Doctor Who Recap: “The Crimson Horror”

by Sarabeth Pollock:

Doctor Who Recap: “The Crimson Horror”
Original Air Date (BBC/BBC America): Saturday May 4, 2013
Season 7 Episode 11

Yorkshire, England.  1893.  Edmond tells his frightened wife that if he doesn’t return within an hour, she’s to call for the police.  They must get to the bottom of this “queer” business.  With a final kiss, he turns and walks down the dim hallway toward the door with the circular window that’s oozing red light.  Again with the red light.  He pauses at the threshold to give his beloved a parting glance, then he goes inside.  Almost immediately, a group of women dressed in black enter the hallway.  The oldest woman, Mrs. Gillyflower, offers her condolences at the loss of the young woman’s husband.  The young woman seems nervous around these women and she stammers that her husband is fine…and that’s when we hear the scream coming from the hallway.  “I’m so sorry,” Gillyflower says.  We hear the young woman scream as the camera pans away.

At the morgue, the medical examiner makes crude jokes at the expense of the uncomfortable man come to view the latest victim of the mysterious “crimson horror” case.  The medical examiner pulls back the white sheet with flair, revealing a body that’s as red as a sunburned lobster.  The face, however, is locked in an expression of pure horror.  The man reveals that this is his brother, and he’s there to claim the body and return home to London.

The man ends up in the garden conservatory seeking counsel from Silurian Madame Vastra and her wife, Jenny Flint.  He believes that his brother, who worked for the newspaper, was investigating something prior to his death.  He asks Vastra if she believes in the process whereby a photograph can be taken of the last thing a human eye saw prior to death.  When she balks at the myth, he hands her a photograph.  Jenny takes one look and hands it to Vastra, who pulls back her veil in shock.  The poor grieving man has had quite enough and, upon seeing Vastra’s Silurian lizard face, faints dead away.  In the darkroom, she and Jenny develop more photos.  The last photo is a close-up of the eye, and when Jenny sees it, she proposes that they take a trip north.  In the picture, the image burned into the deceased Edmond’s eyeball is a picture of the Doctor.

Vastra, Jenny and Sontaran Strax ride in the carriage on their way to the North.  Vastra shares that the proprietor of Sweetville, Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower, does heavy recruiting for her private community and she prefers young, beautiful people.  Strax is pleased to have been selected for the job, but Vastra informs him that she’s really talking about Jenny.  If that’s the case, he counters, then the “boy” should be heavily armed for the task.  Why?  Well, they are heading to the North, he points out.  Silly British humor.

Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower, it turns out, is running an informational lecture on the impending moral apocalypse.  Jenny listens as Gillyflower describes how her husband blinded her daughter.  As the audience gasps, the curtain drops and a young woman is sitting on stage.  When she turns around, her eyes are milky white and her face is scarred.  The woman stands up and walks across the stage to a poster covered by a drape.  As her mother offers the audience a safe haven from the juggernaut of the apocalypse, the blind girl, Ada, uncovers the board and reveals a picture of Sweetville.  They sing.  Jenny looks on.  When the time comes to sign up to become a Sweetville resident, Mrs. Gillyflower sees Jenny as an ideal candidate.  Outside the meeting, Strax asks how Jenny will manage to summon the Doctor.  Vastra replies that she will go through every locked door, sneak in to every crevice of the place.  “Business as usual, then,” Strax comments.  Agreed.

Sweetville looks like a combination of Versailles and Buckingham Palace.  Inside, Blind girl takes a plate of food up a flight of stairs, and then she slides it under a locked door, muttering under her breath to the “monster.”

Mr. Thursday, Edmond’s brother, arrives at Madame Vastra’s residence for an update.  He faints as soon as he sees Strax.  Strax brings him inside and Vastra speculates that he’s there for an update on his brother’s case.  The question is how the Doctor’s image was emblazoned on a dead man’s eye.  It’s not scientifically possible. She wonders how Jenny is getting along.  Strax proposes a full frontal assault on the compound if Jenny hasn’t made contact by nightfall.  At Vastra’s dubious gaze, he clarifies that casualties could be kept to a minimum….

