The Crimson Horror

The Crimson Horror offers up a different vision of Victorian life to the one we've seen in recently in Doctor Who. This is the world of industry, all belching chimneys and humming factories. A dirtier world, where dead bodies turn up in the canal as often as they do in the pages of the penny dreadfuls, and where good upstanding women can try and build a new Jerusalem, and decided who will and won't be allowed inside. A world, much like our own, full of the grotesque, and of hypocrisy. 

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.

NEXT TIME...

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

This episode is growing on me, although it does seem to go out of its way to make that a slow process. Four elements to be discussed - three of them have made me scratch my head at some time or another since this was first broadcast; the last is something I'm only beginning to understand now, having watched it again.

That Title. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS? Oh, that's a bold claim to make, one that raises almost impossible expectations in the minds of most casual viewers, let alone hardcore fans. But, on the second or third viewing, I think I decided that what we ended up with was fine.

There's a delicate balancing act to be performed: we need to see the things we have decided will be there, like the swimming pool, the library and the, er, Cloisters, but different groups of fans will be fervently expecting the show to adjudicate on previous controversies: will there be a food machine? What about the Eye of Harmony, will the TV Movie be upheld or struck down? WILL THERE BE ROUNDELS?

On top of all that frothing and wailing, we want there to be surprises too, of course, and, to be fair, we get them. The liquid Encyclopædia Gallifreya is one such nice touch; another is the Tree of Architectural Reconfiguration. Then there's the great tome that Clara stumbles across, provocatively entitled The History of the Time War. It rather does beg the question, who wrote it? But perhaps the TARDIS spontaneously (and objectively, of course) writes up everything that happens as it whizzes past?

The Van Baalen Brothers. The idea of the Doctor having to employ the help of unscrupulous salvage merchants to rescue Clara is a good one, but these guys are too stupid to pose any real threat to the TARDIS and not nasty enough to worry us too much either. To be honest, it's a relief when the story ditches them so what are they doing here? And then there's that whole bizarre subplot where one of the brothers has been convinced b the other two that he is a robot. That's just ridiculous. Does he sleep? Do they feed him croquette potatoes and tell him they're batteries? It's a horrible and callous thing to have done (no wonder Clara doesn't know where to look when it is revealed), but also it is so very petty. At the end, they all seem to be back on their ship, and apparently their lives are somehow going to better now because of the events aboard the TARDIS that never happened. But really, who cares?

The Reset Button. Okay, first time through this makes no sense whatsoever and is pretty infuriating. On subsequent viewings it becomes clearer what actually happens and it turns out that the main structure of the time loop (eddy, whatever you want to call it) hangs together quite well, sort of. Here's the sequence: as we see it:

1. The salvage ship fires a magnetic beam at the TARDIS.
2. A remote control device for a magnetic beam appears inside the TARDIS.
3. Clara picks it up and burns her hand. Over the course of the episode it becomes increasingly clear that the device had writing on it that has been burnt onto Clara's hand. Eventually it can be read. It says: "Big friendly button."
4. The Doctor takes the remote control he stole from the Van Baalen brothers and writes these words on it using the sonic.
5. He finds a time fissure on the wall of the TARDIS and this time pokes his head through and catches the attention of his earlier self. He throws the device through the fissure.
6. The earlier Doctor now understands the arrival of the device and hits the button, therefore preventing the magnetic beam from grabbing the TARDIS, and causing a paradox. Which resolves itself, by and large.

It's more confusing when everything is shaking and booming and the Doctor is shouting, but there isn't just one iteration of the remote control device being handed around in an endless loop. I think. But it's not a great way to end a story, and there's no way the Van Balen brothers are somehow improved by events they can't remember.

Clara. Last week the Doctor, determined to discover her secret, was told that she was just an ordinary woman. He's even more determined this week. He confronts her on a cliff top and demands to know the truth. It's the same sort of behaviour he exhibited with the Flesh version of Amy: suspicious, not wanting to be taken in, slightly scary. He asks the same questions as before, and he gets the same answers as before. But this time he appears to believe them.

