After so many years of the modern series, it’s quite a shock to watch this story, so early in both the lives of the 9th Doctor and Rose. I’ve probably watched it once since original broadcast and my fan-brain had filed both the 9th Doctor and Rose away as ‘fine but not great’.  The Unquiet Dead reminded me of how important Rose was to the early days of the ‘new series’ and also how great Christopher Eccleston was in the role. I think it’s all too easy to forget, with the juggernauts that were David Tennant and Matt Smith crashing through fandom’s, and the general public’s, collective consciousness, how pivotal Eccleston was to the success of the new series.

Eccleston is great in this story – full of joy, jokes, righteousness and fallibility. I haven’t been a big advocate of Eccleston remembering him as a fairly unlikeable Doctor and not one that chimed with other favourites of mine – Troughton, Davison and Smith. But rewatching this story was a small epiphany. I really liked his performance and the relationship with Billie Piper’s Rose. There were numerous lovely little bits; ‘I’ve changed by jumper; his embarrassment at landing in the wrong place; his excitement at the sound of screaming from the theatre; ‘I love a happy medium’; his smile when Rose is lambasting Sneed; his disappointment at his possible death in a cellar in Cardiff…so much stuff.

Billie Piper, too, is great as Rose. It’s easy to forget this was only her third story but she is a confident performer who doesn’t really put a foot wrong. Her relationship with the Doctor is convincing as are her reactions to arriving in the past, her disgust at the Doctor’s proposal to use people’s corpses as hosts for the Gelth and her compassion for Gwyneth.

It’s interesting to see the Doctor, effectively, getting it wrong. The Gelth’s deception plays on his guilt about the Time War – something which was still a huge mystery at this point; only three episodes into the new series. It’s intriguing that those mysteries which were set up about the Doctor in An Unearthly Child and which slowly revealed over 26 years of the original series are being echoed by the mysteries set up in Rose which have been revealed over the 7 seasons of the new series culminating in our first actual glimpse of the Time War in The Day of the Doctor. It’s almost like a condensed version of the original series overall character arc for the Doctor.

A central feature of The Unquiet Dead which is revisited in many of the Eccleston episodes is the conceit of the Doctor ‘making people help themselves/making people better humans’. It’s most focussed on Rose, obviously, but it also spreads to Gwyneth and Charles Dickens in this story; as well as Cathica in The Long Game; Nancy in The Empty Child; Margaret Slitheen in Boom Town; Lynda with a Y in Bad Wolf and of course, Mickey Smith. At the time, this was an aspect of the series I wasn’t keen on. I felt it meant the Doctor took too much of a back seat in the resolution of many of the episodes. This wasn’t the sort of character I wanted the Doctor to be. In hindsight, though, with six more series of ‘new Who’ to enjoy, it seems a more reasonable take on the character and I can see how it is a result of his guilt surrounding the Time War. With a bit of fan retcon, the arrival of the War Doctor gives a reason why the 9th Doctor may be less enthusiastic to be proactive in dangerous situations, preferring to let other people take the lead. The events of this adventure almost prove his point as he is wrong about the Gelth and his actions ultimately cause Gwyneth’s death. It’s not something which is specifically picked up on in later episodes, although maybe, in a later series, its something which would have had more repercussions in later episodes. The uncertain nature of whether the audience would take to this new Doctor Who probably restricted Russell T Davies’ ability to play with this slightly darker version of the Time Lord.

The tone of the story is very much Dickensian and not just because of the actual inclusion of Charles Dickens himself. Although we’ve been in the Victorian era for a while now, our actual visits to the Victorian England written about by Dickens have been limited somewhat to stories such as The Next Doctor and The Haunting of Thomas Brewster. The Unquiet Dead goes full on. A Christmas Carol is a strong influence; it’s set on Christmas Eve, there are ghosts; one even emerges from a door knocker as Dickens watches. Gatiss, in the commentary, states that it was an unintentional echo to have Dickens fulfillling the Scrooge role from grumpy curmudgeon to being reborn and vital, although I’m not convinced of his claim as it seems to obvious – maybe its something that Euros Lyn, the director and Simon Callow drew out more during production. Gatiss does talk about a previous version of the story which was far more Dickensian in tone with mediums, spirits and oddly-named characters and you can see how elements of it have remained in the slightly more straight-forward story which reached the screen.

