Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

This review can also be found on Media Gateway.

There’s something not quite right about Mrs Gillyflower’s mill, Sweetville, with it’s clean streets and perfect people, and things take a turn for the sinister when bright red, petrified corpses start turning up in the nearby rivers. Mark Gatiss’s second episode of the year takes us to Yorkshire in 1893, where Madame Vastra, her companion Jenny, and Commander Strax investigate The Crimson Horror...

Composed of equal parts horror, comedy, period detective drama and SciFi, The Crimson Horror has a strong classic Doctor Who vibe about it, coated in a magnificent Victorian aesthetic. In many ways, the episode felt like a melting pot of genres, blending the 19th century crime drama and fun-filled SciFi adventure perfectly and interspersing the script with both the humorous and the macabre; it is the quintessential Gatiss!

From the opening, The Crimson Horror is a fairly Doctor-light episode, with the Doctor and Clara actually part of the mystery rather than the ones trying to get to the bottom of things. Instead, the focus is primarily being driven by the three sleuths: Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Commander Strax. The investigative trio have now kind of grown on me; maybe it’s the fact that as this episode’s leads, their characters felt more developed than before and weren't just secondary characters simply there for a quick gag or two. With the three of them carrying the first half of the episode, sans Doctor, we’re treated to a distinctly period drama-esque crime thriller which expertly manages to weave in a Silurian and a Sontaran as its lead characters without them feeling out of place. They were the perfect characters to drive this episode. And indeed, it’s great credit to Catrin Stewart, Neve McIntosh and Dan Starkey that they can evoke such a captivating tale of horror and intrigue without the show’s titular character being present for most of the story. It’s actually got me on board the bandwagon for a spin-off series starring these three!

It’s good to see their characters getting a bit more exposition, too. It’s a welcome step into the limelight for Catrin Stewart, with Jenny the lock-picking chambermaid leading the investigation, and proving to be quite the sizzling sleuth in the process. Meanwhile, Commander Strax is more than just the comedy Sontaran in this episode, displaying a certain degree of competency, but still walks away with the bespoke award for Most Humorous Dialogue (“Horse! You have failed in your mission. Do you have any final words before your summary execution? ... The fourth one this week, and I'm not even hungry.”).

As for the story itself, The Crimson Horror certainly had a compelling narrative. With the episode’s eponymous macabre mystery (and its even more terrible truth), and the conspicuous absence of the Doctor, the episode had set up a truly intriguing premise. This level of intrigue was carried throughout, with the truth behind Sweetville being slowly revealed piece by piece, and the identity of it’s mastermind, Mister Sweet, an enigma right until the end. Some of the elements of The Crimson Horror were incredibly dark - certainly the kind of thing that would have given the ten-year-old me a good few sleepless nights! - making it one of the more terrifying episodes of the recent series.

Executing Mister Sweet’s plans was the villainously unhinged Winifred Gillyflower, played by the excellent Dame Diana Rigg, who brings a superbly deranged and zealous preacher (and harbinger) of the apocalypse to the story. However, the absolute stand-out performance is Gillyflower’s much-abused daughter Ada, portrayed by Rigg’s real-life daughter Rachael Stirling. The highlights of the episode are certainly the scenes featuring both Rigg and Stirling, as they work fantastically opposite each other throughout, especially in the final scenes (although one hopes their mother-daughter relationship is somewhat better off screen!).

The Crimson Horror was an overall good episode. It’s blending of SciFi with period drama and detective thriller made for an interesting and well executed mix, and its use of the sinister and the macabre with comedic elements felt perfectly balanced. The reintroduction of Vastra, Jenny and Strax was certainly a welcome return, and after their inclusion in this episode, I’d like to see more of their characters in the future.

Next week, the Cybermen return in Neil Gaiman’s Nightmare in Silver. Considering Gaiman’s previous episode of Doctor Who, The Doctor’s Wife, (and his body of work in general!) this is an episode I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time!

If you missed The Crimson Horror because some deranged old woman dipped you in a vat of poison and tried to dispose of your petrified corpse, then I’m deeply sorry for everything you’ve been through, but I’m not entirely sure how you’re reading this. However, if you were were lucky enough to survive the process and are now back in the land of the living, you can watch the episode on iPlayer here.