Toby Whithouse's excellent script follows the first half of the story as the Doctor leaves Clara and members of the expedition in 2019, only the Doctor has shown up as a ghost, too.
There are a lot of Doctor Who tropes in operation here, from running down corridors; there are aliens from earlier episodes and gradually the pace and images and echoes close in slowly. That sense of constricting, crushing events adds immeasurably to the terror and things being off, like a Russian village in 1980s Scotland, inhabited by dummies, constantly throwing the viewer off, adds to the terror. Director Daniel O'Hara aids that growing dread with a slowing, nightmarish pace, awaiting the release of death o perhaps the title's flood.
Under show runner Steven Moffat, Doctor Who's writers have shown an increasingly skilled hand at scaring the pants off the viewers. This episode is one of the best.
There are a lot of Doctor Who tropes in operation here, from running down corridors; there are aliens from earlier episodes and gradually the pace and images and echoes close in slowly. That sense of constricting, crushing events adds immeasurably to the terror and things being off, like a Russian village in 1980s Scotland, inhabited by dummies, constantly throwing the viewer off, adds to the terror. Director Daniel O'Hara aids that growing dread with a slowing, nightmarish pace, awaiting the release of death o perhaps the title's flood.
Under show runner Steven Moffat, Doctor Who's writers have shown an increasingly skilled hand at scaring the pants off the viewers. This episode is one of the best.