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TARDIS Guide

Review of The Unquiet Dead by Sinewhales

8 September 2024

This review contains spoilers!

Again, an episode which is worse than I remembered even though it is the only Mark Gatiss episode which is not a "one off" adventure and that follow the continuity and the arc of the season.

The Unquiet Dead was eh, boring at its worse and at least a bit goofy at its best. It's very uninspired. The characters are pretty flat and uninteresting, Dickens isn't even the central point of his own story and the Doctor is written pretty weirdly (It makes no sense that he got convinced that easily by the Gelth and it's weird that he gave the impression that he was that weak to the point where he felt threatened to the point where he felt like he would die by a foe that basic).

The Gelths aren't pretty interesting ennemis either. Their plan is pretty uninteresting and even though I kind of get the point Gatiss wanted to make, it's only ruined by their plot twist revealing they were in fact evil and wanted to invade Earth for seemingly no reason, which itself is pretty unmemorable and resolves itself within 2 minutes.

Overall it was pretty empty on the writing side, there wasn't really any moment that felt emotionally impacting or memorable even though I kind of like the interactions between Gwyneth and Rose and that the Doctor appears to be even more impacted by the Time War than during the previous episodes but other than this it was pretty mediocre and it isn't an episode I would recommend.