Of course, while he and we are focussed on the mystery of an ordinary girl, Clara is doing her own detective work. We don't care about the Doctor's mysteries. They're in front of us all the time, for fifty years, and we no better than to think that any of them are going to get revealed any time soon. But in Hide, Emma Grayling warned Clara that the Doctor had "a sliver of ice in his heart"; here Clara discovers his name, learns about the Time War. There is a mystery waiting to be solved this year, but it's not Clara's.


NEXT TIME...

Hide

Ooh this is a good one. Writer Neil Cross seems to be on a mission to make new Who more like the original series. The Rings of Akhaten (commissioned on the back of Hide but transmitted first) felt like it needed the space of four (or more) parts to unpack its compressed tale, harking back to expansive stories like The Keys of Marinus. But this script, although clearly inspired by Seventies Who (the Doctor visiting a country house to poke his nose into a scientist's supernatural experiments sounds like a Third Doctor version of Image of the Fendahl; even the 1974 setting splits the difference between Pertwee and Baker), is perfectly adapted to the slicker modern format.

It helps that this very pared down. It starts off with just two other cast members, the excellent Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine, and, apart from two excursions, the story is contained within the house. Atmosphere is everything. The quiet of the empty rooms; the unspoken, almost despairing tension between Grayling and Palmer (who is haunted himself of course); the legend of the ghost, told in clippings and notes and hand-developed photographs; the restless twitching of the needles on Palmer's equipment. The Doctor does his best to puncture all this - shouting "Boo!", taking selfies, prattling like a jackanapes ("Toggle. Nice noun. Excellent verb.") - but even his manic excitement becomes tempered when he starts to explore the house and encounters unexpected chills, odd sounds and ominous shadows.

The diversions, when they come, advance the story without ruining the atmosphere. The trip in the TARDIS is excellent but it also exposes Clara to a new unsettling perspective, one in which she has already lived and died (and not in the way that concerns the Doctor either). The reveal that the ghost is in fact a time traveller, stranded between moments and stretched out through the aeons, is an excellent 'scientific' rationalisation, but it also fuels the rescue effort, pushing the story forwards into the final third. When the Doctor ventures into the pocket universe it is a strange and disturbing place: only pale grey trees in the mist of twilight, and a twisted thing... It's very nicely realised. The location is not over-complicated; it is eerie and subtly disquieting. The thing itself, the Crooked Man as it is listed in the credits, is brilliantly done: we are given just glimpses, recorded backwards, so that it lurches unexpectedly, an unrecognisable shape, entirely unnatural. The effect is very good indeed.

At the end of all this we find out the real reason the Doctor came here in the first place. He wanted to meet Emma, and to ask her to use her powers to tell him about Clara. It's an important exchange.

THE DOCTOR: What is she?
EMMA: She's a girl.
THE DOCTOR: Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?
EMMA: She's a perfectly ordinary girl. Very pretty, very clever, more scared than she lets on.
THE DOCTOR: And that's it, is it?
EMMA: Why? Is that not enough?

It may only be a seven episode season, but we have been conditioned to expect an arc, a mystery. As far as the Doctor's concerned, as far as the TARDIS is concerned, there is something odd about Clara, and therefore that's what we think too. We are wrong.

Cold War

A return for Mark Gatiss, a return for the Ice Warriors and a return to the Eighties for Doctor Who. When I heard the premise for this story it all seemed so obvious, as if there had previously been a hole in the Universe that Cold War had been designed to plug. A Martian warrior, hauled out of the ice by Soviet sailors, runs amok inside a submarine during a potential USA/USSR nuclear flashpoint? Absolutely! And in a sense, Gatiss is plugging a gap.

Fans have been regularly and incorrectly anticipating the imminent return of the Ice Warriors since about, ooh, 1983, when Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary prompted the show to revivify long lost villains from its past. For example, there was Warriors of the Deep (January '84), which saw the return of the Silurians and, er, the Sea Devils, and, set in a deep-sea military base, agonised about a cold war between two nuclear powers turning hot. Despite some strong moments, the story was plagued by production issues and, well, not very good. The reptilian Earthlings suffered from some dodgy revamping and the whole thing was lit with a one billion watt bulb. You'd be forgiven for thinking there should have been another way.

Cold War is it. The best form of revisionist history, it takes the real-world nuclear tension of 1983, brings back the Ice Warriors with a subtle and excellent redesign, and, with modern Who production values, makes the whole thing look bloody good. And it doesn't need to twist itself in knots to explain its oh-so-neat title (I'm looking at you The Power of Three). What's not to like.

