Doctor Who (TV Series) The Crimson Horror (2013) User Reviews

Enter cackling old crone.....

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 15 September 2015]

It's Yorkshire 1893, and things are grim, people are dying of the Crimson horror.

Jack the Ripper is the definite vibe.

Mrs Gillyflower, she is the most stereotypical old crone ever used in a TV show, from the black outfits down to the cackling laughing, initially I found her heavily underused, but on re-watching I think she's good, clichéd, but fun. I truly love both Diana Rigg and Rachel Stirling, an acting dynasty! Smith has some very good scenes with both.

Gorgeous to look at this episode is truly eye candy. I love the imagery of the people in display cases, looks brilliant. Sweetville itself also looks fabulous.

I do love the Vastra, Strax and Jenny trio, come on give them a spin off series, they deserve it! Jenny in particular, why not make her companion for a few episodes.

This one, as with the Journey to the centre of the TARDIS had every possibility of being a classic, but it just fails to hit the mark in a great way. The trouble is for a lot of the episode very little actually happens, very good all the same, just a bit more style then substance. I applaud it for being different, 8/10

Miss Flint, We're Needed

[boblipton · 8/10 · 4 May 2013]

There are lots of references to the BBC series "The Avengers" in this episode, including Diana Rigg, the sexy Mrs. Peel of the old series and recurring player Catrin Stewart dressing up in leather and using judo -- Miss Rigg, alas, is a bit old for such shenanigans. Mark Gatiss' script is a rip-roaring melodrama set in Victorian Yorkshire. It's a lot of fun as Miss Rigg gives a performance worthy of Tod Slaughter as a villainous squire.

This is probably the strongest episode in a frustrating season. The presence of Vastra, Jenny and Strax add a good bit of humor and the crew offers us some nice effects, including a sepia-colored synopsis of the events not shown directly. I have some issues with the insistence that all the stories be one episode long; this one could use another fifteen minutes, perhaps, but Gatiss and director Saul Metzstein have taken the lack of time and turned it to their advantage with a fast-paced story.

Surprisingly great episode in an average series 7.

[kingkass · 8/10 · 14 October 2018]

Okay so this episode doesn't seem to have much buzz around it but I loved it. The acting was excellent. The slow mystery was so intriguing and I liked the reveal. It was creepy and weird and fit the tone of the episode I think.

The Horror! The Horror! Kids!!

[foreverknight47 · 5 May 2013]

DR.WHO REVIEW: (careful if you haven't seen it yet as here be spoilers).

At last, after a very poor series of episodes DR.WHO slid into the safe harbour of a Mark Gatiss story and all was well again. Last night's THE CRIMSON HORROR brought all of Gatiss' trademark obsessions of body horror, steampunk and comic book plotting to the fore and it was a delight from start to almost finish. I'll get to the almost in a moment.

Bravely, The Doctor was off screen for the first 10 minutes leaving Madame Vastra, Strax and Jenny to carry the episode and very well they did. With some deeper character work there's a spin-off series there. Diana Rigg was utterly believable as Mrs Gillyflower (even with rubber monster attached) but Rachel Stirling stole it as her blind(ed) daughter, Ada.

New WHO always works in Victorian milieu and this played with genuine tropes such as End of Days religiosity and muscular Christianity (the "supermodel" guards) as well as Utopian work schemes such as the factory/village complex extrapolated from real model communities like Port Sunlight, Bourneville or even Trowse near Norwich.

Writers still having a problem with Clara though. She seems too knowing to ever be in much danger. Best image of the episode though did actually involve her, the sheer Victorian horror of being preserved under glass. Brilliant! Now to the almost. The awful last few minutes.

Clara goes home and the kids have been trawling the internet for images of her time-travelling, like you do. With all the penny dreadful plotting of the episode (many different aliens, symbionts, a Wax Museum Doctor, steam powered missiles) I just couldn't swallow that these kids would use the internet for STUDY! Searching for historical pictures just in case their nanny was there and then blackmailing Clara to get on the time machine. Just utterly unbelievable! Kids in the TARDIS? Just SO wrong. Please don't turn DR.WHO into SPYKIDS on a CBBC budget.

