The Paternoster Gang are some of the Doctor’s most loyal friends. Madame Vastra (a Silurian), Jenny (her wife) and Strax (a Sontaran) are based in Victorian London and they solve various crimes and combat extraterrestrial threats using steampunk equipment. Sontarans are war-like by nature, but Strax helps Vastra and Jenny out and that actually was quite nice of him. Not all Doctor Who monsters and aliens are evil, some can be reformed! The Paternoster Gang formed during the events of the Doctor Who episode A Good Man Goes to War, when the Eleventh Doctor was assembling an army to rescue Amy and Melody Pond from Demons Run.
A Good Man Goes to War
★★★★☆
TX: 04/06/2011
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Peter Hoar
On the battle outpost of Demons Run, the Headless Monks and Madame Kovarian have kidnapped Amy Pond and her newborn baby Melody on the order of the movement known as the Silence. The Silence have engineered baby Melody to grow up to be an assassin that will kill the Doctor. The Doctor, Rory, the Paternoster Gang (composed of Silurian Madame Vastra, her Victorian wife Jenny and Sontaran Commander Strax), Dorium Maldovar, Silurians and Judoon arrive at Demons Run and defeat Colonel Manton and his troops. However, the victory comes too easily and Dorium and Vastra suspect that this is a trap. Their suspicions are confirmed when the Headless Monks mount a surprise attack on the Doctor’s friends. Madame Kovarian confronts the Doctor and tells him that the Silence intend to destroy him and that Melody Pond is part of their plan. During the battle, it is revealed that Amy’s baby has been switched with a Ganger avatar. The real baby Melody has been kidnapped by Madame Kovarian! With the battle over, Amy and Rory are in despair at the loss of their child. But the Doctor reassures them that he will find Melody and he dashes off in the TARDIS. River Song has arrived and she reveals to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter Melody!
The Snowmen
★★★★★
TX: 25/12/2012
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Saul Metzstein
In my favourite Christmas Special, the Doctor meets his new companion Clara Oswald, a barmaid working at the Rose & Crown pub living a double life as a nanny in Victorian London. The Paternoster Gang (which formed after the events of A Good Man Goes to War) make contact with Clara and explain to her that the Doctor has retired… albeit not for long. Alien snow has arrived on Earth and sentient snowmen are terrorising the streets of London! The Great Intelligence has landed on this planet and Walter Simeon, its henchman, (played impeccably by Richard E Grant, who previously starred as the Doctor in the spoof The Curse of Fatal of Death and the animated adventure Scream of the Shalka) is aiding it in its scheme to conquer the world. This episode serves as both an origin story for the Great Intelligence and as a prequel to The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear (from the Intelligence’s perspective, not the Doctor’s). The Doctor takes on the role of Sherlock Holmes and he and the Paternoster Gang investigate the GI institute. After the Ice Lady (an attempt by the Intelligence to manifest itself in human-ice crystal form) and Clara fall to their deaths, the Doctor and Vastra confront Dr Simeon, who becomes possessed by the Intelligence. The Great Intelligence tries to kill the Doctor, but the family mourning Clara’s death generates an emotional field that turns the snow to rain tears. The Doctor vows to find Clara Oswald, having now met two different versions of her that died in different circumstances in separate time periods. Jenna Coleman is looking damn fine in her first official Doctor Who episode!
The Crimson Horror
★★★★☆
TX: 04/05/2013
Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Saul Metzstein
The Paternoster Gang investigate sinister activities at a town called Sweetville in Victorian Yorkshire, 1893. The trio are visited by Mr Thursday who says that a post mortem on his late brother Edmund (who was a Sweetville resident) reveals the image of the Eleventh Doctor in his retina. Jenny infiltrates the utopian society of Sweetville, where she discovers that the Eleventh Doctor and Clara have been captured by Mrs Gillyflower and her blind daughter Ada. Mrs Gillyflower is breeding a new race of hosts using diluted prehistoric venom from the repulsive red leech, Mr Sweet. Mr Sweet is symbiotically attached to Mrs Gillyflower. Strax attacks Mrs Gillyflowers’ troops whilst Vastra and Jenny smuggle all of the venom out of the rocket before Mrs Gillyflower fires it in order to wipe out humanity. During the skirmish, Mrs Gillyflower falls to her death and her daughter Ada destroys Mr Sweet with her cane. The Paternoster Gang and Ada bid farewell to the Doctor and Clara. Clara returns to the present day where the two kids that she is nanny to, Angie and Artie, have worked out that she is a time traveller and they blackmail her into taking them in the TARDIS with her. This episode leads directly into the events of Nightmare in Silver.
The Name of the Doctor
★★★★★
TX: 18/05/2013
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Saul Metzstein
Clara Oswald, the Paternoster Gang and River Song are brought to the Doctor’s tomb on the planet Trenzalore by the Whisper Men. The Doctor and Clara travel to Trenzalore too and are reunited with the ghost River Song (Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead). The Doctor says that there are dimensional forces deep in the TARDIS that tend to make one feel a bit giddy (Castrovalva). The Intelligence mentions that the Doctor has other names such as the Valeyard (The Trial of a Time Lord). The Great Intelligence, bitter about being constantly defeated by the Doctor, has decided to take the revenge on him by stepping inside his time stream and ruining the Doctor’s entire life by turning every one of his victories into defeats. Clara steps into the Doctor’s time stream in order to save him from the Great Intelligence. But, after bidding a final goodbye to River Song, the Doctor follows Clara into his time stream. There, the Doctor reveals to Clara his greatest secret… There was a hitherto unknown incarnation during the Doctor’s life that he has done everything to bury because his actions were not carried out in the name of the Doctor.
Deep Breath
★★★★☆
TX: 23/08/2014
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Ben Wheatley
The sister ship of the SS Madame de Pompadour, the SS Marie Antoinette crash lands on prehistoric Earth. Another set of clockwork robots begin repairing the ship with organic dinosaur flesh and then later human components. By the 19th Century, the Clockwork Robots have established a base beneath a Victorian restaurant called Mancini’s. The newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor, Clara and the Paternoster Gang track down the clockwork robots to the restaurant after following a trail of intrigue through Victorian London that began with a T-Rex in the River Thames. The clockwork robot leader, the half-faced man makes his escape through the use of a hot air balloon made of human skin. The Doctor fights to the death with the half-faced man until the half-faced man falls from the balloon and is impaled on a spire. Shortly after making their goodbyes to the Paternoster Gang for the final time, the Doctor asks Clara Oswald in the TARDIS whether he is a good man… a question that she doesn’t know the answer to. Madame Vastra paraphrases the Brigadier in Planet of the Spiders, Robot when she says “well then, here we go again!” regarding the Twelfth Doctor’s regeneration.
Chris Olsen's TARDIS 
