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.

At best, I find this season finale unsatisfying. At worst it is a major disappointment.

It especially hurts as I feel like this story had so much going right for it. The return of Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh is great fun; and I can get past the dog CGI as a bit goofy and on brand for DW. Mel is back! Whilst I still want some more respect to be given to her computer programmer background, Bonnie is a delight to watch perform.

Unfortunately, everything else in this episode sort of just falls apart. Sutekh is built up to be this all powerful god yet is defeated almost trivially. I still think it was an odd choice to make it such that Sutekh had clung to the TARDIS the whole time since Pyramids of Mars - surely the salt at the edge of the universe in Wild Blue Yonder is a much better point to make him reenter.

By far the biggest letdowns of this story is the overall season arc of Ruby’s biological mother. We spend this whole season with this mystery, with the recurring snow, with the almost magical inability for anyone to detect who her mother is. She has no face on the historical reconstruction hologram! All the clues are pointing towards there being something special about Ruby. Even part of the reason Sutekh shows up is because they - a god - cannot find out who Ruby’s mother is! To have the grand reveal at the end of this episode that she’s just a normal girl with a normal mother is so underwhelming. If you’re going to make the companion an ordinary person - just do that! It worked super well for Bill Potts as a recent example!

I get that there was a desire to do a Poirot-esque reveal of the mystery at the end, but none of it makes any sense. There are definitely things revealed here at the end that were never hinted at during the series or impossible for the audience to figure out beforehand - what is the point of putting arc clues in throughout the season if they are all red herrings? What does the snow mean in each episode if her mother is a normal person? Who is she pointing at the street sign for? I find it hard to suspend disbelief here when there are this many ridiculous things going on.

Overall, I found this season and its finale to be rather disappointing, which is a shame as I really like Ncuti and love his performance- I just wish he had much better material to work with!