Rob Shearman is my all time favourite Doctor Who writer, one of the few who've I've never come across a single bad story from, certainly some are weaker than others but when he's on his A game, it's some of the best Doctor Who I've ever come across. What makes him stand out is that his Doctor Who stories are really unlike the Doctor Who stories you tend to come across. You never forget your first time experiencing a Rob Shearman story, the imagination, the dark sense of humour, the incredible wit in the dialogue, the characters that just leap out of the story and take on a life of their own, and his most highly valued trait is his ability to write thought provoking subtext.

The Death of Me is one of his more chilling tales and one that leaves so much to the imagination and explains almost none of itself. It sees the Doctor arrive at a B&B in the middle of a fog, where an emotionally distant couple are killed every night at midnight along with their chicken, their killers turn out to be thousands of versions of the themselves who tear them apart and the Doctor is caught in this trap as he too is torn apart and awakes the next day fully intact.

What the cause is behind this...quite unusual scenario to say the least is not something you're going to get any answers for, which may disappoint those who always expect these things to have some explanation, but that's not the focus of the story, or even how Shearman tends to operate. The story's dark, violent, it sends the Doctor to some very uncomfortable places as he quickly behaves in a manner uncharacteristic to how he normally acts in these situations, it has a lot of subtext on the monotonous, repetitive cycle of living an idle life, and the solution is delivered in such a blunt, obvious way that it's honestly funny. And ending as well is very dark, thought provoking and cynical despite a seemingly happy ending. It's so short and yet it really stays with you long after reading it.