Inspirations: The Crimson Horror

It helps to know what interests Mark Gatiss when considering the inspirations behind this story. 

He loves Dickens, and Victoriana in general. He loves horror movies - especially the old Universal Monsters and Hammer Horrors. He loves classic supernatural fiction, of the likes of M R James, Bram Stoker and E F Benson. He loves the Gothic. He loves Sherlock Holmes. And he's a big Pertwee era fan.

In recent years he has been the instigator of the annual "A Ghost Story for Christmas" strand on the BBC. He has presented a pair of documentaries for BBC Four on the horror movie genre - a general one and a specifically European one. He has presented another BBC Four documentary on Dracula.

He adapted Dickens' A Christmas Carol for the stage a couple of years ago, in which he played the part of Jacob Marley's ghost.

He and Steven Moffat sang the praises of the Third Doctor era in a special documentary for one of the Collection Blu-ray sets.

And of course his very first contribution to the series was 2005's The Unquiet Dead, which was inspired by a lot of the above.

Why the mention of the Pertwee era? Think about another story set in a small industrial community, in which people turn up dead with their skin a bright shade of a colour it most certainly ought not to be...

Gatiss toyed with the idea of calling this "The Red Death", in tribute to The Green Death (and possibly as a nod to Poe, Vincent Price and Roger Corman).

It's this which then led to the final title of The Crimson Horror - the word "Horror" having often been used to describe a particularly lurid and bloodthirsty event by the popular press. Newspapers in 1888 had referred to the "Whitechapel Horror" in relation to the Jack the Ripper killings. The Penny Dreadfuls - cheap mass produced books which generally dealt with shocking material - knew that the word on the cover would attract readers of a more morbid fascination.

In The Wedding of River Song Gatiss had played, under a pseudonym, the character of Gantok. The alias he used was Rondo Haxton - a tribute to the actor Rondo Hatton who appeared in a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film as the "Hoxton Creeper". Hatton featured in a couple of horror films as well, in one of which he reprised the "Creeper". Madam Vastra, of the Paternoster Gang, is a consulting detective akin to Sherlock Holmes - the subject of Gatiss & Moffat's big TV hit.

Gatiss also toyed with the idea of making this Celebrity Historical by having the Doctor meet Arthur Conan Doyle. He had studied medicine and qualified as an ophthalmic surgeon - which led to the idea of people seeing the image of the last thing they saw on the eye. This is known as an optogram. It's generally regarded as folk myth though a 19th Century scientist discovered that there is a chemical in the eye which can act like developing solution used by photographers. The Doctor had talked about this in The Ark in Space.

The Holmes story The Adventure of the Gold Pince-Nez mentions "the repulsive tale of the red leech" - one of those unwritten tales, like the Giant rat of Sumatra.

The ghoulish mortuary attendant is clearly based on the one played by Roy Hudd in The Blood Beast Terror (1968). It's the film Peter Cushing once described as his worst, and features Doctor Who alumni Wanda Ventham and Kevin Stoney amongst its cast.

The way Matt Smith plays the "rouged" Doctor, and the friendship which forms between him and Ada is surely inspired by the Frankenstein Monster. You'll recall that he makes friends with a blind hermit, and she even calls the Doctor her "monster".

We ought to repeat the "Red Death" thing, as The Masque of the Red Death is regarded as the best of the Vincent Price / Roger Corman AIP horrors, based (loosely) on one of Edgar Allen Poe's most famous works.

Gatiss' interests overlap so much with those of Robert Holmes (dark deeds in Victorian times, based on horror films / book). It's noticeable that the two most (only?) popular Gatiss Doctor Who stories are the ones which delve into these genres. The rest, for me, are pretty poor. 

(If you come back, Mark, stick to Holmesian territory - be it Sherlock or Robert...).

An earlier idea Gatiss had for a story was titled "Mother's Ruin" - a nickname for gin, which used to be drunk like water in Georgian and early Victorian times (because it was cheap and usually healthier than the water supply). There were riots when taxes were increased and prices rose. Hogarth produced a famous engraving called "Gin Alley", which showed many of the hazards of drunkenness amongst the lower classes, like a woman dropping her baby and hardly noticing.

This led to thoughts of the Victorian Temperance Movement, which was to manifest itself in Mrs Gillyflower's moral crusade.

The Salvation Army, founded by William Booth in July 1865, would appear to be another influence here.

(It should be noted that the hymn - Jerusalem - sung in the episode at the gathering is anachronistic. That musical arrangement of Blake's words came later).

Getting Dame Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachel Stirling together to play Gillyflower mere et fille arose from Gatiss acting in a play with the former Avenger.

It should be noted that, once again, Jenny is presented in a very Emma Peel manner when it comes to a fight.

Mr Sweet was named after Gatiss' friend Matthew Sweet - he of the excellent in-depth interviews on the Blu-ray sets.

The model village "Sweetville" was inspired by Saltaire, near Bradford in Yorkshire. This was founded in 1851 by industrialist Titus Salt - and salt just happens to be what Mrs Gillyflower feeds to her parasite friend.

One of the best jokes in modern Doctor Who is the little boy by the name of Thomas Thomas giving precise directions to Strax - Tom-Tom being a GPS sat-nav system. I laughed.

The Doctor mentions once having to get a gobby Australian to Heathrow Airport - a reference to Tegan Jovanka. At one point he says "Brave heart, Clara".

Finally, Clara gets home to find that the kids have managed to find lots of photographs of her from earlier stories. That's definitely one for the "What's Wrong With..." post for this story.

Next time: If you thought that Gareth Roberts was the author of the worst ever Cyberman story, think again. Neil Gaiman (if we're still allowed to mention him) proves that he is just as capable of writing garbage as the next person...