Time to rattle through some things.

The Submarine. Moody, atmospheric, claustrophobic? Tick, tick, tick, all present and correct, along with gallons of water, red lighting and torpedo tubes. Was there a periscope? I don't remember now, but if there wasn't, I didn't miss it at the time. I've seen this described as a classic Sixties 'base under siege' environment, but really it's even more confined than that and, of course, the sub is not under siege (unless you count the bottom of the sea): the Ice Warrior is already in here with them. It's a fantastic bit of set design even though it is just a little bit on the roomy side - but then imagine how terrible and improbable it would have looked if they had stuck to the compressed dimensions of a real sub.

Skaldak. Excellent redesign of the Ice Warrior. Gone are the child-bearing hips and the Lego hands, but the classic look remains intact. Nicholas Briggs works his magic on another voice (exotic, sibilant but still blissfully audible) and Spencer Wilding provides the looming presence. Gatiss writes beautifully for the Martian, capturing that signature wistfulness and poetically evoking the culture of an alien world ("The songs of the Red Snow"). And then the surprises - Skaldak escaping from his suit, the spindly hands descending from the shadows, the final reveal of the native Martian physiognomy... I liked all of that, it felt like progress. One day, when we win the CGI lottery, I'd love the TARDIS to visit Mars in its pomp.

Clara. It used to be that companions just jumped aboard and found their feet. Or didn't and just stood about faffing for two years. But these days, joining the TARDIS is a bit like becoming a Blue Peter presenter, constantly having to prove their worth through tests and extreme situations. Having lived like a Dalek for a year and nailed the skydiving, Clara's next challenge is to interrogate an Ice Warrior! Let's see how she got on. Needless to say, she's no Adam and passes with flying colours. But her key moment comes when she does suddenly have a wobble. Having held it together through the conversation with Skaldak, the deaths of the sailors and the alien hunt, she cracks at the point of greatest tension as the inscrutable Martian ship hovers and the world teeters on the edge of nuclear war. And thank goodness she does, because I would have started screaming about forty minutes earlier and this recognisable moment of real fear ensures that Clara remains ordinary and likeable.

The Russians. Liam Cunningham, having escaped the utter dross that was Outcasts, resurfaces here as very likeable Captain Zhukov. Definitely the safe pair of hands one would want in charge of an enemy nuclear sub, especially if there are dangerous lunatics like Stepashin aboard. Although the lieutenant's bellicosity looks like it's heading somewhere when he offers to make a deal with Skaldak, he doesn't make it to the final scene. Those final moments are fairly tense as they are, sure, but I can't help but think they could have been more dramatic if Stepashin had been there trying to press the button himself. Then there's David Warner, playing the eccentric scientist Grisenko. Warner is a legend (if only for his work with Gatiss on the wonderful radio sci-fi comedy Nebulous), and surely deserves a meatier role than this. Because it's Warner, I was initially suspicious of Grisenko's amiable nature - but he does just turn out to be nice. It feels like a bit of waste, but then it's still good to see him in Doctor Who. And lastly, William on the anonymous crew member who decides to take a blowtorch to Skaldak's ice block in the first place: "Oh, he's an idiot. That is clearly not a mammoth."



NEXT TIME...

The Rings of Akhaten

Okay, when I first saw this I was convinced this was the worst new episode since New Earth. On reflection, I think that's probably still true from a cold, objective point of view - but that would be to wilfully ignore that The Rings of Akhaten is bold and exciting attempt at something more exotic.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. It's looks weird: there's something claustrophobic about it on-screen and it's difficult not to notice that it's filmed on just two or three studio sets. The space bike effect is very static and flat. The story is difficult to follow, and stops being at all interesting quite early on. Who are the Vigil? Why are they chasing Merry? Why do they appear in the tomb? Why don't they try and stop the Doctor when he's haranguing that planet? Is the planet alive? Or is it infested? How will destroying the creature affect the planetoids in orbit around it? How come everyone's forgotten that it's there? What effect is singing supposed to have on it? Is it Merry who sticks Clara to the mummy's case? Why? Who's the mummy and what's it for? The planet is poisoned by the "infinite potential" caused by the fact that Clara's mum died prematurely, but not by the Doctor's interminable experiences of alternate timelines, other universes, hypothetical futures and so forth? Um, okay!

