Doctor Who: S07PT2E06 - The Crimson Horror.

Told you this would be late!

Yorkshire 1983, 'Sweetville' - the mysterious city on the hill, a place where only the perfect are allowed to enter and a place where the perfect are never seen again. However there may be some connection between Sweetville and the petrified, red bodies that are turning up in the canal...

As a seemingly common thing with Gatiss penned Who, it starts with some beautiful set up, then seems to fumble and fall apart in the last half of the episode. The Crimson Horror was no different, it's once again an episode I think really needed two parts. I really loved the idea of a mysterious, gated community where the people who go in only ever seem to come out again as bright red bodies but there was no time to explore or really establish this. I wanted to see more of Sweetville, I wanted the lore and rumours of Sweetville to be explored so I had an impression of the place before I entered it so there would be this sense of dread and mystery. We got none of that.

I'm honestly not sure how much that is Gatiss' fault though, honestly. Pretty much every story in this Part 2 has demanded two episodes, or a much tighter redraft. There are so many plot points in this episode that the episode wildly leap frogs back and forth from them all in a wild, headless chicken manner that seems little interested in establishing anything or keeping the episode coherent. If nothing else you should at least establish conflict or it becomes boring and this episode didn't even have time to establish that. It's a shame too because I love Gatiss, he has so much heart and imagination but seeing it all squashed into forty minutes just reduces it to pulp. And not the good kind.

Great another episode with Madame Vastra, her wife and Strax, which is apparently what everyone wanted, I'm personally not seeing the appeal. I thought they were fun and amusing when they weren't the primary focus in The Snowmen but here they're given even more screentime than The Doctor and Clara are and my God does it feel forced. They really aren't fun or funny when they're being shoved into every possible moment. If this is supposed to be a backdoor pilot for them, you can colour me uninterested. Then again jokes in other areas don't really get much better, I hate it whenever the Doctor is the centre of a sex joke.

However the Doctor doesn't get much better in any other area either, this has to be one of the worst written Eleven's yet. He just seems to be getting outsmarted by everyone this episode, which is just wrong on so many levels. Although like I said, they had to find some way to force the Scooby Gang into as many scenes as possible, so they seemed to decide that making the Doctor seem completely incompetent and like some kind of bumbling idiot was the way to do it. I don't know either, I guess Gatiss wrote this bit on crack or something. And wow Doctor, you almost got Clara killed again...well done.

It's also another episode where Clara really feels very snuffed out again, she seems to be getting less interesting each week as they give the poor girl less and less to do. With the Doctor himself not coming in 'till around 15 to 20 minutes in, it takes a few minutes for Clara to come afterwards and since so much has already been set up and revealed without her, she really doesn't have a whole lot to do when she's finally introduced. Although I will say that I loved that wood once again outshines the Sonic Screwdriver, especially a point in the show where the Sonic seems to have no limits to what it can and cannot do. 

And that isn't even mentioning the absolute garbage of an ending the episode came packed with. Seriously I couldn't list and elaborate on how stupid that one scene was without taking up over twice the room this review has already taken up but Jesus Christ.

I don't even understand, Gatiss what are you doing? You've written my two least favourite episodes of Part 2, episodes centred around things that you know so much about, things that seem so uniquely you. I guess knowing something doesn't necessarily make you good at it as well. It clearly doesn't in Gatiss' case, his love for the macabre and all things Victorian only blend into a lacklustre, sometimes incoherent and ultimately utterly pointless filler episode.

Pros;

• The setup was great.
• Chair > Sonic Screwdriver.

Cons;

• Terrible pacing.
• Lack of conflict.
• Incoherent story.
• The Scooby Gang. 
• How the Doctor was written.
• How little Clara got to do.
• The ending. 

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate, 'The Crimson Horror'?