I feel like The Crimson Horror gets a lot of flack, but honestly I love it. Admittedly, it does have my least favourite moment in Doctor Who ever (that oh so hilarious moment when the Doctor literally assaults a married lesbian), but if I fast forward through that bit and ignore the sonic screwdriver erection joke shortly afterwards, it's one of my favourites in series 7.
I love that for the first 15 minutes or so, the main characters are essentially the Patternoster gang, and honestly I think they could have increased that even further. They each bring something to the team, and even Strax gets to use his gun a few times, and I love just how delighted he is about that.
It's an episode that doesn't take itself seriously (Thomas Thomas, for example) and so just gets on with being ridiculous, campy fun. I'm not a huge fan of the Doctor's tone of humorous delivery in this era, but I think it actually works in the context of this episode.
On top of that, you get a really dark undercurrent of this abusive mother who's also a eugenicist, which manages to hit both poignant and humorous notes successfully. Diana Rigg is clearly having a lot of fun as a villain (and I love the Emma Peel homage when Jenny gets into her fighting suit), and I just adore Rachel Stirling. She brings the note of poignancy of an abused daughter, that manages not to feel out of place in this otherwise gloriously campy and over the top episode. She and her mother are very believable as mother and daughter, because they actually are, and it's a delight to see.
This post doesn't have a lot of point to it. I just watched the episode and really enjoyed myself. I'm not saying it should go down as a masterpiece, but I do think it's highly enjoyable and criminally underrated.