Season 7's Worst episode

[xtreme_acryion · 6/10 · 5 May 2013]

What? What was THIS? This episode was everything Doctor Who was not.

We got a Victorian setting. We go a visual filter for an old school Victorian setting. Gimmick, but it works. The costumes are top-notch. Especially Clara's. Also, the first appearance of the alien was just a tad disturbing/gross. These are the good things.

The bad. Literally everything else. The story is brain-dead. It makes no sense. The threat is nonexistent. The ending of the episode is maybe the most retarded thing Doctor Who has pulled since its reboot in 2005. The Doctor appears at about 2/3 in, and he just ... does not do or say anything useful or interesting. Our dear Clara is there just to be there. If the Doctor would've been traveling with a piece of wood in this episode, it would've been the same thing.

This episode is the genuine example of FILLER. If Season 7 has been a so-so experience for you until now, this episode will make you think it's downright cringe-worthy.

AKA The Paternoster Gang Pilot

[timdalton007 · 8/10 · 27 May 2018]

For some time now, there's been some chatter among Doctor Who fans for a spin-off based on the Paternoster Gang of Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax. Nearly five years after their last on-screen appearance in Deep Breath, such a thing has yet to appear. If such a series were to appear chances are The Crimson Horror, aired as part of the second half of Series Seven in 2013, would be the template for such a series.

Written by Mark Gatiss, it's an episode that plays with many of the writer's favorite tropes. After all, it's a combination of Sherlock Holmes, The Avengers (that would be the one with Steed and Mrs. Peel) and of course Doctor Who itself. The first of those shouldn't come as a surprise since Gatiss is the co-creator of Sherlock after all. It's fun to watch here, especially in the opening minutes as Vastra's services are engaged in the same style as many a classic Holmes story. Elsewhere, The Avengers influence comes in Jenny's effort to infiltrate Sweetville (which, as a mysterious factory, also has echoes of Nigel Kneale's seminal Quatermass II from 1955) and the leather catsuit she wears during the episode's latter half. The science fiction nature of the plot owes much to Doctor Who itself of course but the combination of all these elements made for a solid script from Gatiss. Is that because he got to play with so many tropes along the way?

It also shows how strong the casting of the three Paternoster Gang members was. For the opening fifteen minutes or so, and for a good chunk of the running time even after that, they are the lead characters. Along the way, all three actors get the chance to shine. Neve McIntosh shows off the intelligent but cheeky side to her Silurian detective, Catrin Stewart gets to play Jenny as the on the ground operative picking locks and beating up baddies, and Dan Starkey provides comic relief mixed with lasers as Strax. Separately and together, they very much carry the episode even with the presence of Matt Smith's Doctor which is the all more to their credit.

They aren't the only highlights of the episode. The Avengers influence on The Crimson Horror is the all the better for the presence of its longtime leading lady Diana Rigg as Mrs. Gillyflower, a role she seems to relish in as it falls in the tradition of so many of the baddies she faced as Emma Peel in that iconic series. Her daughter Rachel Stirling appears in the episode as well as playing, appropriately enough, Mrs. Gillyfower's daughter Ada. The real-life mother/daughter play off each other splendidly as the relationship between their two characters is a less than happy one which might be to their credit as performers and Gatiss as the writer. They and the Paternoster Gang also have some nice interactions with Smith's Doctor and Jenna Coleman's Clara whom, though sidelined to an extent, still make their presence felt when they do appear.

Additionally, the episode's production values are strong. Production designer Michael Pickwoad and costume designer Howard Burden are up to the challenge of creating the larger than life, steampunk Avengers world that Gatiss hands them on the page. From Jenny's leather catsuit to a steampunk rocket hidden in a mill smokestack, they bring the episode to life superbly. Murray Gold's score brings in plenty of action and suspense themes which compliment the production as a whole. Brought together under the direction of Saul Metzstein and the results are solid throughout.

The combination of all these elements made for one of the most memorable and enjoyable offerings of Series Seven. It's a fun mix of genres from a writer clearly enjoying what he's writing. That it's brought superbly to life is even better, especially given how it shows off its guest cast.

The only question is, after five years, when are we getting that Paternoster Gang spin-off?

