Doctor Who – Recap: The Crimson Horror via Rickey.org
Recap video and review of Doctor Who – Series 7 Episode 11 – The Crimson Horror:
Doctor Who is picking up steam as we get closer to the end of the season, yet the proximity to the season’s final few episodes doesn’t dissuade the series from adopting different, interesting approaches to its storytelling. In the case of “The Crimson Horror”, that approach involves sidelining The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) for the first half of the episode and focusing, instead, on the crime-solving trio of the Silurian warrior Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her human wife Jenny (Catrin Stewart), and their Sontaran butler Strax (Dan Starkey). Since returning in 2005, Doctor Who has occasionally had episodes that sidelined The Doctor for much of the episode, as a storytelling strategy. “Blink” is perhaps the best implementation of this approach, thanks to Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan) being such an utterly winning character in her own right. And that’s kind of the point. For an episode to sideline The Doctor and still work, the substitute protagonists have to be compelling, in and of themselves. Thankfully, Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, last seen in the Christmas special, “The Snowmen”, are among the best non-Doctor recurring characters in the series’ rebooted run. Honestly, I’d watch the hell out of a spin-off with those three just rolling around Victorian London, solving crimes while Strax’s bloodlust and his lack of understanding about human anatomy get him into trouble. They contribute, in a big way, to the episode’s whimsical sense of adventure. That might not have been what writer Mark Gatiss (who scripted this season’s “Cold War”) was going for, as much of the narrative is presented as a Victorian horror story, but it’s ultimately why “The Crimson Horror” is so gripping. I doubt it would have been as fun to watch had it adhered to the horror show concepts in the script, instead of embracing the action-adventure side of the story. In brief, I couldn’t think of a better installment to serve as Doctor Who’s 100th episode since its return in 2005.
Credit: BBC
The story of “The Crimson Horror” involves the creation of a peculiar, gated town called “Sweetville”, which is run by Mrs. Gillyflower (Dame Diana Rigg, currently “Queen of Thorns” Olenna Redwyne on Game of Thrones). Mrs. Gillyflower is an odd sort, preaching salvation from the apocalypse to hopeful, prospective applicants to the community, while providing her blinded daughter as a macabre example of heavenly wrath. Ada (played by Rigg’s real-life daughter, Rachael Stirling) is the most sympathetic character of the episode, having endured a lifetime of abuse at her mother’s hands, and we only learn the extent to which she’s suffered later on. As for now, Jenny must infiltrate Sweetville in order to get to the bottom of the rash of deaths plaguing Yorkshire. Bodies are turning up left and right, all marked by waxy red skin and an expression of horror plastered on their face. Madame Vastra takes an octogram of one of the bodies, as an octogram operates under the belief that, in certain cases, an eye will retain the last image it sees before death. Through the procedure, Jenny and Madame Vastra discover that the last thing an inspector-turned-victim saw before his death was The Doctor.
Credit: BBC
This kicks off what amounts to a deeply-involving investigation, as Jenny combs the depths of Sweetville — happening upon a cell where The Doctor, afflicted with The Crimson Horror, is being kept prisoner. He can’t talk and can hardly move at all, prompting Jenny to help him into a deprivation tank where he’s able to utilize his sonic screwdriver to reverse the effects of The Crimson Horror procedure, which apparently didn’t take due to The Doctor’s alien physiology. Back to his regular form, The Doctor explains how he came to this predicament, in an amusing montage done in the style of a kinetoscope film: The Doctor had set a course for Victorian London, hoping to jog Clara’s latent memories of her past existences across time; however, the TARDIS brought the duo to Victorian Yorkshire, at which point The Doctor and Clara set about solving the mystery of The Crimson Horror by infiltrating Sweetville as Dr. and Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Gillyflower revealed that the town is named after her “silent partner”, Mr. Sweet, a mysterious third party whom no one has ever seen. Not that anyone would have had much of a chance to see him anyway, as Mrs. Gillyflower’s plan becomes clear in short order: The Doctor and Clara are captured and dipped, along with other Sweetville residents, in a vat of red leech venom, creating the distinct look of Crimson Horror victims. Mrs. Gillyflower intends to preserve all the residents of Sweetville before launching poison into the skies via a rocket, a plot that has the potential to wipe out all life on Earth — which is the point. Mrs. Gillyflower’s extensive experiments on her own daughter may have blinded and scarred the girl, but the research provided her with the information on how to immunize herself against the poison. Once all civilization is wiped out, Mrs. Gillyflower will awaken her subjects from preservation, creating an edenic New Jersualem.
