machine without imagination but excellent auto-complete would generate.
And I love that idea - that on the meta-meta level we as viewers are being convinced to watch the episode as though it were a 'real' episode in series 9 when it's actually supposed to be a transmission vector. (Consider also that it's the one single part story in a season that is otherwise all multi-parts.)
I have a suspicion Gatiss was influenced by ETA Hoffmann’s romantic/gothic novella The Sandman (1817) in certain ways here - not only the antagonists, but it’s a deliberately fragmentary epistolary novel in which we never quite know the truth of what’s going on. And it has a lot to do with eyes, and perception, and horror associated with both. And it has a rationalist heroine called Clara!
Sure, he could’ve read the Gaiman comics, but I know which sounds more up Gatiss’ street.