For me, there tends to be a slight sense of trepidation when approaching a Mark Gatiss script. Maybe it's because I've seen what he can accomplish with Doctor Who when he nails it (such as his books Nightshade and Last of the Gaderene), and so far he hasn't quite made it to those levels on the actual show -- "The Unquiet Dead" probably came closest, but even it had the unpleasant subtext about immigration bringing things down. But now, finally, Gatiss has achieved his full potential: "The Crimson Horror" is a delight from start to finish.
It helps that Gatiss is on comfortable ground here: "The Unquiet Dead" already demonstrated his affection and affinity for the Victorian period, and "The Crimson Horror" cements that, with shenanigans in 1893 Yorkshire involving a woman preaching fire and brimstone (Dame Diana Rigg, in an exquisite performance) but also a chance at salvation. And meanwhile, people keep turning up dead, their skin colored crimson. This is also Gatiss's chance to use the Paternoster Gang (formally introduced in "The Snowmen", although "A Good Man Goes to War" features all three of the Gang), and you can tell that he's thoroughly enjoying the opportunity. In fact, the decision to sideline the Doctor for the first third of the story is a smart one, as it allows the Gang to take center stage, and they prove just how good they are -- the three of them have genuinely wonderful chemistry that elevates any scene they're in. We also get a sense of how independent they are, and how comfortable they are doing their thing -- if anyone deserves a spinoff series, it's them: it's only because they spot an image of the Doctor in a dead man's eyes that this turns into a Doctor Who story in the first place. Jenny is clearly at home in hand-to-hand combat (in what is clearly an homage to Diana Rigg's most famous character, The Avengers' Emma Peel), and Strax is having such a good time shooting up the place that it's hard to begrudge him it (although Vastra certainly does: "Strax! You're overexcited. Have you been eating Miss Jenny's sherbet fancies again?" "...No..." Strax replies guiltily).
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| Jenny helps the semi-preserved Doctor. ("The Crimson Horror") ©BBC |
This leads to the main storyline, where it's immediately evident that Dame Rigg is having an utter whale of a time as Mrs. Gillyflower, relishing the opportunity to play such a black-and-white villain -- Gatiss makes it clear that Mrs. Gillyflower is utterly convinced of the rightness of her scheme, which means she gets to be delightfully villainous without having to worry about being misunderstood or anything like that. The best scene might be her confrontation with the Doctor ("Mrs Gillyflower, you have no idea what you are dealing with," the Doctor tells her. "In the wrong hands, that venom could wipe out all life on this planet." "Do you know what these are?" Mrs. Gillyflower replies, holding out her hands. "The wrong hands!" she cackles), but even moments with her daughter Ada (played by Rigg's real-life daughter Rachael Stirling, in their first professional show together) are wonderful, even as she cruelly rejects her daughter -- the daughter, we later learn, that she herself blinded. And there's the bizarre relationship she has with the primeval red leech that's producing the venom that leads to the Crimson Horror, which Rigg plays to the hilt.
Really, it's hard to come up with anything that doesn't really work here -- everyone is fully committed, and the script sparkles the whole way through with cleverness and wit, and even the silly jokes (the way Mr. Thursday faints every time he sees something unusual, Strax receiving directions from "Thomas Thomas") bring a smile to the face, even as they make you groan a bit. The only issue is the very end, where we suddenly have to have a lead-in for the next story, with the kids Clara babysits threatening to reveal her secret (that she's a time traveller) to their dad if she doesn't take them with him (is that remotely the sort of threat that has any hope of working? All they have as evidence is photos that Clara could simply claim were Photoshopped), and this hardly feels like Gatiss's fault. So therefore a great script, fabulous performances, and thankfully no subtexts to worry about means that "The Crimson Horror" is Mark Gatiss's best episode yet.
And what do you know? Fandom agrees with me: Doctor Who Magazine's recent First 50 Years poll has it as the highest ranked of Gatiss's six stories to date -- 83 of 241.