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Singularity starts strong. The Fifth Doctor and Turlough arrive in near-future Moscow, where the Somnus Foundation quietly rules hearts, dreams, and, it turns out, sleep. What begins as a cult promising aura-readings, enlightenment, and healing becomes something darker: brains hijacked, bodies displaced, minds linked into hive consciousness. If you like high concept sci-fi, End of Evangelion-ing all of humanity’s individuality into a singular godlike gestalt, this is your twisted dessert. But tasty as the idea is, Singularity doesn’t quite give you enough flavor to make you remember the bite.
The plot pivots around Lena Korolev, whose brother Alexi has been taken by Somnus. She’s raw, trapped between familial love, grief, and distrust. The Doctor and Turlough investigate, uncovering that the Somnus “priests” aren’t just charismatic leaders — they’re future humans, exiled to build back a dying world by siphoning off human minds, rewriting history, consuming the identity of volunteers. Time fractures, the TARDIS becomes both tool and target, and the horror of losing self, body, memory, autonomy escalates. But somewhere along the way the urgency trips over its own ambition.
You nailed it: the concept is excellent. The Somnus Foundation is a thinly-veiled allegory for real-world cults, for organizations that promise salvation, belonging, tech-miracles, or spiritual renewal — but demand surrender, obedience, erasure. The “create a Singularity” bit — merging minds until individual identity dissolves — is terrifyingly evocative. The sleep experiments, the volunteer aspect, the seductive promise of being part of something bigger, all echo doctrines of new religious movements, techno-utopian cults, even some modern wellness/spiritual overlords who sell enlightenment in installments. That idea alone should have given Singularity teeth.
Yet, for all that, the story doesn’t fully lean in. The antagonist presence of Somnus is desperate for weight but often feels distant — lots of exposition, rhetorical speeches, and creepy aura-talk, but less of the visceral. The supporting characters (Lena, Alexi, Pavel) are interesting, yes, but under-realized. Their tragedies are described, their pain conveyed, but they don’t always feel lived-in. I spent more time thinking, “I wish I cared more” than “I am caring.” And the setting — Moscow — feels half-used. There are moments of Russian atmosphere in the audio design; some accents, street noises, cold, wary citizens. But none of it fully grounds the cult’s shadow in the city in a way that feels unique. It could’ve been any metropolis.
Turlough gets decent material. He works well as the reluctant partner, someone pushing back at the Doctor, asking “why do you always intervene?”, “what about the cost?”, “what does it mean to surrender the self?” But even his arc feels starved. The Doctor is his usual ethical fulcrum — curious, compassionate, outraged when he must be — and Davison does well. But by the end, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the story set out to wrestle with identity loss, autonomy, and what it means to belong — but then put much of that into footnotes while the splashy spectacle occupied the spotlight.
Sound design and mood are ambitious. There are nice moments: the hive-mind sequences, the fracturing time echoes, dreams bleeding into reality, the TARDIS under psychic pressure. The pacing, though, is uneven. The first half lures you in slowly; the second half tries to pull off big reveals and twists, but often leans on “explainy” dialogue rather than letting horror or tragedy show itself. Some twists feel telegraphed; others come late and feel more like afterthoughts.
Themes here: sacrifice, identity, the danger of surrendering self for promises of something greater, the morality of using future knowledge or technology to rewrite or exploit the past, grief and family loyalty, cult dynamics, and fear of loneliness. But again — promising themes without enough digging. If the script had let Lena’s grief fester more, let the Somnus cult be more scary beyond their platitudes, had the Doctor pushed harder in his confrontation with what he might mean to them — this could have hit harder.
Final Thoughts:
I like Singularity, I wanted to like it more. It’s got the bones of something profound, the architecture of modern sci-fi horror, and good performances. But it’s too loose, too cautious in places, and undercooked in character payoff. After it ends, you feel unsettled, but also a little cheated: you see the shape of something grand, but the story won’t let you touch it.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 End of Evangelions