This story definitely struggles a fair bit for feeling a bit unpolished. I also really don't like the performances put in by the child actors in this episode. They've been given the brief of annoying phone-addicted teenager (to be fair, they do a convincing job of) - which is unfortunately just annoying!

The only good takeaway for me from this episode is the characterisation of the cybermen - all too often writers fall into the trap of just writing the cybermen as robots that love to shoot and yell DELETE, effectively written as bargain bin Daleks. To write the cybermen well, they really need to be scary. The best way to do this is like in World Enough and Time, where you really lean into the body horror of the cybermen to make them scary. The characterisation here in Nightmare also works in a way - I like playing into the computer hivemind to upgrade and overcome obstacles. I just wish the rest of the episode was well written and performed enough to carry this characterisation further.

There are also moments in this episode that seem a bit more ickier and questionable with the recent allegations that have been raised about Neil Gaiman - the line about Clara being in a skirt that's a little too tight is the most egregious one. All in all, this is one of my least favourite episodes, for the cardinal sin of being annoying - definitely one I would skip on a rewatch.