Last week Clara had a tiny tour of the inside of the TARDIS, she also found out the "mystery" surrounding her and then..... Everything was restarted and she can't remember it.
What'll happen this week when they go back to Victorian England?
***SPOILER***
It starts with scary ladies, dead red men and a fainting man coming to find Vestra.
It turns out that in Yorkshire dead bodies glowing red have been turning up so the Paternoster gang go to investigate. They send Jenny into find out what is happening.
During a meeting with Winifreed Gillyflower, Jenny finds out that she is making a home for people to survive a coming apolcolypse, she's named it Sweetville. When Jenny goes to join Sweetville she sneeks into the backrooms where she comes face to face with gramophones pouring out loud industrial sounds.
A little more sneaking about and Jenny finds a prisoner, a red glowing prisoner. When she unlocks the doors she finds that it is the Doctor all red and stiff. Whilst they escape Mrs Gillyflowers daughter who we met at the meeting and is blind finds out the Doctor has escaped. It seems that she was the one that put the Doctor in the prison but it doesn't seem a malicious reason as she calls him a monster like she calls herself.
Vestra and Strax have both returned to London to gather information and Strax is his usual wonderful Strax self! To be fair I should probably rewatch the episode soon as I missed a lot of the dialogue in their scenes hence why I haven't really written about them.
Back to Jenny and after seeing people being dunked in red goo, the Doctor thaws himself out and kisses her he mentions Clara. This obviously confuses Jenny, the last time Jenny saw Clara she had died. Cue flashback scene where Clara and the Doctor (in period costume!) arrive in Yorkshire, run into people fishing the "Crimson Horror" bodies out of the canal, trick their way into Sweetville and get captured they get the red goo treatment. Whereas the Doctor turns red (and is meant to die but doesn't) Clara just gets made into some kind of perfect dummy.
We come back to the present (after seeing Gillyflower Jr leading the Doctor to the cell and keeping him there to keep him safe) and the only question Jenny really has is "isn't Clara dead?"
Meanwhile Strax is lost and meets a boy called Thomas Thomas. Ohhh the laughs! He tries to kill his horse too "Horse you have failed at your mission we are lost".
Gillyflower pretty much disowns her daughter and leaves her there, apparently she isn't perfect enough for her mother. The Doctor and Jenny find and save Clara but have to battle their way through the "models" thankfully Vestra and Strax show up in time to help. Obviously there are some questions, quickly avoided by the Doctor, about Clara, but we are soon back to the point at hand. "A Chimney without smoke"...
In the flashback we found out that the red goo is actually a venom made by a prehistoric creature, well that goo is about to be sent into the atmosphere and infect people by air. The Doctor leaves Vestra and Jenny to sort out the problem at that end and run off to Gillyflower Jr. The Doctor figures out what happened to her and takes her to her mother.
It turns out her "silent partner" Mr Sweet is actually one of those prehistoric creatures and it has latched onto Gillyflowers chest. The Doctor confronts her about experimenting on her daughter and after some quick dialogue and Gillyflower Jr attacking her mum with her walking stick Gillyflower takes her daughter hostage and runs off to let of the rocket with the poison.
Safe to say Vestra and Jenny have taken the poison so all Gillyflower does is set off a giant rocket that explodes, and after Strax shoots at her and she falls to her death Mr Sweet gets a beating from her daughter!
When Clara goes home she finds a laptop open with photos of her from some of her adventures (DAVID WARNER!) the kids she's been looking after have sussed her out and demand to be taken with her.
Unfortunately for them their episode is being written by Neil Gaiman, so it won't be a walk in the park for them.... Not that it ever is (says the girl watching Earthshock whilst finishing this review).
This episode is probably my favorite other than Cold War from this series. It full filled its promise of a good adventure. It had the Paternoster gang who I adore and a very small amount of Clara.
Now I love Clara 99% of the time but she doesn't seem to gel with the stories, a lot of the time when something is happening (Gillyflowers daughter hitting her, last week with the big reveal of who the android was etc) she looks like us. She doesn't emotionally react to anything around her, which I don't get. The thing is that they close up on her face in these scenes and she just looks... Bored. If there was one thing I adored about Amy Pond it was that she really felt for everything and everyone she met. Clara does but then there are some moments that it seems the director forgot she was there or meant to be there. She doesn't seem to get involved in anything but the action.
But I don't think that has anything to do with Jenna who has been brilliant.
The show was really stolen by Jenny though this week, as well as the Gillyflowers. Before now Jenny has been very two dimensional, I can't say I adored her like Strax and Vestra but this episode gave her the lead and it was a wonderful change, she went from bad ass side kick to wonderful sleuth! The Gillyflowers were wonderful though, mummy being wonderfully creepy all show long and daughter being so lovely you just had to feel for her. Matt was really subdued this episode as was Dan Starkey (Strax) there was much less comedy (even though there was comedy there) and I think it helped the episode.
The story was good, to be honest I had to battle with people talking over it at times but it was solid. Unlike the last few episodes were it felt like the ending was tacked on, even though this ending was kind of a set up for next week it really wasn't tacked on like some of the endings (especially Hide, last week was more along the lines of just being terrible). I loved the fact that Clara was in Victorian clothing, made everything feel a little more special and I think Mark Gatiss is wonderful at writing the time period.
It was a nice solid story with a decent beginning, middle and end which has been missing a lot this series (or half a series as series 7a was wonderful!) even though the stories have been strong the last half of the episodes have felt rushed and sometimes silly.
Next week we have Cybermen and Neil Gaiman. Good times ahead!
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