Right, I’ve just realised a pattern has emerged with the current run of Doctor Who.

• The Bells of St John – just OK.
• The Rings of Akhaten (aka the one with the singing) – loved it.
• Cold War (aka Ice Warrior on a Soviet submarine) – just OK.
• Hide (aka the haunted house episode) – loved it
• Journey to the Center of the Tardis – just OK
• The Crimson Horror…

Well, guess what? I thought this one was pretty smashing too. It’s written by Mark Gatiss and normally I put his episodes in the “just OK” camp. But he’s gone and done something special with this one.

First a brief story summary, hopefully avoiding big spoilers, but be careful anyway.

The episode starts not as an episode of Doctor Who, but more like an episode of Madame Vastra Investigates. Our favourite Silurian detective is brought north from London to Yorkshire to investigate some mysterious goings on at Diana Rigg’s utopian mill where people go in and never come out again. Except for the bright red bodies. Vastra has reason to believe the Doctor is involved and sends Jenny in undercover as a new recruit.

There is one moment I do want to mention here as it was wonderfully realised visually and audibly. Jenny is exploring the mill and heads to a door from which industrial sounds can be heard. She goes through and enters an empty factory space with some giant gramophone style speakers belting out recordings of the machines. It’s a fantastic image that will stick in my mind.

Jenny and Vastra eventually do find the Doctor, bright red but fortunately not deceased. He manages to get himself back to normal (i.e. not bright red) and he relates his involvement in the adventure. And an entertaining episode becomes even more entertaining because his flashback sequence is done in the style of an early piece of period film with added grain and noise and a sepia tone. It was a joy to watch.

Plus the Doctor references trying to get a “gobby Australian” back to Heathrow. “Brave heart, Clara,” he adds. The inner eleven year old that watched Peter Davison’s first series of the show was clapping his hands.

It’s also worth mentioning Rachael Stirling as Ada, Diana Rigg’s real life daughter playing Diana Rigg’s character’s daughter, if you know what I mean. She created a memorable and sympathetic character who had compassion for her “monster”. Put her on the list of character’s I’d like to see return.

Oh, there’s lots of great stuff in this one. In fact it’s so much above the level of the other Gatiss episodes that I wonder if he’s been held back from doing the stuff he really wanted to do until now.

Anyway, brilliant.

Next time, the Cybermen return. And Neil Gaiman is writing it. Even though, it’s going to be an odd-numbered episode and therefore I wonder if it will be “just OK”…

First of all I must acknowledge the fact that I did not write any comments on last week’s episode, Cold War, aka the one with the Ice Warrior on the submarine. I found the episode oddly uninvolving. I had looked forward to the return of a Pat Troughton monster and the Russian submarine stuff so it was a pity I was underwhelmed.

However bonus points do go to the casting of Liam Cunningham and David Warner. On a point of trivia Liam Cunningham was considered for the role of the Eighth Doctor back in the 1990s, and I am sure that David Warner’s name must have come up over the years as well.

But onto last night’s episode, Hide, Written by Neil Cross of Luther fame. Please be aware of spoilers below.

The Doctor and Clara arrive at a old country house in 1974 where a professor called Alec (played by Dougray Scott of Enigma) and his assistant Emma (played by Jessica Raine of Call the Midwife) are researching a ghost that has been seen at that location over hundreds of years. Right away I am receptive to this episode being set firmly in the time of Jon Pertwee’s tenure on the show and it is nice to see some good old fashioned tape decks and toggle switches. The house is suitable spooky and the atmosphere genuinely unsettling.

After an encounter with the ghost the Doctor decides to play a hunch and takes the Tardis back and then forwards in time on the precise spot so he can take photographs to assemble a slideshow. His nonchalance at visiting the formation of the Earth and zipping forward to its destruction unsettle Clara and she realises that “we’re all ghosts to you”. She asks the doctor if her body is buried somewhere out there. The Doctor uncomfortable allows that it probably is, avoiding the fact that she’s died twice already.

Back in 1974 the Doctor assembles his slideshow and we see images of a human woman running from something. The Doctor informs us that she is a time traveller who got caught in a pocket universe. Time is passing more slowly for her than in our universe. She’s been running for minutes but for us its thousands of years. Ultimately the doctor must go into the pocket universe and try to rescue her from that something.

I really enjoyed this episode. I put it down to the location, the period, the guest cast and a well written story. It has a good Petwee era vibe. A joke is made around the fact that in 1974 a companion is called an assistant. Neill cross makes some astute observations about the Doctor by comparing him to both war hero Alec and the something in the pocket universe. Meanwhile empath Emma warns Clara of the sliver of ice in the Doctor’s heart. We also discover the Doctor’s ulterior motive for meeting Emma.

If there is one thing that jars with me its Clara. I have to be brutally honest here and say that I found her a more interesting companion when she died at the end of every episode. A low point for me in this episode was her “Ghostbusters” joke at the start. Although she redeems herself slightly later on when witnessing the last days of Earth and getting a little upset.

But when all is said and done this is my favourite of the four episodes to date. On the strength of this one I hope Neill Cross returns to write many more.