Crimson horrible

[dkiliane · 7/10 · 7 April 2019]

Ok so the headline is a little harsh. It's not that bad. But it's not particularly good either. Strax, Vastra and Jenny investigate a sealed off supposedly utopian community (cult, really), led by the villainous Ms. Giliflower, when the coroner reveals to them a dyed red body with the image of the Doctor in its eye (which in itself felt gimmicky since it had no further relevance to the story whatsoever).

To be fair, this is the good part. I feel I must have missed some blue ray extra or something cause I have no idea why these are reoccurring characters or how they even truly got involved with the Doctor in the first place. Even so, the trio is quite entertaining whenever they show up in an episode so I don't really mind. And this episode is no exception with Jenny particularly stealing the show with her lockpicking, butt kicking antics.

Ironically, once the Doctor and Clara show back up is when the episode goes down hill. Not due to anything on these characters' or actors' parts but after finding Jenny finds the Doctor, the story basically goes nowhere until it's rather anti-climactic end.

I'm used to Doctor Who being somewhat nonsensical but this is nonsensical and a bit boring. The only purpose for Ms. Giliflower's daughter is basically to show her cruelty which we could already surmise since she is basically a cackling witch the whole time, plotting to poison the world via rocket. And I know I should feel empathy for her blind daughter but she is not particularly relatable and her motivations don't make much sense either. And the alien behind the red dye/ poison - - basically a parasite that acts as a suckling baby (quite disturbing) that meets a rather ignominious end at the daughter's hands, well, er, foot.

First couple acts, while not stellar, were still at least entertaining but it really did fall apart in the final act due to lazy writing. When I was reviewing this episode I didn't even realize Mark Gatiss wrote it, but it doesn't surprise me in the least. It had all his hallmarks of forgettable Doctor Who writing. At least he got the humor right. 7/10

There's trouble up t' mill

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 5 May 2013]

When a man dies at the Sweetville mill his brother is highly suspicious; the dead man his bright red! He employs Madame Vastra to investigate what is going on. She along with Jenny and Strax head North; here Jenny goes to the mill and starts to look around… she makes some startling discoveries! The mill is run by the elderly Winifred Gillyflower and her silent, and unseen, partner Mr Sweet; also there is Winifred's blind daughter Ada who is feeding something she refers to as her 'monster'. Jenny's explorations bring her to The Doctor who was already there. A series of flashbacks show how he and Clara were investigating the mill but managed to get caught. He and Jenny set about looking for Clara before learning of Winifred's dastardly plan; they then set off to stop her before her actions cause the end of humanity!

This Mark Gatiss scripted episode is an enjoyable mix of melodrama and humour; the 'Crimson Horror' of the title is unpleasant enough without being too scary for younger fans of the series and the jokes, while silly, are funny… I particularly laughed at Strax's over the top belief that violence is the solution to everything. The central story will be familiar to anybody who has watched the James Bond film 'Moonraker'; we have a villain who is planning to eliminate the vast majority of humanity to leave an Eden for the select few 'perfect people' to repopulate. We get a nice twist part way through, which I've struggled not to spoil although I'm sure some viewers will guess it before the reveal… although I confess I didn't! The regular cast are supplemented with top quality guest stars in the form of real life mother and daughter Dame Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling who play Winifred and Ada. The action is solid but not without flaws; surely everybody knows you can't stand next to a launching rocket without being burnt to a crisp but here they weren't even slightly singed! The fact that Jenny had met a different Clara was dealt with by The Doctor stating that it was 'complicated'; perhaps a bit cliché but it served to avoid the problem.

After the main story there is a short epilogue where Clara returns to the children she is looking after and learns that they have found pictures of her in different eras and rather than thinking they have found pictures of people that look like her immediately realise she has been time travelling… this was clearly designed to set things up for the next episode but just seemed a little too far-fetched… even for a series as far-fetched as Doctor Who!

A biased review

[laura-bonaventura1 · 9/10 · 29 April 2014]

Do you like biased reviews? Because if you give me Dame Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling playing mother and daughter is the way to get a biased review from me.

Victorian Yorkshire, humor, horror. Well not as much horror as I was expecting: disappointing. The rocket at the end was a great idea but it made me think: why there isn't some serious steam punk when the Doctor goes back to the Victorian age?