Simon Callow is superb as Dickens. Callow is a Dickens expert, having played him many times in live shows. His performance here is perfect and I adore the scene in the hansom cab where he begins to warm to the Doctor when he reveals he is a fan of his work. Putting aside my earlier issues with ‘guest characters saving the day’, the scene where he returns to the house (having bolted through a mixture of sheer terror and unwillingness to accept the bizarre truth of the situation) and forces the Gelth out of their host bodies is a bit of a punch-the-air moment for the character.

The other two main cast members are also great. Alan David gives a wonderful performance as Sneed, by turns sympathetic and slightly slimy. Even more of a revelation is Eve Myles who is awesome as Gwyneth. It is easy to see why the production team wanted to work with her again and give her the top role of Gwen Cooper in Torchwood. Her conversation with Rose in the scullery where they bond over boys and she unwittingly reveals her psychic gift, and the presence of the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ in Rose’s mind, is charming and chilling in equal measure.

The Gelth, as a monster, I find the least successful element of the story. I’m not overly keen on the ‘zombies’ but my main issue is with the reveal that the Gelth have been deceiving the Doctor. I don’t think its initially clear enough what is happening. The blue Gelth suddenly turn into a fiery red with fangs but the dialogue becomes a bit indistinct and its not immediately obvious why they’ve gone ‘bad’ as it were (apart from the fact that they were clearly always going to be the ‘baddie’ so it isn’t a massive shock when they reveal their true colours). Of course, the Gelth, realised as insubstantial spirits, are a further descendent of the Victorian obsession with the spirit world as we’ve already seen in The Curious Tale of Spring Heeled Jack, The Haunting of Thomas Brewster and, to a lesser extent (not really being Victorian), Assassin in the Limelight. This story also involves a séance to contact the spirit world, a popular pastime in Victorian England (and would clearly have featured more prominently when eccentric spirit mediums were more central to the original story idea). The concept of a séance being a gateway to an alien world is something we’ll return to in the Jago and Litefoot story: Spirit Trap. This propogation of gaseous, insubstantial, ghost like aliens in Victorian England is something I plan to look at in more detail in a separate post.

Historically we have, of course, Charles Dickens and (as with The Shakespeare Code; and later with The Unicorn and the Wasp) a story which includes echoes of written work. His live performances of his novels, particularly A Christmas Carol are historical fact as was the state he found himself in prior to his death – estranged from his wife due to some daliances outside of wedlock and suffering from gout (not specifically mentioned in the script but commented on by Gatiss and Callow in the commentary). The close of the story mentions his infamous unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood – the ending of which is, as I understand it, hotly debated by Dickens aficionadoes in much the same was as we try to wrangle out the inconsistencies of UNIT dating. The bittersweet ending of Dickens declaring a revelation of how to end the novel and the Doctor quietly revealing to Rose that he’ll never get to write it due to his death later in 1870, is a beautiful way to end the story as it the TARDIS dematerialising from the street with snow swirling away into the wind and Dickens skipping off through the night.

On initial broadcast, The Unquiet Dead was touted as a prime example of how good the new version of the series was. At the time, I wasn’t convinced. Something about the story didn’t click with me. This time round (and I have watched it once since initial broadcast) I found much more to enjoy. The ‘look’ of the episode still leaves me a little cold (it’s a bit drab) but the central performances from Eccleston, Piper, Callow, Myles and David propel the story along; the special effects are excellent and the Victorian atmosphere is perfect – it’s something all the production teams of Doctor Who have been adept at as evidenced in The Next Doctor and clear in classic series examples, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Ghost Light, and Matt Smith stories The Snowmen and The Crimson Horror (another Gatiss Victorian-set episode).

It’s been interesting that I’ve had a similar reaction to this story as I did to The Next Doctor – both left me a little cold on initial broadcast, both I’ve watched once since without much change in opinion, but when viewed as part of my marathon I’ve found lots to enjoy and its giving me a new, slightly different perspective on what I thought was my opinion of the new series.