Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror Review

The Crimson Horror

And to think, I wasn’t looking forward to this one. How wrong can you be? This was an absolute corker. Mark Gatiss, who wrote the earlier corker “Cold War” produces the goods again.

I was ready to hate Strax – but he wins me over, he is a comedy character but he is let loose to be a proper warrior as well.

Perhaps the Victorian era is overly used in Nu-Who, but the Doc has a very solid reason to go there as part of the quest to figure out what/ who Clara is.

Our Silurian and her lady-friend are on good form investigating the weird goings-on, and actually rescuing the Doc (to some extent). Smith, as always, is on excellent form, and JLC finally gets a decent outing as Clara – bringing the sauciness and sassiness of her debut stories.

With Diana Rigg, we have a proper villain – a thoroughly nasty piece of work, perfectly willing to do nasty experiments on her own daughter (played by her actual real daughter, Rachael Stirling). Stirling is superb, blind, disfigured, abandoned yet still capable of compassion and fury. And Rigg is a villain to the end – as she dies she asks her daughter “Can you forgive me?” The daughter replies “never”. “That’s my girl,” says Mum with pride before her last gasp.

All that AND a sort of cliff-hanger/ lead-in to next week as the kids that Clara nannies for discover her time-travelling antics (although Clara seems bemused by the pic of her in Victorian London...) and insist she takes them along...

....along to meet the Cybermen in the next episode it seems..

And now, fanfic/ flashfic..

Consequences of Time – Episode 6

The wind stopped. “That’s better,” said the Doctor. He looked up, but didn’t let Graf go.

“What have you done?” grunted Graf, his voice muffled with his face in the snow.

The snow, which had obscured everything, was now settling. A dark shape ahead was materializing as the view became clearer.

“Your frozen terror,” said the Doctor, letting Graf raise his head.

“What is it?” he asked. The Doctor climbed off. Both men stood.

“No idea,” said the Doctor as he walked towards the large, black cube.

“STOP RIGHT THERE, OR DIE!” boomed a huge, electronic voice. The Doctor stopped.

Drabble a day-ish...

Hmm, a wonderful weekend of skiing (only slightly marred by the mountain being closed and no actual skiing taking place) got in the way of my drabble a day for Spec Fic NZ's blogging week. Plenty of others more than made up for my missing blogs (the link takes you to them), including a couple of very kind words about my story "Miramar is Possum Free" in the "A Foreign Country" anthology.

One of the blogs from the anthology editor, Anna Caro, has a link to an interview she did with Radio New Zealand about "A Foreign Country" which has a reading from my story - click on this link and find "A Foreign Country" in the list to download.

And today's drabble - slightly inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune, but quite a bit shorter...

Helah sat on the dune. His bionic eye spotted the rider long before his organic eye did. He scanned the rider’s bio-signature and lowered his gun.

Dura shouted as she rode up. “The messiah is with us.”

Helah looked back to the oasis. Ten thousand cyborg warriors awaited his command.

“New messiah, guys,” he shouted, “Let’s kick some ass!” There was a thundering of hooves and whine of motors. Within two weeks the heretics had been destroyed. Helah led his people back to the desert.

He sat on the dune. Dura was approaching. Another messiah would be with them soon.

I've been working my way through the anthology - and loving some terrific stories - I'll post some comments on some tomorrow (along with a hundred words of something...)