ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is a brilliant story – with great acting, a great
setting and a great storyline. It manages to be both hilariously funny,
unnervingly scary and action packed. Essentially, it is everything Doctor Who
should be and along with Hide makes me wish that Matt Smith had stayed around a
bit longer because he’s so effortlessly superb as the Doctor here that it’s a
joy to watch.
The Patenoster Gang (Vastra, Jenny and Strax) are
investigating strange goings on at Sweetville in Yorkshire (there’s a great
Strax line about going to the North), 1893. Here there is a phenomenon known as
the Crimson Horror where dead bodies are turning up, stiff as a board and
crimson red. The most recent has retained the last image he ever saw in his eye
– an image of the Doctor!
Jenny is sent to infiltrate Sweetville and meets up with Mrs
Gillyflower (Diana Rigg) who leads the community like a militant Salvation Army
leader and with a rod of iron, even treating her own blind daughter Ida (played
by Rigg’s own daughter, Rachael Stirling) with cruel contempt, alongside her
never seen partner Mr Sweet. Jenny finds the Doctor chained up in a room,
bright scarlet and unable to move. Jenny frees him and he tells her that he and
Clara were also investigating and they came across a plot to freeze people so
that they can be revived later, which sometimes goes wrong – hence the red
corpses. They find Clara and revive her.
Vastra recognises that the substance used in the process as
being from prehistoric Earth and she and Strax (with the assistance of Thomas
Thomas, a young boy who gives directions) break into Sweetville. The Doctor and
Clara confront Mrs Gillyflower and she tells them of her plot to poison
humanity with the Crimson Horror and only save those chosen people who have
been converted at Sweetville. Mr Sweet turns out to be a prehistoric red leech
that has connected to Mrs Gillyflower symbioltically. Mrs Gillyflower
experimented on Ida which is what caused her to loose her sight. Clara smashes
the controls for the rocket which is going to spread the Crimson Horror but Mrs
Gillyflower puts a gun to Ida’s head and heads for the manual controls within
the chimney of Sweetville – in reality the rocket launcher.
Mrs Gillyflower successfully launches the rocket – but Vastra
and Jenny have already removed the leech poison. Strax shoots at Mrs
Gillyflower from the top of the chimney, he misses but Mrs Gillyflower loses
her footing and falls to her death. As she dies Mr Sweet detaches himself and
begins to move away but he is crushed to a pulp by Ida using her cane.
When the Doctor returns Clara home she finds that the two
children she looks after Angie (Eve de Leon Allen) and Artie (Kassius Carey
Johnson) have found photos of her from 1974, 1983 and a picture of Clara from
1892 (The Snowmen) and have worked out she is travelling in time – they demand
to go on a trip with her.
There is just so much to love in this story. It is perhaps
the best outing for the Paternoster Gang – especially for Strax who is at a
peak of hilariousness here… I love it when he refers to Jenny or Clara as
‘boy’. Jenny too has more to do then usual and is key to bringing the Doctor
into the narrative.
Both Diana Rigg and her daughter, Rachael Stirling, give
tremendous performances. Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower is so ruthlessly horrible that
she just drips that kind of Victorian righteousness that is so unlike modern
outlooks – but at the end, when she is abandoned by Mr Sweet, even she has a
sympathetic edge. Stirling as Ida is astonishing, strong, sad, emotionally
unstable but eventually transcendent it is an absolute masterclass in acting.
Then there are our regulars, Jenna Coleman and Matt Smith.
Although Jenna has a bit less to do in this story than others, she does it so well.
Matt Smith is wonderful here – funny and eccentric, sad and edgy and when he
needs to be as serious as hell.
Everything else works well too. The Victorian setting is
great for Doctor Who, the humour (for instance the man who keeps fainting, and
the great joke with Tom Tom (the Sat Nav boy) is really funny.
There aren’t many stories which hit the nail right on the
head with everything, but this is one of them and sits high up amongst the very
best Doctor Who has to offer.
NEXT UP: NIGHTMARE IN SILVER
© Text copyright - Raving Loony
Productions and
Andrew J. Müller,
Roy Barton
and Shaun Runham
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. Müller
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2022