So it looks a bit ropey and the story's half-baked. So far, so 1987. But there is a lot of good stuff that should be counted in defence of The Rings of Akhaten.

Much of the design work is excellent, especially the Vigil (which makes it all the more annoying that they don't do more in the story). The market scenes, the crowds and the effect shots of the system make this the most exotic and interesting alien world we have seen in years - certainly since A Christmas Carol, probably since The Doctor's Daughter, and possibly even further back than that. Furthermore, these people have a proper culture, a social hierarchy, myths and legends, an economy, a religion - it's all fascinating, and a hell of a lot more than we usually get for non-human societies. (Although, if their monetary system is based on paying for things with items of personal, sentimental value, how does that work? The ring, for example, that Clara gives to Doreen, is invaluable to the human, but worth nothing to the alien, for whom it has no history. If she asked for a refund, what would she get back? Presumably something that meant a lot to Doreen, but nothing to Clara...)

Sorry, got distracted. The nub of it is that while this is quite a bad story, it is also a beautiful and exciting breath of fresh air. It's right that Doctor Who takes risks, experiments and tries to show us the more exotic corners of the Universe. It would be much less fun to play it safe.


NEXT TIME...

The Bells of Saint John

Rather an odd beginning to the Doctor's search for the real Clara Oswald - having just chatted to her as a child in the mini-prequel, he then retreats to a thirteenth century Cumbrian monastery to "divine her message". Well, why not I suppose. Presumably he didn't realise he had been speaking to Clara herself and besides, the episode proper can't rely on ten million people all dutifully clicking on an optional webisode for plot developments (or can it?). In any case, it creates the perfect opportunity to justify the story's title with a satisfyingly incongruous telephone call.

And with that all out of the way Doctor Who screeches up to the very edge of ultra-modernity, almost, but not quite teetering and falling into the future. In many ways it is to 2013 what The War Machines was to 1966: swap those eponymous tanks for the Spoonheads, the Post Office Tower for the Shard, WOTAN for the Great Intelligence... Except of course that any similarity is utterly obscured by the astonishing changes that those forty-seven years have wrought.

This episode is thoroughly au fait with the pervasive and inter-connected nature of modern technology. The lights in your street can bring down a plane; human behaviour can be adjusted with an app; people's most private data (their, er, souls?) can be uploaded to the cloud, or rewritten. Kizlet traces the Doctor not with CCTV, but by flicking in real time through the location-pinned photos that are being uploaded to the web. Clara discovers the enemy HQ by hacking their webcams and cross-referencing the data against social media profiles. There are no ponderous explanations, it all just flashes across our eyes, the screen filling with code and data; none of this seems outlandish, or incredible to us sat at home - we get it, we are already part of the technosphere.

This is why it's not facile or cliched to turn wi-fi into a threat. This isn't the plastic attacking in Terror of the Autons, or the Christmas tree turning on Rose and Jackie. We're being shown the world we live in, and good thing too.

There are some superb moments in The Bells of Saint John. The creepy sweet way the Doctor tends to the fallen Clara. The breath-taking scene that rushes us into the TARDIS and back out through the doors onto a crashing passenger jet, Clara still clutching a cup of tea. The scene in the cafe where Kizlet hijacks passers-by to intimidate the Doctor. The way the Doctor outwits Kizlet (classic Moffat: it's so obvious, but only after he's shown us how the trick was done). The way the Great Intelligence's employees collapse and revert back to their original personalities (although, if they were just glorified automata, why did they all have Facebook accounts?). Celia Imrie in particular is fabulous throughout, but when she turns into that small child... brrr! Scary stuff, for adults and children alike, and a cracking start to this half of Series Seven.  


NEXT TIME...

The Snowmen

The Doctor Who Wheel of Festive Settings is given its annual spin and - bing! - comes up Victorian once again. But unlike the two most recent Yuletide specials, The Snowmen is not just doing Christmas for Christmas' sake. This story has an important job to do: the show has to pivot, here, from Amy to Clara, from 7a to 7b, and the Doctor has to make the transition, just like everybody else.

