1. The Crimson Horror - Eugh!
I was kind of expecting this one to not be as good as the last, mainly due to the obvious pattern I could see in the Gatiss episodes, but I wasn't expecting a bad episode like this. It felt like it was an arc episode written by Russell T Davies rather than a usually dark, sinister and vaguely amusing entry that you'd expected from Gatiss. Everyone was incredibly hammy and over the top including Diana Rigg and the problem of the dark humor being executed poorly is amped up to about 10. This honestly felt like a parody episode, there is credence and credibility in here. I do like Vastra and Jenny and even Strax and Gatiss does do their character's justice to an extent (minus the Thomas Thomas nonsense). But Clara barely does anything and Smith's Doctor appears to be his most out of character in this episode when he tried to kiss Jenny and gets a slap in the face, (that's something Ten would do, not Eleven). If this was intended to be a backdoor pilot for a spin off, I don't think Gatiss is the right person for that job. Where this episode fails in the plot, it's incredibly generic and weakly executed and it suffers from a rushed ending like all series 7 episodes did (if you want a movie of the week series, make the episodes long enough to tell the story they need to). Overall this one is probably Gatiss's worst, it is bad but there is still greatness in here, it's mainly the plot and the way it's executed that doesn't work. Overall conclusion: As a whole although Gatiss is polarizing, for every bad episode he writes a good one to counter it. It is very hard to tell why these problems in his bad episodes occur, for all we know it could be the direction or the show runners edits. However with all that is said and done, even in his worst episodes have something to like in them. I actually think that once Steven Moffat steps down then Gatiss should at least be given a shot at running the show. We've had writers that can write cracking episodes turn out to be not so good show runners. Who's to say that the only problem with Gatiss might be the very opposite? He clearly does some amazing work on Sherlock and he's the co-writer on that show. He clearly understands the show and has a passion for it. If I was working for the BBC I'd at least consider Gatiss as the next show runner, for all we know we could be pleasantly surprised.