Thoughts About “A Touch of Brimstone”

I was watching some clips from the Season 4 episode “A Touch of Brimstone” as part of preparing a new music video, and I noticed a few really interesting things going on in Act II. Here are my ideas about these, in no particular order.

Foreshadowing Cartney’s Demise

When Mrs. Peel meets the villain John Cartney (Peter Wyngard), he invites her to a meeting of the Hellfire Club. We initially see the lads are all drinking, eating, and wenching, but Cartney and Mrs Peel haven’t arrived yet. One of the Hellfire Bois, Roger Winthrop (Michael Latimer), calls for a toast. He starts reciting the Hellfire Club’s own special toast, and other members of the club join in. Cartney and Mrs Peel enter the room in the middle of the toast, whereupon Cartney takes a torch from the wall next to the door and finishes the toast by himself before throwing the torch into the blazing fireplace to one side of the table where the party is going on.

“I Hope It’s Little Nell”: Dickensian Symbolism in “Too Many Christmas Trees”

Much of the action in the Season 4 episode “Too Many Christmas Trees” takes place at the home of Brandon Storey, a publisher who is not merely an authority on the works of Charles Dickens: he is Dickens’ number one fanboy. Storey is putting on a Christmas party in his stately home in the true Dickensian manner, and gives each of his guests a Dickens-themed costume to wear. The choice of costume is not random; the Dickensian costumes assigned to or assumed by the different characters in this episode are obviously intended to create resonances among Dickens’ novels and the plot of “Too Many Christmas Trees,” from both an in-world and out-of-world perspective.