Credit: BBC
The Doctor and Jenny set off to search for Clara, as a confused Jenny asks the obvious question of what he means by “Clara”, since Clara died. The Doctor never explains Clara’s existence to Jenny, Strax or Madame Vastra because, as has become clear since Clara’s introduction, he can’t explain something he doesn’t know the answer to, himself. During the search, we learn that Ada was The Doctor’s captor, having discovered him alive amidst the pile of discarded subjects who didn’t survive the Crimson process. It’s a heartbreaking bit of business, as Ada speaks to her “monster”, telling him that he’s all she has in the world — before discovering that The Doctor has escaped. Mrs. Gillyflower discovers her daughter weeping over a pair of empty manacles and demands an explanation, at which point Ada details her emotional attachment to one of the subjects. Disgusted, Mrs. Gillyflower effectively disowns her daughter, and tells her that there will be no room for her in their new Eden. The Doctor, happening upon Ada in the halls after rescuing Clara, has a heart-to-heart with his former captor. It’s a lovely moment for Matt Smith, as his tenderness is one of the most engaging aspects of his performance. His kindness to Ada, and his gratitude to her for having saved him, pays off in the climax.
Credit: BBC
When The Doctor and Clara confront Mrs. Gillyflower, the old crone reveals her plan, as well as the identity of Mr. Sweet — a parasitic alien leech, latched onto her chest. It’s a disgusting visual, but it’s in service of further exemplifying Mrs. Gillyflower’s madness. And Ada’s too, in a sense, as she attacks her mother after discovering that she’d subjected her to cruel experiments as a youth. Clara stops the rocket from launching by jamming the launch mechanism with a chair, but Mrs. Gillyflower remains resourceful, taking Ada hostage with a pistol to keep The Doctor at bay, while dragging her to the secondary launching mechanism in the rocket tower. The Doctor is unable to prevent the launch, but we quickly discover that the rocket is devoid of poison, thanks to the efforts of Jenny and Madame Vastra. Mrs. Gillyflower, defeated, plans to take The Doctor and co. down with her. Enter Strax, in full Sontaran regalia, who shoots at Mrs. Gillyflower, causing her to fall over the tower’s ledge to her death. Mrs. Gillyflower, in her dying moments, pleads with Ada to forgive her, as Mr. Sweet deserts the dying maniac. Ada refuses to grant her that forgiveness. “That’s my girl!” Mrs. Gillyflower says, before dying. Ada, finally free, receives encouragement from The Doctor to simply live her life, as he moves on to the next adventure, no closer to solving the mystery of Clara than he was last week. Clara, for her part, has problems of her own, as the children she babysits discover, from pictures in books at school, that she and The Doctor are time-travelers. They give her an ultimatum: take them with on her next trip, or they’ll tell their dad the truth (you’d think she’d shrug it off as a photoshop, but then, Clara kind of gives herself up through a slip of the tongue about being in Victorian Yorkshire instead of Victorian London). Should be an interesting plot development for next week.
Credit: BBC
“The Crimson Horror” is a terrific episode with tons to like, from Strax’s continued lack of understanding about Earth to The Doctor’s mild crush on Jenny, what with her wit and martial arts skills. There’s also a great running gag of the primary investigator in the Crimson Horror case repeatedly catching sight of some alien thing or other (Madame Vastra, Strax, the TARDIS) and fainting in a straight-backed, dead-pan manner. All-in-all, it’s not an episode where the thematic implications are as overt as they were, say, last week. But as a standalone adventure, this was probably my favorite episode of the latter half of series 7 — unless the final two weeks are able to top it. Given how well Doctor Who does finales, I wouldn’t put it past them.