He has succumbed to the most extraordinary sulk in the wake of Amy's departure (you can't convince me he's depressed about poor Rory). I let this slide when I first watched this, but now it seems bewildering. Having said that, the surly, shabby Doctor is rather fun, lurking in the shadows in his wonderful hat (Smith at his most Troughtonesque), and parking his TARDIS up on a cloud, like something out of a George Méliès film. But, again, compared with the departures of Rose or Donna, his depression is excessive and rather disturbing. Whatever his obsession has been with Amy (and I don't fully buy all that "first face I saw" stuff in The Power of Three), both he, and the show, need to get over it, pronto.

This is why we are here, of course, and so, thankfully, Clara turns up almost immediately. Jenna Coleman, with her engaging and clever performance, her enormous and expressive eyes, and an arsenal of weapons-grade smirks, has definitely got the measure of things and makes this version of Ms Oswald a little less flirty than Oswin was, but no less forward thinking. Within a few seconds Clara has amply demonstrated her credentials - an inquiring and intelligent mind, a tendency to curiosity over fear, a stubborn tenacity, and the ability to run like the wind in a dress and heels. Neither we nor the Doctor are given any choice but to take to her straight away.

After that strong start, she just gets more interesting and more likeable. The barmaid/governess duality is a bit odd, but provides her with an effective monopoly on female Victorian life - common and street-smart on the one hand, refined, learned and eloquent on the other. She deals effortlessly with the clumsy advances of Captain Latimer Von Trapp and chases the Doctor down twice, the second time navigating a fearsomely contrived interview with Madame Vastra that is nonetheless immensely satisfying thanks to the momentary frisson of her final fluked answer: "Pond."

Even now, she faces one final test: a cynical challenge set before her by the Doctor that she overcomes with an umbrella and no shortage of Poppins-like élan. Finally she can ascend to the TARDIS, and to the full companion status. At which point clever, mean old Mr Moffat pulls the rug from under us all, and dashes poor Clara upon the cobblestones. Deeply unfortunate for her, of course, but a wonderful, if dastardly, shot in the arm for this story: a dark twist that propels the Doctor through the final act and on into the rest of Series Seven.

Plenty of other stuff to like here too, and none more impressive than the CGI-assisted shot that finally manages to place the interior of the TARDIS inside the outside. Blimey, we've waited a long time to see that. The Paternoster Gang (great name, much better than The Silver Cloak) are a real treat. It's great to see Vastra in her adopted (if not native) environment, and Jenny (her relative ordinariness is crucial to this triumvirate and holds the gang together) continues to charm and delight, part 'umble servant, part samurai dominatrix. And it's fantastic to see cross-species lesbian relationships normalised on prime-time family Christmas television - surely to goodness that's the point of Doctor Who, even if Sydney Newman forgot to jot it down at the time. Strax may be a shadow of his former self, he may have ruined the Sontarans forever, but he is undeniably hilarious - for now at least. The business with the memory worm is exquisite (all the more so thanks to the eventual pay-off) and about a squizillion times funnier than when Del Boy fell through that gap in the bar. Oh yes it is.

Speaking of funny, all that Sherlock zaniness just isn't. Yes, it's a bit meta, and almost justified by Vastra's crypto-Holmesian set-up, but do we really need jokes based on the fact that Moffat is involved with other programmes?

Richard E Grant is also not funny, but then this is a good thing. His Doctor Simeon is appropriately chilly and played ramrod straight - exactly what this needed. Sir Ian McKellen (I know!) gives the Great Intelligence some vocal heft, but Grant supplies the stiff exterior it will be using from now on and it's an excellent fit. Also, how wonderful to bring back such a strong and flexible villain from the Sixties. Obviously I hadn't ever seen The Abominable Snowmen, or The Web of Fear (now gloriously returned to us) but I had adored the Target novelisations as a child. I'm extremely happy that The Snowmen connects so gracefully with those old stories.

So, all in all, pretty satisfying. Like any good Christmas, the really important things have been excellent, and it's only the odd decorative frippery that has disapointed. Goodness knows what next Christmas has in store, but for now I'm excited that the rest of Season Seven has hoved into view.

The end is in sight, and about time, probably.


NEXT TIME...