Meanwhile, Jenny waits in a line with another woman, Abigail, whose neighbor already came to Sweetville.  Abigail frets over her bad teeth and tells Jenny that her neighbor loves Sweetville.  She’d sent a letter right after she got there, but oddly enough she hasn’t heard from her since.  As the line starts moving, Jenny pulls out her kit and starts to pick the lock on the mill door.  She gives Abigail money to cause a distraction, and when she swoons, Jenny slips inside.  She runs into a massive room where phonographs play the most horrid noises as loudly as possible.  Jenny ducks behind one as men walk past carrying baskets.

Vastra pays a visit to the local medical examiner, who seems to also be an apothecary of some kind.  He knows she’s there about the so-called Crimson Horror, and when he produces a bottle full of red liquid, she realizes that she’s seen these symptoms before.  Long ago.  The man asks how long.  She turns and faces him, revealing her scaly face.  “About sixty-five million years,” she tells him.

Mrs. Gillyflower sits at the dinner table with her daughter.  She’s hunched over her soup while her daughter’s posture is very rigid.  Ada asks if Mr. Sweet will ever join then for dinner.  Gillyflower says he’s a busy man, and then she knocks over the salt shaker as a distraction.  The servant behind Ada nods and leaves the room while Gillyflower fiddles with something inside the collar of her dress.

Jenny has found the dark corridor where Edmond lost his life.  The red light is still glowing menacingly from the round window.  Jenny peers inside, eyes wide, and then she hears growling from the other end of the hall.  She finds the staircase that Ada went up earlier.  When she comes across the locked door, she makes an arrangement with the strange monster inside.  If it agrees not to harm her, she’ll get it out.  When she opens the door, she’s shocked to find the Doctor inside.  He’s wearing plain white long underwear and his skin is red and he creaks like a wooden doll when he moves.  His clothes are in a pile on the ground and he’s in shackles.  And he can’t talk.  She hurries to free him, and then she helps him back down the corridor.  At that precise moment, Ada comes in with food for the “monster.”  She doesn’t notice Jenny and the Doctor, but she panics when she realizes the door to the monster’s chamber is open.  It’s worth noting that she seems to care about the monster.

Jenny and the Doctor enter the red room and find that it leads to a factory where people are dipped in the boiling red goo that we saw earlier.  The Doctor wants to go into a metal closet of some kind, so Jenny pushes him inside with his pile of clothing.  He takes out the sonic screwdriver and once the door is closed, a green light fills the window.  Moments later, our Doctor emerges. “Miss me?” he asks.  He pulls Jenny into a passionate embrace and she slaps him.  He tells her she can’t possibly know how good that felt.  Then he tells her he doesn’t know how long he was like that, but for now they have to stop Mrs. Gillyflower and find Clara.  Jenny, of course, doesn’t know who Clara is.

We flash back to the Doctor’s arrival in Yorkshire with Clara.  They’re both dressed for the period, 1893.  Apparently they didn’t arrive exactly when he’d promised, but he points out the accuracy of the TARDIS has improved greatly.  I think we can all agree about that.  A woman’s scream interrupts them.  “Brave heart, Clara,” he whispers. She grins and they run off in the direction of the scream.  There is a crowd gathered on a bridge looking at a body in the canal.  A man begs for people to listen to him.  He knows what is going on but no one will hear him.  The Doctor will listen, though.  The man turns out to be Edmond, and as a journalist he has determined that there is a connection with the bodies.  They go to the medical examiner’s office and the Doctor studies the woman’s red body.  He tells Clara about the technique of lifting an image from a dead person’s eye, but it can only really work if the deceased’s cellular makeup has been altered.  Judging by her color, I’d say we can check that one off.  Edmond takes them to Sweetville and explains that Gillyflower is an engineer who opened a match factory.  Why would she do that?  And it’s said that whoever goes in never comes out.

