was the scene of Joe Corbin telling Ichabod to talk to Abbie the first time anyone has actually acknowledged the Ichabod/Abbie thing out loud?

Yes!

Unless you count things like Caroline the Unfortunately Killed Reenactor Lady last season assuming Abbie was Mrs. Crane after she hit on him and he told her he was married...

Doctor Who: I appreciate its willingness, and ability, to experiment; though Mark Gatiss probably isn't the best choice for that. He tends to play it too safe. In this instance, I liked the whole messing about with monsters, images and grit in your eye better when Moffat did it in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.

However, you do have to love its willingness to tell children all over the country, just before bedtime, that if they go to sleep now they could turn into a monster.

In this instance, I liked the whole messing about with monsters, images and grit in your eye better when Moffat did it in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.

Honestly I just could not with the whole "the monsters are made of sleep dust" thing; the Doctor was leaping to ludicrous conclusions with very little evidence. Which, yes, is kind of his M.O., but I can usually go along with it more easily.

I'm not even sure I understand what really happened in this episode now given the end, and since it's the first episode this season that isn't a two-parter, I was left very confused and disappointed overall.

Yes, it didn't really quite hang together. They actually made it a plot point, but I don't think that's really an excuse. It didn't feel like there was a deeper structure we're just missing, it just felt a bit sloppy. (And having the Doctor repeatedly agree that it didn't make sense was perhaps an ill-advised piece of reinforcement.)

Props to Reece Shearsmith, he conveyed unhinged and creepy very well. (For the last 10 minutes or so at least.) And while I didn't really go along with the subsequent explanation, the growing realisation that there are no cameras was good. (And for all that it's a total rip-off of The Ring, it's cute to have the villain's plot being to tell a good story - called back to The Girl Who Died. Especially when "good story" appears to be "half-remembered episode of Hinchcliffe-era Doctor Who".) Oh, and I did rather like the shots of the pod gliding through the deserted corridors (though again, less impressed with how that wound up).

But the plot never really came together and the characterisation for the most part was pretty cursory. (It's not just that I didn't care when someone died; I often didn't realise someone died, and when I did, wasn't sure who had died.) And eye-booger monsters just don't have the visceral pull of the Weeping Angels or the Vashta Nerada (or even the Autons). It's not the worst ep I've ever seen by any measure (not even the worst this year; certainly not the worst Gatiss, not while Victory of the Daleks exists), but it's a big step down from last week.

In theory this episode was incredibly creepy. In practice, I just didn't buy it, so it wasn't. And maybe having the entire episode be not that great and then at the end having the villain pop out and say "HA! The reason it wasn't a great episode is because of ME! And my Plot Reasons! Muahahaha!" isn't actually a good way to tell a story?

Meanwhile, because I:

a) have finished my studies for the year, and
b) am a giant nerd,

I have gone and ranked all the televised Doctor Who adventures (up to the last Christmas special). I've given them all ratings from 1 to 10, and made each category about equal (25 or 26 adventures for each number).

The First, Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Doctors all get one adventure rated 10 out of 10. The Ninth Doctor gets two adventures. I agonised over how to bump up The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances; after discussing with Ryan, I docked Talons of Weng Chiang one point for the racism. The Eleventh Doctor gets three top-rated adventures.

Half of these positions, however, go to Ten (six adventures) and Four (seven adventures, six of which have "of" in the title). Rounding it out are three adventures with Peter Capaldi.

The Twelfth Doctor has the highest average adventure rating. I really liked last year. He's followed by the Ninth Doctor, Fourth Doctor and Third Doctor.

Dominic Purcell's Yoplait Yoghurt commercial. This is a thing of beauty!

Sleep No More's Audience Appreciation score was 78 - the lowest score of any Doctor Who episode since Love and Monsters in 2006. (Probably due to being an experimental episode done somewhat poorly, but I like to imagine it was from exasperated parents whose kids refused to go to sleep because they would turn into eye booger monsters.)

Looks like I picked the right episode to skip.