When they stumble across a grotesque series of murders at the coast, the TARDIS travellers realise the local constabulary is out of its depth. Something supernatural has come to town, something evil. And it all seems to be tied in to a particular young family.
Monsters lurk behind strange doors. Tragic secrets wait to be uncovered. And somewhere, deep within, the Crooked Man sits. He is waiting for you.
The Crooked Man contains examples of:
- Bavarian Fire Drill: The Doctor barges in to a crime scene and start investigating, to the chagrin of PC Andrews.
- Call-Back: Leela recalls how her father sacrificed himself to save her life, and the Doctor remembers his own previous visit to the Land.
- Comically Missing the Point: When The Doctor and Leela wanders into Leslie King's house, she assumes they are fans who want her autograph. The Doctor being the cloudcuckoolander that he is, assuming she's asking for HIS autograph.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The unnamed book shop owner was killed by The Crooked Man by stuffing him full of book pages, and later the Crooked Man destroys other fictional characters by destroying their original stories.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Laura had a difficult relationship with her father, and Eddie’s real father left as soon as she told him she was pregnant.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Simon stays in the Land of Fiction to protect his son.
- Killer Outfit: Nearly applies to the Doctor when he trips over his scarf while being chased.
- No-Sell: Leela causes no damage when she tries to attack the Crooked Man physically.
- Off with His Head!: At one point Simon tears the head of a fictional alien that is just made of paper-mache.
- Overpopulation Crisis: The Land of Fiction is basically suffering from this, as the abundance of fictional mediums in existence in the present has resulted in the Land becoming too full, causing some of the lesser fictional characters to be 'forced out', such as a tabloid caricature of a famous actress or a murderer from a spin-off novelisation of a soap opera.
- Papa Wolf: Simon Corbett is shown as this, kicking down doors and even through dimensions to try and protect his son.
- Reality Ensues: In the end, Laura Corbett accepts a real relationship with a flawed, genuine human being after Simon sacrifices himself.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the books Laura sold is Moonraker
- The books stuffed down the bookseller’s throat include pages from Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby.
- Spotting the Thread:
- The Doctor and Leela both note that the cabinets in the bookshop and the bookshop door itself were both broken from the inside, suggesting something breaking out rather than breaking in.
- One of the reasons the Doctor realises the truth of the situation, as Simon Corbett has taken his wife's name rather than the usual tradition.
