Yuh-huh!!
Indeed. Such an episode might approach the snark singularity.
Nothing. Just a bit of added drama.
The brain-changing signal.
Because it didn’t. The Doctor was complaining that the whole thing seemed deliberately staged for a purpose he couldn’t fathom. And he was right - it was all misdirection. The purpose he didn’t understand was to create an exciting video that the audience would watch closely, thus “infecting” them with the brain-changing signal.
It’s like the old “stealing wheelbarrows” joke - we and the Doctor were so busy examining the events unfolding that we didn’t stop to think about the medium they were unfolding in.
In the end I wasn’t convinced that “eye-booger monsters” were sufficiently menacing to frighten me. If they’d been more sentient, perhaps, but the disconnect between blind mindless shambling sandmen and a highly intelligent entity tricking the Doctor into facilitating its plan to take over humanity was too much to give the end twist the nececssary oomph. A clever idea but somewhat flawed in execution.
It’s sort of a variation of the “vanity trap” of “Deep Breath” - you’re so busy trying to be clever and figure things out you entirely miss what’s really going on. The “story” didn’t have to make sense, it just had to engage the viewer long enough for the “mind virus” to be implanted in the viewer’s brain.
That was shit.
We’d already had a ‘monsters in a base’ episode this series.
This series is really starting to go downhill after an encouragingly strong start.
Overreact much?
Strong start. First ep of the last two parter mildly weak but finished strong.
One out and out shitty ep. They experimented into “found footage” horror movie homage and executed horribly.
Equals downhill? Personally I require more than one seriously bad ep to count as going downhill.
Yeah. I can see where the complaints about the execution are coming from, but I didn’t find that episode that difficult to follow. Maybe slowing the pacing for an extra couple of minutes of expository dialogue wouldn’t have hurt, but the point was that the footage was supposed to be frenetic and confusing. Personally I like it when they shake up the format a little like that.
Moffat’s sig move fell flat here, see image of an angel etc.
I could have swore they were going to have a reveal which would show both Clara and the Doctor in the Morpheus pods and the whole episode was a dream.
No, I just have a different opinion of the last two parter than you. I thought the first part was awful and the second part “OKish”.
Me too. Though that’s too similar to last year’s Christmas episode.
They already did that for a Christmas episode, with the brain-drilling aliens and Nick Frost as Santa Claus and various iterations of “Are we awake now? How about now? Now?”.
As I said, I liked the idea but it needed a little more work.
ETA: Ninja’d!
I didn’t like this episode much, but I did like the bit when the Doctor and Clara were talking about “space”.
Tonight’s episode:
Oh man 
For any American fans who’ve not yet seen this episode, I will say only this: It’s amazing!
Very sad, but amazing.
Me seemed plenty convincing enough to me. Is she going all Arya?
In case that’s considered a spoiler. Better to be safe! Sorry if it was.
Holy crap. Did not expect that at this point. I guess it was obvious, but I’m still in shock.
Now we gotta break in a new companion, for obvious reasons I am not putting a lot of money In Isldra future in that regard.
For all thats holy, no more Donna’s
Another Rose would be most acceptable.
Declan
Wow.
Am I the only one who didn’t know this was the end for Clara? We’re watching Graham Norton now and Peter Capaldi is a guest. He openly stated that this was the end for her and this Graham Norton aired Friday.
We knew she was leaving; we didn’t know this was her final episode.
I mostly liked this episode…which is rare this season. Actually, rare this Doctor.
I started off with “ugh…not enough episode with the Doctor being rude and clueless…” But I got into it after that.
I’m ready for a change. I would rather see a different Doctor instead of a different companion. I’m one of the ones who still likes Clara - I only discovered Doctor Who a few years ago, and Clara was the active companion. I watched the farewells for the others, but they were in reruns by then.
Maybe this will mix things up enough that I’ll start enjoying the episodes more again.