Penny Dreadful - 'The Day Tennyson Died'

"Well, that all went splendidly."

And so, just a short time after finishing Season 2, here we are with Season 3 of Penny Dreadful, and hey hey, the gang's all here; or more accurately, the gang's all somewhere, but very few of them are 'here' relative to one another.

Vanessa is maundering in the big old house, with the windows shuttered and dust sheets everywhere, living on what must be fairly rancid milk and stale bread, the loss of friends and faith leaving her in an almost bestial state of self neglect. Into the long, dark teatime of her soul comes Mr Lyle, who advises her to visit an alienist of his acquaintance, the woman who helped him to come to terms with his own homosexuality. This she does, and discovers that Dr Seward is the identical descendant of Jean Claypool (aka the Cut-Wife,) her former mentor. The no-nonsense Seward instructs her to go away, do something different and tell her about it next day.

Dr Sweet also has a lot of forehead.

In deference to doctor's orders, she teleports to Scotland. Okay, first she's stalked by a creepy man with too much forehead and a pale looking kid (who goes to great lengths to assure her his pallor is due to anaemia of the blood and then calls her 'beloved', possibly quoting Tennyson or possibly just being creepy) selling memorial ribbons for the late Tennyson, then she goes into a building and I'm pretty sure emerges in Dunrobin Castle, although it could just be a very similar cabinet of dead things. There she bonds with naturalist Dr Sweet over the scorpions and discuss the need for someone to look at the ugly, disregarded creatures in the dusty cases. She goes home and opens up the house.

"Dr Frankenstein."
"Dr Jekyll."

Speaking of which, Dr Frankenstein is visited by an old school friend, whom he asks for help in destroying Lily. Dr Jekyll, however, offers instead to curb her homicidal, monomaniacal urges and 'tame' her for him, using his research on chemically controlling his own colossal outsider's rage.

In the Arctic, Caliban/John Clare/the Creature has a flash of memory from his life and abandons his freezing shipmates to walk home across the ice like a freaking boss.

In New Mexico, Ethan is being transported by train, when his escort of US Marshals and the civilian passengers in the adjoining car are massacred, all save Hekaty-poo, who is able to stave off the shooting by playing the 'defenceless female' card until Inspector Rusk arrives, having survived thanks to going to the buffet car for tea. The killers carry Ethan off, intending to return him to his father, which amuses him rather.

If Timothy Dalton and Wes Studi are coming for you, you know you're in for a
world of pain.

And finally, in Africa, Sir Malcolm is brooding rather drunkenly. A mysterious man lends a hand when he is mugged, and explains that he is Kaetenay, an Apache from New Mexico and apparently something of a father figure to Ethan (he describes him as 'almost' being his son in such a way that I kind of suspect that he feels Ethan's soul was aiming for his own child and missed.) He tells Sir Malcolm that Ethan needs both their help, so they need to head for New Mexico like the couple of well-seasoned badasses they are.

To round things off, Seward's secretary steals Vanessa's fee for ale and whores money, but gets nabbed by an unseen force, menaced by the pale folk, and is finally ordered to report on Vanessa by an awesome and so far off-screen presence that names itself Dracula (a reveal somewhat spoiled by the fact the secretary already copped to the name Renfield.)

Season 3 starts on a high note, but then again we haven't had a sniff of Gray and Lily yet, and there is a threat that we're going to split the party for the whole season between London and New Mexico. I miss Sembene, but on the upside we have Wes Studi now, and that's awesome. We also have Dr Jekyll - who in this version is apparently Indian - although as a sympathetic and supportive influence in Frankenstein's life I'm fully expecting him to get torn in half next week.