Of course, the Doctor and Clara go in and meet Gillyflower, who is most charmed by the Doctor and Mrs. Smith.  Clara gives the Doctor a look at his introduction, but he ignores her and puts an arm around his “missus” and they go on tour.  The tour, however, doesn’t last long.  After Mrs. Gillyflower explains that Sweetville is named for her “silent partner” Mr. Sweet, she shows the Doctor and Clara a room.  Inside is a couple sitting in a giant bell jar, but it’s a trap.  People in black rush them and capture them.  Next we see them being dipped into the vat of red goo.  Then Gillyflower inspects her newest “batch” and tells her daughter to dispose of the reject.  That reject happens to be the Doctor, and instead of throwing him into the river, Blind Girl feels him grasp her hand and she decides to save him as her “secret,” so she locks him away in the tower, telling him that sometimes Mr. Sweet’s recipe doesn’t work so well.  The Doctor is in his cell when Edmond charges in and dies at his feet.

Back in the present, the Doctor tells Jenny that the red stuff didn’t work on him because he’s not human, but it’s a highly toxic compound.  They need to find Clara.  Jenny is confused, believing that Clara is dead.  Yeah, that’s kind of a long story….

Strax is trying to guide the carriage to Sweetville but the horse has stopped.  Sighing, he tells the horse that he has failed in his mission.  Just as he’s about to blast the horse with his giant ray gun, a little boy gives him directions with alarming detail.  He sounds like a GPS device.  Wait a minute.  His says his name is Thomas Thomas.  Tom Tom.  GPS.  I get it.  Funny British humor again…. Strax welcomes him onboard the carriage and off they go.

The Doctor goes looking for Clara while trying to explain to Jenny that Clara isn’t really dead, but they’re not really talking about the same Clara anyway.  It’s complicated, he admits.  They go into one of the rooms and find a couple posed under one of the bell jar things.  It’s Clara.  The Doctor smashes the glass.

Back in the secret monster chamber, Ada is sobbing when her mother comes in and finds her sitting on the ground.  She admits that she’s been keeping a secret.  She tells her mother she has developed feelings for one of the rejects, but the fact that he survived the process must mean that he’s strong.  Gillyflower is very disappointed, and when her daughter begs to be taken to the beautiful new world her mother is creating, Gillyflower coldly replies that there’s no place for imperfection in the world that she’s creating with Mr. Sweet.

The Doctor and Jenny wait to see if they can reverse the damage done by the red goo.  That’s when they’re interrupted by Gillyflower’s pilgrims in black.  Great, the Doctor sighs.  It’s the “supermodels.”  Before he can think up a plan, Jenny casts off her black gown and reveals her leather fighting suit underneath.  She takes out the first three men to attack with a grin on her face.  But the rest of the supermodels have bats, so the Doctor suggests they run.  That’s when Strax arrives with his ray gun, and he blasts them away.  Strax is excited by the action and proposes multiple methods of continuing the assault, but he is sent outside to wait with the carriage.  He walks away like a petulant child.  Vastra suggests that they leave quickly, but he says they can’t go until they’re finished.  He opens the chamber and Clara falls into his arms.  He caresses her face when she opens her eyes.  She looks at him and pokes his nose, and then she realizes they aren’t alone.  There’s trouble, the Doctor tells her.  “And she’s a lizard.”

Vastra points out that her people never did anything as damaging as the humans have done to each other.  But she knows about the Crimson Horror, only to her people it’s known as the Red Liege.  It’s a parasite that will destroy the host.  The question is how will Gillyflower use it?  Clara speaks up, but the Doctor shushes her while he tries to come up with a theory.  She grabs his shoulders and says that the chimney isn’t blowing any smoke.  And Gillyflower kept talking about the horror raining down on everyone.  The Doctor grins.  “Miss me?” she asks.  He kisses her forehead.  The group makes their way to the main boiler room.  They find the giant chimney and the workers who are preparing to dump the giant vial of red goo into the chamber to release the poison into the air.

Mrs. Gillyflower sits down at the organ and hits a few keys.  The organ spins around to reveal a giant console.

The Doctor and Clara encounter Ada weeping in the hallway.  Once she realizes who he is, she tells him that her mother said she’s not desirable enough to be chosen.  The Doctor asks if she can tell him who Mr. Sweet is, but even now Ada doesn’t want to betray her mother.  The Doctor grabs her hand and tells her that she needs to know what is going on.