My impression is that Mark Gatiss modeled this filler around his guest stars: Gatiss was actually playing "The recruiter officer" on stage alongside Stirling. But even just watching the episode you'll find it out by yourself in no time: Clara is basically invisible while the Doctor says and does a bunch of useless thing. It's an hazard to propose a script like this since 50% of its success or its failure depends on the guest stars level: in "Blink" Carey Mulligan did a great job on a excellent story, while in here the Rigg ladies saved the day working on a decent but not sparkling script. Brendan Patrick deserves a special mention too.

Sweet and Sour

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 7/10 · 20 February 2019]

This is a strange story. It is largely a fun and slightly silly adventure. It features zany stuff such as dead bodies coloured vibrant crimson with images of the last thing they saw in their eyes, the Doctor turned into a red 'Frankenstein's monster' type figure, Strax putting in his usual comedy performance, a lot of other humorous dialogue, a lot of dashing about plus a prehistoric, red leech creature. It also though has a darker side with the grim Victorian Yorkshire factory and its bitter and formidable owner Mrs. Gillyflower (the wonderful Diana Rigg) turning it into a haven for those she wishes to save from her self made 'apocalypse'.

The description of the scenario very much sounds like a Hammer Horror or a Talons of Weng Chiang style story from the golden years of 1970s Doctor Who. I am sure that was what was being aimed for. That style is totally my taste so I should really love this story. However, I feel it misses the mark a little bit so it only reaches the standard of a decent but unexceptional filler episode for me. For my taste, this would have been better if treated a bit more seriously.

Having the great veteran actress Diana Rigg - famous for The Avengers in the 1960s and now known well to younger audiences as the 'Queen of Thorns' Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones - is a brilliant addition and she brings gravitas and menace in her villainous role. Her treatment of her blind daughter, well played by Rachael Stirling and her confrontations with the Doctor are the strongest part of this episode.

The mixture of comedy and darkness works OK as entertainment and there are lots of nice moments and touches. However, it needed a better plot and a less silly effect for the poison to have in my opinion. The over the top colour of those poisoned and the unbelievable idea of leaving an image in their eye are a bit too much like a comedy sketch and take me out of my immersion in the episode. So do farcical scenes like the gentleman repeatedly fainting in slapstick style.

The revelation it is all based around a creepy little leech monster, known as 'Mr. Sweet' despite his seeming need for salt rather than sugar, adds to the weird and slightly too unconvincing feel of the episode. Why would a prehistoric leech influence Mrs. Gillyflower to wipe out humanity with its poison and why would Mrs. Gillyflower be able to build such a successful rocket in Victorian times and make a jar of poison spread across the whole world with it? Wouldn't poisoning the water supply be simpler and more plausible? You really do have to take it with a pinch of salt (pun intended) but it is a bit of fun. I am not over-reacting, just mentioning things that could have been better.

My son loved Mr Sweet and was devastated by his ignominious demise so that was a bit sad really.

This is an entertaining episode with good horror themes, period atmosphere, strong guest actors, some fun humour and darker scenes.

My Rating: 7/10.

My Series 7 Episode Ranking: 9th out of 14.

The Crimson Horror

[MrFilmAndTelevisionShow · 8/10 · 12 April 2021]

This episode features some brilliant lines from Strax, a actual good episode for Lizard Lady and her sidekick, I actually like them in this episode. Good actresses as always just not usually a fan of the characters themselves. The acting in general was great as usual too, the plot was good but I felt it could have been a bit more dramatic in places.

On the whole it was a good episode, not the best and not the worst, simply good.

Decent

[pjgs200 · 6/10 · 20 December 2023]

A decent episode. I'd say the opening is really strong, and it kind of gets less engaging once it hits that flashback, which could have been a bit more concise. Smith is great as always, but I don't know that I really like series 7's depiction of Clara. She's young and pretty here, and that's it, really.

Vastra and Jenny are nice, I like Vastra's joy at the "65 million years ago" line. I think the episode just becomes kind of unengaging. It's not a very tense or fun finale, and frankly Murray Gold's music gets too triumphant too fast. I'm writing this in 2023, so the show has had a different composer, and I do think that a more subdued style fits the show better. Although there are some nice compositions, especially at the beginning of the episode.

