Episode #245 : The Crimson Horror

"Them new manufacturers can do horrible things to a person. Horrible. I've pickled things in here that'd fair turn your hair snowy as top of Buckden Pike."

Episode #245:      The Crimson Horror.
Companions:        The 11th Doctor and Clara Oswald.
Air Date:              4th May 2013.

In 1893, the Eleventh Doctor's old friends, Vastra, Jenny Flint and Strax find an optogram of the Doctor on a victim of the mysterious "crimson horror". They head for Yorkshire, where Jenny infiltrates Mrs Winifred Gillyflower's community of Sweetville to find what has happened to him.

A good old Victorian gothic horror. The Paternosta Gang investigate a strange series of murders in Yorkshire which leave red-skinned bodies floating in the canal. The Doctor and Clara have got their first but both need rescuing before the villain of the piece can be stopped. It's nice to see the old Victorian gang getting some centre stage again but half way through it becomes the Doctor and Clara show once again.

For it's nice gothic storytelling it isn't a great episode mainly because it jumps around a bit in the middle explaining what happened to the Doctor and Clara before the episode even starts but also because once it does get going the ending feels all too rushed just to get to a rather unsatisfying climax. The Crimson Horror is one of those stories that if fleshed out a bit could have done better by being a two part story rather than being crammed into 45 minutes.

The actual villain of the story isn't very inspiring either being an old lady with a prehistoric leech stuck to her. Both are defeated way too easily and the story just ends. Even the leech, while creepy crawling across the floor, just seems a weak adversary.

There is a continuation to the Clara mystery but it doesn't go anywhere as the Doctor refuses to inform his Victorian friends about what is going on, leaving them just as much in the dark as the rest of us were at the time.

I really do like Clara has a companion. For a time I would have said that Amy Pond was my favourite modern companion but I have come to appreciate Clara more. She is a good strong female role model who knows her own mind and isn't just on screen to be a screamer. She is part of the story, leading from the front with the Doctor. That she isn't living on the TARDIS and has her own life away from time travel feels better than the later Pond stories where they lived at home. I think Clara has, at this point, become my favourite Doctor Who companion.

It is with her that the story ends on a lead in to the next adventure with the children she looks after finding some rather random photos online of Clara during her recent adventures. Some of them I'm not sure how they could have been taken but that doesn't spoil it.