Clara and the Doctor encounter Mrs. Gillyflower in her chambers.  He tells her who he really is and lets her know that she’s “nuts.”  He prods her to reveal who Mr. Sweet it.  Gillyflower says that he’s always around.  But why would they need to control people using ancient leech juice, he presses.  That’s when she informs them that her relationship with Mr. Sweet is “symbiotic.”  She rips off her collar to reveal a little lobster thing attached to her chest.

In the factory, Vastra and Jenny move into position.

Gillyflower explains that she found Mr. Sweet and he taught her everything she needed to know.  As she talks, she feeds him little red berry things.  The Doctor tells her that the red goo could potentially destroy humanity if it fell into the wrong hands.  She holds up her hands, proclaiming them wrong ones, and she goes to the console and flips a switch that lights up the chimney.  That’s when the Doctor starts asking questions about Ada.  He says that Ada’s injuries are not consistent with an accident.  He believes that Gillyflower experimented with her.  Gillyflower confirms this, saying she had to find the proper antidote.  Ada is outside listening and she charges her mother angrily, beating her with her cane.  Clara uses a chair to smash the console, which turns the lights off.  Just when things look to be safe once again, Gillyflower puts a gun to Ada’s head and uses her as a shield to sneak away.  The Doctor uses Clara’s smashing technique to break a window so they can follow.

Gillyflower tells the workers to prepare the toxin.  The Doctor and Clara chase her to the chimney tower, where she has placed a secondary launch mechanism.  She pushes Ada down the stairs to the Doctor and pulls the trigger, which launches the giant chimney.  The giant chimney, as it turns out, was a giant rocket.  The only thing Gillyflower didn’t count on was the fact that Vastra and Jenny stopped the poison from being loaded into the rocket.  Defeated, gillyflower aims her gun at the Doctor, vowing to at least take him out.  That’s when Strax fires down at her from above.  She loses her grip on the railing and plunges to the floor.  As she lay dying, she calls out for Ada, who does not offer forgiveness to her mother as she dies.  Mr. Sweet detaches from Gillyflower and crawls across the floor in search of a new host.  Just as the Doctor proposes taking him back to his own time period, Ada smashes him with her cane.

Outside, the Doctor promises to take Clara to London, but she’s done with the Victorian era.  “You’re the boss,” he tells her.  “Am I?” she teases, stepping into the TARDIS.  Ada assures the Doctor that she’s ready to step into the light, and she tells him that an educated lady like herself will be just fine.  He bids adieu to Vastra, Strax and Jenny and jumps back into the TARDIS just as poor Mr. Thursday walks up to see about any progress on his brother’s case.  The TARDIS dematerializes and he faints dead away.

Clara returns to her house in the present day.  The security monitor shows the TARDIS leaving.  Everything in the house is cheery and bright.  That’s when she sees the laptop on the kitchen table.  There are pictures of her from 1983 aboard a Russian sub, in 1974 in a haunted house, and in Victorian London.  The kids walk in and accuse her of being a time traveler.  That is her in those pictures, that much they’re sure of, and they also recognize her boyfriend.  She’s a time traveler, and unless she fesses up, they’re going to tell their dad that the nanny is a time traveler.

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I thought this episode was kind of slow.  I liked the hidden humor (Tom Tom), but I thought it was slow-paced compared to the previous episodes of the second half of the season.  And then the ending came.  Now I can’t wait for next week!

What did you all think?  Did anyone catch a reference to the Fifth Doctor?  Any Easter Eggs?

Until next week, Whovians!

Sarabeth Pollock is a contributor for DarkMedia. She covers True Blood, Doctor Who, and American Horror Story, as well as the True Blood comics and whatever movies and books happen to catch her fancy.  She’s an avid writer, reader, and pop culture fan, with interest in everything from True Blood to Doctor Who to Anne Rice to Deborah Harkness.  Follow her on Twitter at @SarabethPollock and check out her blog at http://sarabethpollock.wordpress.com