Doctor Who 7.11: The Crimson Horror

[selenay]

Brave heart, Clara!

Sometimes Mark Gatiss's scripts leave me a little cold. It's as though he knows the technicalities of how horror and creepiness should work, but he forgets to bring along the emotions and the guest characters kind of...feel flat to me. This one didn't have any of those problems!

I mean, for a start, it's hard to make any episode with Vastra, Jenny and Strax fall flat on emotions or characters. When I say that I'd happily watch a spin-off with just those three I mean it: they're so engaging and they can hold an episode on their own with no problems. The first half of this episode showed that perfectly because the addition of the Doctor didn't suddenly make the episode chug along: it had been going strongly without him and he was a nice extra but not a game-changer.

It's possible that I have way too much love for Vastra, Jenny and Strax. You know what I'd absolutely love? The episode where we get to see how Vastra and Jenny first met. It may sound silly but I've got half a dozen different headcanons for them and I want to see that on screen one day. Otherwise I'll end up writing the fic for it and i've got too many other things in progress to take on something like *that*.

The other thing Gatiss had was Diana Rigg and Rachel Stirling who were absolutely fantastic. Stirling in particular was great. She made me feel for her character and I wouldn't mind seeing her back again. As odd as this sounds, I was really pleased there wasn't a magical cure for her blindness at the end because that kind of ending would have felt to trite for a character like that, who had learned how to live and rise past her disability despite everything that had been thrown at her including her own mother.

The only slightly weak part, for me, was the big reveal about Mr Sweets. I'm sorry, that evil parasitic lava was a little too cute. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a body horror thing and instead it had an adorability factor that was a bit out of keeping with everything else. Rigg managed to pull past it, though, with a fine turn as a maniacally insane evil genius. Well done, Diana Rigg.

I did enjoy the Doctor's bits as well. The moment that earned a loud squee this week was the Doctor's reference to "trying to return a gobby Austrailan to Heathrow", followed immediately by "Brave heart, Clara!" which was always Five's way of trying to cheer up and chivvy along Tegan when things got a bit hopeless. I'm afraid that any reference to the original series makes me squee, but a reference to Five's era and his gobby Australian makes my heart sing. Woot!

The thing I was really intrigued about was how Vastra and co. would react to Clara. After all, as far as they're concerned she's dead. I really loved the way it was handled, never quite letting Clara know why they were gawping at her but irritated with the Doctor because he refused to explain it all. The audience knows that he's not explaining because he doesn't know, but he did his enigmatic stuff with the others and they probably think he knows a lot more than he's letting on. Very interesting way to work that plot and now I'm getting incredibly intrigued by Clara.

And then we got that final scene where she returns home and...wow.

For a start, I love that she's essentially sneaking out to go travelling and then returning home. She's keeping her base with the family because she doesn't want to let them down but she needs to have adventures as well.

I'm both impressed and laughing at the kids being so damn smart, working it all out and demanding that Clara take them with her next. That's going to end well!

Then there's that picture of Clara that she genuinely doesn't recognise because it's not a picture of *this* Clara. Hmmm! I wonder why the Doctor wanted to take her to London at the time he was aiming for? I wonder whether he ended up in Yorkshire because the TARDIS didn't want him there? It's all very intriguing.

I can't wait to see whether Clara asks the Doctor about that picture next week and what his response will be if she does. Ack!

Next week's preview looks very cool. It's got that Gaiman-ish vibe to it and as I loved The Doctor's Wife more than should really be possible, I'm really excited about this one. Somehow I sense that Gaiman doing Cybermen is not going to be what we expect and my heart is going to be shattered into pieces by the end.