A decent script from Mark Gatiss, I did like Ada's story a lot, and Mr. Sweet is suitably gross.

A Large Portion Of Yorkshire Tripe When The Audience Should Have Had A Horror Feast

[Theo Robertson · 4/10 · 4 May 2013]

A man visits Madam Vastra in Victorian London and tells her that bodies have been tuning up in a Yorkshire town , their flash turned crimson , Doing an autopsy finds that the last thing one of their victims saw was The Doctor . Vestra , Jenny and Stax depart to Yorkshire to solve the mystery of the crimson horror

There's something about a Mark Gatiss scripted episode . He wrote the season one episode The Unquiet Dead that still remains one of the finest episodes from NuWho . With the exception of this all his other stories contain a good premise but in their execution something seems to go wrong somewhere and this is summed up perfectly with The Crimson Horror , an episode with so much unfufilled potential

The episode gets off to a great start where a body is hidden under a shroud . The shroud is lifted up to reveal a dead man , his flesh turned red and his dead eyes staring straight ahead . It's a quietly effective moment from the show that shows its influences from the very best Hammer horror movies such as THE REPTILE and THE GORGON . All the building blocks are there to make a classic horror episode which the original show was famous for . Add to this a couple of prestigious actresses Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling to the guest cast what could possibly go wrong ?

Two things - the script and the production . Someone somewhere and I think it must have been Steven Moffat has developed Gatiss script very poorly . Instead of playing up to the horror elements he's more focused on smart one liners . Indeed the whole plot mechanics seem set around snappy jokes which sometimes work such as Strax pulling out a gun and stating this is the fourth horse he's had to shoot but more often than not become totally repetitive and unfunny such as someone constantly fainting . This means the audience are served up a messy runaround . This is not drama this is Victorian farce

It's summed by by the ending where the Doctor and his colleagues are in the tower and the villain Winifred Gillyflower releases a ballistic rocket in to the atmosphere and yet the laws of physics are totally ignored where the rocket takes off but fails to incinerate the Doctor and his companions . Some people may claim because DOCTOR WHO is fantasy then this is forgivable but they miss the point that science fiction works best when disbelief is totally suspended due to the conviction of the writing . Read anything by HG Wells or John Wyndham or watch a teleplay by Nigel Kneale to see how it should be done . Regardless of genre the laws of physics should never be ignored if you're writing drama

In summary this is yet another episode from the Smith / Moffat era that had great potential and yet seems to have been sabotaged by the production team trying to entertain the audience instead of compelling them . It is entertaining to a degree but is also rather pointless and silly lacking in any sort of gravatis and giving the much hated perception that DOCTOR WHO is a programme for children

I have a cunning plan ! Oh no you don't and BTW you are crap at science too!!

[EdWrite · 5 May 2013]

A rocket flies up a chimney flames pouring from its thrusters and in such an enclosed space no one even gets a hair singed.

How come the Dr's plans nowadays seem to comprise of running after the monster/bad guys then going "oops!!", when he catches them and he realises they have a bigger gun, claws, army, WMD (please circle relevant item(s))? For once I'd like to see the Dr using his huge brain to be, well, smart...and thinking just a little further ahead.

So many good things were trying to happen in this episode like the comedy that comes in the form of Jenni, Vastra and Strax as well as the homage to the Avengers. Loved the line "attack of the super models".

Diana Rigg as Mrs Gillyflower, with her lack of redeeming features and no room for the weak was excellent and very reminiscent of Maragaret Thatcher in her hey day.

Anyway, I guess whipping a dead horse instead of killing a live one, like Strax nearly did, is not so popular now since the media rewrote her legacy recently.

The fact that Diana Rigg's real life daughter played her screen daughter was a very nice touch.

Even with all that good stuff there was no build up of tension or suspense. As everything is bottled into a single episode, everyone now knows that in 45 minutes everything will be resolved and the Dr will triumph (half the audience changes channel or puts the coffee on). Unfortunately, the format of 1 story to a show is really destroying any sense of story telling.

The dumbing down of the show and the Dr, is evident as at the end we are to believe that 12 year old kids can take the time to find pictures of their nanny over more than 100 years and come to a conclusion that she is a time traveller. Wow google search has improved leaps and bounds as well as the attention span of 12 year olds.