I suspect that this episode will divide people. It’s either the biggest load of tosh or it’s brilliant. I’m really not sure which, but I do know I enjoyed it very much.

I’m not sure why. All the ingredients would suggest I not like it.

But I enjoyed it very much.

This is the first of two Neill Cross written episodes for this series, a writer I know from the very dark and twisted BBC cop show Luther. I was expecting something dark and twisted here, and my expectations were completely confounded.

As always I will try to avoid big spoilers.

Where to begin… Ok, the Doctor takes Clara to the titular Rings of Akhaten, a suitably science fiction-y location for the new companion’s second adventure. (Remember Rose got to see the end of the earth in five billion AD for example.)

They arrive on one of the many bits of rock orbiting a big red planet. (Or maybe it was a star. I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter.)

Clara encounters a scared little girl in a red robe who apparently is the Queen of Years. Clara helps her escape from whatever dreadful fate awaits her, only to discover the girl has to sing in a ceremony. No harm there surely, so Clara escorts the girl back to her minders.

The Doctor and Clara take their seats at he ceremony and enjoy the singing. For a while. There’s a fair bit of singing in this one. It was one of the bits I really should have hated but somehow found myself enjoying.

So all the nice alien folk are singing their god to sleep, because they don’t want him to wake up.

And of course…

In many ways there’s very little plot in this one. But I enjoyed it anyway. It was so ‘out there’ I just went with it and enjoyed the ride.

Towards the end Matt Smith does a Big Speech to the Angry God Thing that is very much from the school of Roy Batty along the line of “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”. Opinion seems to be divided over it being his best moment ever as the Doctor, or “really, a big speech again?” Still, he was good.

Watch out for the cool creepy guys who ensure that he ceremony happens.

In an early sequence we see the doctor effectively stalking Clara’s parents from their first meeting onwards. Clara’s leaf from her book in the last episode reappears and becomes an important McGuffin. I’m really not sure what’s going on with that leaf. Perhaps we will discover more about it later.

The Doctor also mentions to Clara that he visited the Rings of Akhaten before with his granddaughter. Might the show be preparing the way for the return of Susan in this 50th anniversary year?

Next week… Ice Warrior on a Cold War submarine! I’m there!

Well, I suppose it had to happen…

I’ve just discovered that a Doctor Who figurine collection is coming out. I don’t know when and I don’t know how many issues it will last (although given the fifty year history of the show, eleven doctors, countless companions and lots of monsters I’m thinking “lots”).

Find out more at www.dw-figurines.com.

I thought this Christmas episode was a bit more substantial than the previous Christmas episodes, most likely due to it being part of an ongoing story rather than the usual twee and glib nonsense that usually appears.

Spoilers follow.

So it’s Victorian times and the Doctor is retired and generally stalks about Pondless and unhappy. He meets sassy barmaid Clara who catches his attention with the alien snowmen she encounters. She follows the Doctor to a park and sees him disappear up a ladder. This leads to an entertaining sequence involving a spiral staircase that takes her up to the Tardis sitting on a magic cloud.

Now that I have typed that it makes it sound a bit, well, naff. But it was a magical little sequence. Doesn’t make a blind bit of sense but something about it appealed to me.

In Clara’s other guise as a posh governess we discover a frozen pond that is of interest to Richard E Grant’s doctor Simeon, a man who hears the voice of Ian McKellen when he talks to a big snow-globe.

The Doctor investigates Simeon in the guise of Sherlock Holmes. Expect a Doctor Who in-joke in the next series of Sherlock when it returns in 2019 for a one episode run.

Silurian Madam Vastra and her chums reappear from series 6. There’s a nice scene between Vasra and Clara where Clara has to answer every question with one word.

And here’s the spoiler.

While helping Clara escape from an ice creature, the Doctor – too busy showing off his new Tardis control room (well, it is very nice) – gets distracted enough to forget the door is open and allows said ice creature to pull Clara off his magic cloud and plummet to her doom. I did spend a good chunk of the episode wondering if it was the shortest run of a companion ever.

Eventually the Doctor makes the connection between Clara and soufflé-making Oswin from Asylum of the Daleks. The same girl has died twice. Impossible? A coda shows us another modern day Clara. So there are multiple Clara’s trout time and space and the doctor has to solve the mystery and give his new companion her key to the Tardis.

My theory, which will be wrong, is that she’s like Julian Glover’s character in City of Death, shattered through time and trying to get back together. You know, the Tom Baker story set in Paris? Except Clara won’t be a green alien with just one eye. Probably.

And in another interesting development it seems that Simons big snow-globe is actually the Great Intelligence from ye olde Patrick Troughton Abominable Snowmen/Yeti days.

So overall an enjoyable way to spend an hour and watching the spiral staircase bit again on the iPlayer.

Ah! A new Tardis control room set. And one that finally looks like a Tardis control room should. And roundels on the walls. Well, hexagonal roundels. And the Doctor in Victorian era garb.

Now, just give him a recorder and a 500 year diary and have done with it.