The second prequel minisode to The Snowmen continues to establish the three members of the Paternoster Gang.  The focus here is, very much, on Vastra and Jenny.  Strax is, in fact, hardly in it.  Although this is titled ‘Vastra Investigates’, the Silurian crime fighter actually does very little investigating.  We start the short sequence as a criminal is taken away by Strax whilst Vastra and Jenny have a conversation with Inspector Gregson.  He mentions aspects of the case – identical twins, undetectable poison and an ancient Egyptian curse; tantalising us with elements of the unseen adventure.  Vastra gets to be condescending and then proceeds to shock the Inspector with the revelation that she and Jenny are an item.  The story concludes with Jenny and Vastra travelling by cab through the snow – snow which concerns Vastra, as there is not a cloud in the sky.

The influence of Sherlock Holmes is even more obvious here than in the previous minisode.  Firstly, we have Inspector Gregson who is actually a character from the original Sherlock Holmes stories, appearing in stories such as A Study in Scarlet.  Apparently, in those stories, he is presented as quite a clever person, almost matching Holmes’ intellectual capacity.  However, the  Gregson in this prequel is very much in the mould of those inspectors we are used to in Holmesian stories where the ‘Great Detective’ condescends, patronises and generally belittles the detective skills of the local police force.  This version of Gregson actually gets to reappear later in the series in Deep Breath.

Part of the teasing of Gregson comes in the form of emphasising the relationship between Jenny and Vastra.  After some dialogue about Strax being Turkish and Vastra’s  ‘skin condition’, Vastra reveals that she is in love with Jenny.  Gregson, is true Victorian stiff-collaredness, swallows hard and seems lost for words as Jenny and Vastra flounce off arm in arm.  I think I’ve mentioned before my difficulty with the Vastra/Jenny relationship – not not that – come on, it’s the 21st century for crying out loud. No, my issue is with the way Vastra treats Jenny like a servant, even when they are not around other people.  It seems a very unbalanced relationship.  That said, here, in the prequel, it seems much more as if they are equals and it seems odd, that in later, fuller, appearances, this imbalance is introduced.  I like the Paternoster Gang (and I know they aren’t popular with a vocal minority of fandom (but then some fans seem to hate writers inserting anything, you know, fun, into their precious show)) but of the three, Vastra is probably my least favourite and that’s mainly due to her arrogance and superiority.  Here it is evident in her treatment of Gregson, although that, as I say, has its roots in the Holmesian pastiche, but in later episodes it is her treatment of Jenny which riles.

Can’t complain about more Paternoster Gang

loved this little minisode

A free prequel still on Youtube, and now having been there for almost ten years, it's only now in filling in some of these Christmas reviews that I've come around to watching this (up until now I had no idea it even existed).

It's the Paternoster Gang doing Paternoster things. You either love 'em or hate 'em, they are exactly the same here as in the show. I've always found them relatively inoffensive. In small doses they can be fun, and, like anything, really, they can be exhausting if overused. Moffat tends to push the comedy angle of these three to a fault - I like the idea of them, but all to often the joke is just on how silly their mere presence is. It's a difference of having characters be funny, and having them do funny things. I don't think Vastra Investigates succeeds in doing the latter, nor is it really all that funny. If you've seen The Snowmen you've seen the jokes here, and otherwise it is just bare-bones set-up for that story. Still, Jenny and Vastra are well performed as the two actors are perfectly capable of being funny, they just need the material. Our token Victorian character there just to react to Vastra doesn't do much for me though, and thus the entire short falls kind of flat, in my eyes.

I do love the make-up on Strax and Vastra - that's always done pretty consistently well. Sadly, there just isn't worth watching here. Even in a two and a half minute thing, one should be able to slip in at least some humour or some better set-up for the Snowman. Instead, it feels pretty pointless and more like content that just got cut out of the actual episode. I'm not against the idea, as really, this is just a bit of clever marketing. I'd certainly prefer this over say, a trailer that is either misleading or filled with spoilers, but it compares really poorly to legendary prequel shorts like Night of the Doctor, for example.

Imagine being blessed with not one but TWO minisodes ahead of a Christmas special nowadays. We didn’t know how lucky we were. Another fun little teaser for The Paternoster Gang, this one a little more workmanlike in its set up of who they are and what they do. Still - it’s all good hype!