Victorian Values: The Crimson Horror

Okay, first of all, I have a confession to make: I really don't care for the Paternoster Gang, so their presence in this episode didn't exactly thrill me. I mean, I think Vastra's got some great insights into the Doctor's character,  and Strax is rather amusing, but the whole Victorian inter-species lesbians thing feels gimmicky at times.  And you can all yell at me for this if you want--I'm already stressed out enough with finals that it won't make my days much worse--but I have moral objections to homosexuality and bestiality.* Not to mention that my elementary-age brother likes to watch with me, and I don't want to explain why a lizard is calling a normal girl her "wife."  As individual characters, they're okay, though I'm not sure how Jenny learned martial arts in 19th-century London--did we really need a helping of Action Female?

I think this was meant to be the Doctor-lite episode of the series, but I'm not sure how well it played out. The Paternoster Gang did a good job of getting to the action, but Clara didn't really seem to jell in her roll. Okay, so anyone could get dipped in prehistoric venom and be put out of commission for most of the episode--it happened to the Doctor too--but I thought that Ada had a much more interesting connection with the Doctor, protecting him from her mother, calling him her "monster"--which brings back the Hide quote about "every lonely monster needs a companion." I kinda hoped the Doctor would stick around for a while and make sure she was okay.

And finally, the ending was funny and I'm looking forward to seeing Eleven with more kids--seriously, he's wonderful with kids--but did nobody consider that the pictures of Clara could have been faked? Even if the kids were convinced, Clara could have done a better job of throwing them off the track. And seriously, would their dad believe them anyway?

*in speculative settings, near-human races don't count, but certain humanoid ones would.  So in LOTR, elf/human,  human/hobbit, would be normal, but human/orc would be bestiality.