NuWho Rewatch: The Crimson Horror
Jan. 23rd, 2016 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI want to like The Crimson Horror. It has Diana Rigg in it, Madame Vastra and her gang, and the plot holds together pretty well, but somehow I can't get over feeling it's all a bit over-the-top and has too much of the grotesque.
Having written that, I then almost instantly want to compare to the Sixth Doctor era. Especially since Revelation of the Daleks (arguably the best story of the era) is also over-the-top and grotesque and another story I don't personally like very much. I feel The Crimson Horror has less to admire though - Eric Saward was pursuing a particular vision of a world in which there are no heroes, one in fact where heroic gestures most often merely lead to pointless death - while The Crimson Horror feels more like someone decided to throw Victorian Gothic, and Hammer Horror around more or less at random and see what resulted.
I also think the level of humour sits awkwardly with the rest of the story. I can see that, on the page, linking a slightly Hammer aesthetic with several comedic sequences ought to have worked, but I have a suspicion that over-the-top gothic horror works better when played completely straight with the audience allowed to find its own humour in the sheer outrageousness of the whole thing. The Tom-Tom joke in The Crimson Horror is particularly painful. I had to explain it at length to The Child who, even once she'd grasped it was a SatNav joke, kept demanding to know what it was doing in the story. She was not impressed.
All that said, it is difficult to find a lot to criticise here. The performances are good. The plot makes sense, at least by its own gothic standards. The use of flashbacks, and starting the story in the middle works surprisingly well. Even the unwanted kiss between Eleven and Jenny is more a failing of the era as a whole, than of this story in particular. Still, I it's not a story I find I like much and the best I can say is that my dislike may not really be the episode's fault. Since the story isn't really trying to do anything beyond entertain, it's difficult to even say I can appreciate it even where I don't much like it.
Addendum: Over Christmas The Child discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer. NuWho viewing has slowed considerably as a result.
Having written that, I then almost instantly want to compare to the Sixth Doctor era. Especially since Revelation of the Daleks (arguably the best story of the era) is also over-the-top and grotesque and another story I don't personally like very much. I feel The Crimson Horror has less to admire though - Eric Saward was pursuing a particular vision of a world in which there are no heroes, one in fact where heroic gestures most often merely lead to pointless death - while The Crimson Horror feels more like someone decided to throw Victorian Gothic, and Hammer Horror around more or less at random and see what resulted.
I also think the level of humour sits awkwardly with the rest of the story. I can see that, on the page, linking a slightly Hammer aesthetic with several comedic sequences ought to have worked, but I have a suspicion that over-the-top gothic horror works better when played completely straight with the audience allowed to find its own humour in the sheer outrageousness of the whole thing. The Tom-Tom joke in The Crimson Horror is particularly painful. I had to explain it at length to The Child who, even once she'd grasped it was a SatNav joke, kept demanding to know what it was doing in the story. She was not impressed.
All that said, it is difficult to find a lot to criticise here. The performances are good. The plot makes sense, at least by its own gothic standards. The use of flashbacks, and starting the story in the middle works surprisingly well. Even the unwanted kiss between Eleven and Jenny is more a failing of the era as a whole, than of this story in particular. Still, I it's not a story I find I like much and the best I can say is that my dislike may not really be the episode's fault. Since the story isn't really trying to do anything beyond entertain, it's difficult to even say I can appreciate it even where I don't much like it.
Addendum: Over Christmas The Child discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer. NuWho viewing has slowed considerably as a result.