Unusually (unless you count most of Season 22, anyway), the Doctor doesn't show up for nearly twenty minutes and when he does, he's been Ronsealed to within an inch of his life. That shot of him in the cell, painted red and gasping, is a memorable one and certainly provides a shock on the first viewing. (The hints were there, not least of which was Ada addressing the cell's occupant as "monster" - we should know by now, somewhere in between the 'goblin' of The Pandorica Opens and John Hurt's appearance at the end of The Name of the Doctor, as we are, that the Doctor is the biggest monster of them all.)
Before the Doctor is released, it falls to the Paternoster Gang to kick things off and this is no bad thing at all. Strax is beginning to get a little wearisome now (what the hell is that satnav joke doing on screen?) but Vastra and Jenny are good fun and I don't mind at all if the show is going to maintain an occasional presence in the nineteenth century. Between the three of them they contrive some lovely moments, but it is Jenny who offers the most value as she infiltrates Sweetville (lovely arresting image of the empty factory with the phonographs faking the industry) and rescues the Doctor (I like Vastra's explanation to Strax of Jenny's methodology "she need only ignore all keep-out signs, go through every locked door, and run towards any form of danger that presents itself").
The stars of the show though are Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, and Rachael Stirling as the blinded Ada. Gatiss wrote the episode specifically for the real life mother and daughter and it is surely a huge coup to have them aboard. Mrs Gillyflower is a tremendously horrible old woman, assured of her own sanctity even as she callously wreaks death on those around her. She saves her most disgraceful behaviour for Ada, her own daughter - having blinded her in a series of self-serving experiments, she then discards her as unworthy of salvation. For all that Rigg seems to be having a lot of fun, and Mrs Gillyflower can't help but be one of the more watchable, and deliciously bonkers, villains we've seen. Stirling is brilliant as poor Ada. A damaged woman, still capable of hope and compassion, who is then completely broken by her mother's harshness. She presents a striking visual too: a Victorian grotesque, pushing her way about with her cane, her white eyes staring blankly from her scarred face, her neck taught as she strains her head to listen. It's an excellent performance.
At some point I realised I had only the vaguest idea of what the actual point of Mrs Gillyflower's plan was - but I think it is sort of Moonraker isn't? She's so disgusted by the degenerate world (this from a woman with a leech suckling at her décolletage) that she plans to kill everybody and then repopulate the Earth with her perfect specimens? Whom she is protecting from the murderous rain by the simple and efficacious method of dipping them in red stuff and installing them in giant glass chambers, right? Really?
Oh well, it's still a lot of fun, and that image of Clara and her faux beaux, all plasticised and stuck inside a bell jar, is rather wonderful. Poor Clara. She doesn't get to do very much today at all seeing as even when she does wake up she has to share the screen with Vastra et al. However she does get to throw a chair into a control panel, she's the one that spots that the chimney doesn't smoke, clever clog, and she is the one under investigation.
Yes, despite what he said in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, it transpires that the Doctor is still trying to work out Clara's non-existent secret. He obviously feels slightly guilty about it, because when Vastra and Jenny realise what he's up to he cringes like a naughty schoolboy caught red handed, but he doesn't feel so guilty that he is prepared to stop digging. I have to say, the first time through I was still convinced that something was up with her too at this point - that had after all been the established pattern with previous companions. It's a slight shame, what with her only being in half of this story, because it feels like this 'mystery' is stopping the audience from fully engaging with Clara now, after a very strong first few of episodes. Perhaps if this sequence was spread out over a full season we would be able to balance our mild suspicions against her consistently faithful behaviour - but there just hasn't been enough time and the Day of the Doctor is almost here.
The stars of the show though are Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, and Rachael Stirling as the blinded Ada. Gatiss wrote the episode specifically for the real life mother and daughter and it is surely a huge coup to have them aboard. Mrs Gillyflower is a tremendously horrible old woman, assured of her own sanctity even as she callously wreaks death on those around her. She saves her most disgraceful behaviour for Ada, her own daughter - having blinded her in a series of self-serving experiments, she then discards her as unworthy of salvation. For all that Rigg seems to be having a lot of fun, and Mrs Gillyflower can't help but be one of the more watchable, and deliciously bonkers, villains we've seen. Stirling is brilliant as poor Ada. A damaged woman, still capable of hope and compassion, who is then completely broken by her mother's harshness. She presents a striking visual too: a Victorian grotesque, pushing her way about with her cane, her white eyes staring blankly from her scarred face, her neck taught as she strains her head to listen. It's an excellent performance.
At some point I realised I had only the vaguest idea of what the actual point of Mrs Gillyflower's plan was - but I think it is sort of Moonraker isn't? She's so disgusted by the degenerate world (this from a woman with a leech suckling at her décolletage) that she plans to kill everybody and then repopulate the Earth with her perfect specimens? Whom she is protecting from the murderous rain by the simple and efficacious method of dipping them in red stuff and installing them in giant glass chambers, right? Really?
Oh well, it's still a lot of fun, and that image of Clara and her faux beaux, all plasticised and stuck inside a bell jar, is rather wonderful. Poor Clara. She doesn't get to do very much today at all seeing as even when she does wake up she has to share the screen with Vastra et al. However she does get to throw a chair into a control panel, she's the one that spots that the chimney doesn't smoke, clever clog, and she is the one under investigation.
Yes, despite what he said in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, it transpires that the Doctor is still trying to work out Clara's non-existent secret. He obviously feels slightly guilty about it, because when Vastra and Jenny realise what he's up to he cringes like a naughty schoolboy caught red handed, but he doesn't feel so guilty that he is prepared to stop digging. I have to say, the first time through I was still convinced that something was up with her too at this point - that had after all been the established pattern with previous companions. It's a slight shame, what with her only being in half of this story, because it feels like this 'mystery' is stopping the audience from fully engaging with Clara now, after a very strong first few of episodes. Perhaps if this sequence was spread out over a full season we would be able to balance our mild suspicions against her consistently faithful behaviour - but there just hasn't been enough time and the Day of the Doctor is almost here.
No comments:
Post a Comment