Day 796: The Crimson Horror

The surprise break-out stars of the second section to Steven Moffat's era of Doctor Who - the BIG section, were the characters of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, all of whom were introduced in A Good Man Goes to War. They worked because they were all based on strong concepts, be they Sontaran nurses or a Victorian Silurian/human couple who solve mysteries which gleefully enticed the viewer to want to see more of these characters at a future point, something that was helped by the strong performances from the actors who play them. So it's no surprise that they were called upon to return to the worlds of Doctor Who, which they first did in 2012's beautiful Christmas special The Snowmen, and then later in the rather more distinct episode that is The Crimson Horror.

The Crimson Horror doesn't necessarily feel like a Doctor Who episode, instead it feels more like a theoretical episode of the spin-off series 'The Paternoster Gang', starring Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax, with the Doctor and Clara making a guest appearance. The writing, for instance, feels more overtly comical than what you'd normally expect from a Doctor Who episode, such as one of the greatest exchanges in Doctor Who history:
"In the wrong hands that venom could wipe out all life on this planet"
"You know what these are? The wrong hands!"
It's that comedic approach to this episode, where almost every scene should contain some form of joke that makes this episode feel completely unlike an episode of Doctor Who, where the focus is clearly on story first - jokes to be inserted if and when they are needed.

And you get a certain feeling of oddness from the design as well. Previous historical adventures in the Moffat era have at least made an attempt to give the feeling of living in that era, from the low lighting and uniforms in the Russian submarine in the 1980's that we see in Cold War to the fog and murkiness of a pirate ship on the high seas that we see in The Curse of the Black Spot. The Crimson Horror, on the other hand, doesn't feel like a Victorian story, instead it feels like an artist's impression of a Victorian story - steampunk-esque rocket controls and old fashioned and over-large gramophones. It makes the story feel just that little bit more odd; lending to the impression that it's a Doctor Who story where the Doctor's intruding on another television programme.

And, weirdly, it all works amazingly well. I keep on being drawn to this episode as something truly splendid and odd and I love every moment of it (even the Thomas Thomas joke - any story that has an entire scene devoted to a single bad pun gets a thumbs up in my book). It's one of the great disappointments in Doctor Who that the idea of The Paternoster Gang has seemed to have died out; they've made one more appearance in Capaldi's first story and haven't appeared since. Hopefully we'll get to see them again in the coming series though, they're probably one of the greatest things to come out of Moffat's era of the programme.