Over
the past few weeks, I've been harping on the fact that this current
season of Doctor Who has seemed to suffer in quality in a way not yet
seen in the relaunched series. At times I have been somewhat in awe
of how bad some of these episodes have been, a feeling comparable to
the same awe I once felt for how great it used to be. Take the subtle
point where we realized the importance of the girl in the fireplace
to the robots hunting her, or the tragic mistake of the nanogenes
during the Blitz. All classic moments where everything came together
so brilliantly that now in retrospect only serve to remind us how
strange it is to see everything fall apart every week. The Crimson
Horror did not leave me in awe one way or the other, neither being
awful nor awesome in the end, and while that alone makes it one of
the better installments this year, it also makes me very, very sad.
The
Crimson Horror finds us back in the Victorian home of Lady Vastra the
Silurian Detective and her small band of wacky sidekicks as they
investigate the titular rash of, well rashes I guess, that just so
happen to appear deadly, leading them to an apocalypse cult with an
ancient weapon and of course, The Doctor. There was a time, back when
I was under the assumption that the four crappy episodes between
Asylum of the Daleks and The Snowmen were just a fluke, that I
desperately wanted a spin-off series for these characters. Recent
weeks had me worried that such a series might not be handled well in
the hands of the current Who production staff, but this first episode
back with them renews my faith in the possibility just a little bit.
All
of their scenes are generally entertaining with a few downright
delightful moments here and there, to the point that once The Doctor
and Clara show up, the main characters of the show are often
overshadowed by the trio of guest actors. The two groups begin the
story looking into the same case separately, allowing for a narrative
structure that jumps back and forth as new pieces of information fill
in the gaps of our knowledge at different times, letting us at least
pretend for a while that the story is going to turn out to be more
clever than it ultimately does. Its a gimmick, but its better than
nothing, and certainly better than the gimmick of just not being very
good which they've employed so often this year, even if I don't quite
know if it justified covering Matt Smith in all that red make-up.
The
titular horror, which is arbitrarily crimson perhaps only for the
dramatic title they seem to love repeating over and over, is of
course something not of this Earth, or at least not of this time, and
it leads to the one truly very good idea central to the episode. I
won't go into too much detail to avoid spoilers, but we find this
makeshift village of religious zealots in fear of the End of Days
seeking a way to save themselves from death that at least visually
proves to be very creepy, even by Who-standards (or at least what
they once were). The moment we see where the chosen ones are kept is
the closest to that “ah ha!” moment we used to wait for in every
Doctor Who episode back when we could count on it.
I
would also say to this episode's credit that we get perhaps the best
incidental villains since the last Christmas special, which is made more
impressive by the fact that with one very small exception, they are
just regular people. There's no attempt to create another
Moffet-esque small army of creeps like The Silence or the upcoming
Whispermen, and yet these Pilgrims are about as creepy as you can get
just based on what they are doing and why. The politely psychotic
Mrs. Gillyflower and her daughter Ada are on opposite ends of the
spectrum, one monstrously evil and the other completely
sympathetic, which works up to a point, until the final reveal of the
mystery of Mr. Sweet sends the conclusion of the episode into a mad
dash of craziness that, while fun, saps any subtlety from the
proceedings.
And
as for Mr. Sweet, I can only say that there is a brief suggestion of
what a great threat he and his ilk were at one time, and once you
seem him, you may have to laugh, which I'm not quite sure was the
point. Still, overall The Crimson Horror is easily one of the better
efforts so far this season, and while I can't stop myself from
bitching about how bad its been up to this point, with this one, the
marginally good preceding episode, and the Gaiman penned Cybermen
story next week, I'm tentatively of the opinion that we might just
pull this one out in the fourth quarter. Here's hoping.
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