Dr Who over 50 years has taken its original audience with it so that the children have now become the adult audience. When it returned from its years in the wilderness it came back revitalised and with innovative storytelling reached out to a a new, wider audience.

However, Dr Who is not a child's program rather it is a scifi program that children can appreciate. It would appear that the show is devolving into a variation of the Sarah Jane Chronicles, which was a great spin off for young adults, but that is not what Dr Who is or was ever meant to be.

With less and less for the adult viewer to appreciate the current programming is undermining the integrity the show has built up in recent years and is becoming a candidate for the Disney channel. As a matter of fact with the current plot line I'll be monitoring the Disney channel just in case the tardis materialises there with Clara's kids on board.

Hope we can stop the rot soon and save what has become an excellent institution.

On an up note (pun intended), doesn't Jenna-Louise look great with her hair up.

The Scarlet Herring...

[Xstal · 5/10 · 26 December 2021]

It's grim up north and things turn a lot more grim when crimson cadavers appear in the canal. The Doctor's already on the trail but soon Vastra, Jenny and Strax arrive, although they struggle to avoid the banal. There's a bit of shenanigans and some capering about but the plug should really have been pulled to anul. Especially as the end will bug you and the kindest thing would be to put this episode out of its misery and cull, impale with a nail, do not pass go and send it straight to jail.

This deserves a lower rating

[warlordartos · 1/10 · 15 April 2021]

While not being a 1/10 it is at best a 4/10. The so called entertaining part of the story is boring and the physics are non existent. The only good part were Strax's jokes (everyone else's jokes weren't funny). The first at most 10 minutes of the episode were engaging and delivered a real threat, which was then underused and horrible jokes were overused, it then became boring.

Do they have a "Save for later" file at BBC?

[Chaophim · 2/10 · 1 October 2019]

Asking because most stories seem to be part of a building overall arc, but a lot of the Moffat/Matt Smith-era stories, specifically, seem to be disjointed, as if they were rough drafts that were dropped into the arc when writer's block struck on the 'real' arc stories. This one, for example only references the main arc during what I call 'dead space' in the story that, if edited out, would have zero effect on the episode's story.

And on the subject of 'dead space', I'll look to the gratuitous elephant in the room. Thomas Thomas. The writers misssed a golden opportunity with his scene because they could have had Strax reward him with a product-placed Coca-Cola, or a product-placed candy bar, or something as this scene wasn't a humorous 'nod' to the Tom Tom GPS system, imho, but a product shout-outs. The only other time I've groaned this badly at "Obvious reference is obvious" was the Weakest Link/Big Brother/Etc., tie-ins on "Bad Wolf", but even those weren't as flop-hard as Thomas Thomas.

All that aside, this episode felt very weak, rushed, and empty with the Doctor and his companions discovering things a bit too easily, guessing or 'just knowing' answers all too readily, and things wrapping up far too nicely (or not at all...did he rescue anyone other than Clara from the poison? What were their reactions?, etc.,) in order to get this episode on the virtual shelf ASAP.

There are far beter episodes out there - you can easily skip this one and not miss anything of the overall arc except how the kids got onto the TARDIS in the next episode.

Sooo very bad

[kagu · 1/10 · 20 August 2017]

What in the name of all that is holy HAPPENED? This episode might have been the most awful of the entire modern incarnation; We have no idea why there's a 19th century Scooby gang, the doctor is dipped in candle wax, and then they add in some Stepford Wives for good measure. Seriously, wth is going on? The plot of this episode was held together with duct tape and Jesus and the duct tape was discount.

Save yourself 45 minutes of waste and just skip this one. It adds nothing.

The Crimson Horror

[studioAT · 2/10 · 24 August 2023]

So this was a vanity project basically? They wanted to get Dianna Rigg on the show, so they wrote an episode around her?

Unfortunately it's not a good one, and I think 'The Day of the Doctor', might have glossed over the fact for me first time around that actually the show was in very poor form indeed going into the 50th Anniversary. How history repeats as we lurch into the 60th.

We get the return of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax here to - joy of joys. These characters are a bit like River Song for me - more fun for the writers to come up with ideas for than anything they actually do on screen. They aren't funny.

Not a good episode once again.