The Unquiet Dead

I don't have very much to say about this story. I didn't care for it 10 years ago, and I don't care for it now. Something about the setting, the visual aesthetic of the episode, and the Gelth just do not hook me at all. Definitely not the worst episode of Doctor Who ever created, but one that I'm very comfortable calling "meh" at best.

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.

an unfortunately mid episode but i loved the accents

I absolutely hated this one as a child, I think it was the first ‘behind the sofa’ moment I had. As such, I usually skip it when I rewatch series one, but it’s still a good episode. Being scared by Doctor Who is good (sometimes)! It also marks Mark Gatiss’s first writing for the revival series, and it’s definitely a highlight of his nine-episode credits.

It’s our first of three RTD era episodes where the Doctor meets an author and drops references to their works into conversation, and Dickens at Christmas with ghosts, in a distinctly Bleak House, is a wonderfully silly-yet-spooky concept. Though that’s about as far as silliness goes. The whole episode, pre-TARDIS-landing aside, is far more serious than the previous two- the tone is darker, and even the sets are gloomier. There’s still plenty of lightness to the plot- the Doctor’s fanboying over Dickens, Rose and Gwyneth’s conversation about boys- any more than that would feel out of place.

This episode once again puts the characters at the forefront and develops the side characters wonderfully- Dickens gets his own little moment of heroism, and whilst Gwyneth having ‘the sight’ seems a little convenient, it gives the Doctor and Rose a perfect opportunity to clash heads.

The Doctor, in his post-war mind, feels that saving the Gelth is worth having a few zombies around, but Rose is concerned only with Gwyneth having a real choice, and is disturbed by the thought of the dead walking around. It’s an interesting argument, and the audience is left to make up their own mind despite the Doctor being proved wrong with his clouded judgement - if the Gelth really were few and good, would a few lively corpses be a worthy sacrifice? We don’t get that answer.

Instead, we get an explosion! Set ten years before Torchwood is even founded, Eve Myles is already making her mark on Cardiff’s infrastructure.

I can’t say I won’t skip it again in future, but it’s not awful, and certainly better than I remembered from the original broadcast.

This episode scared me as a teenager.  Yes I was a teen 😅😅 and I got scared 😆 .rewatching it now im like .i was scared of that 😅😅

I loved how later they linked /referenced eve myers being in that episode playing a different gwen and how they were related 😆🥰

🙏🏼63% = Okay! = Skippable!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: creepy gas zombies, a historical celebrity, and our first hint of the season arc.

STORY:

That opening scene is a bit creepy, but also campy in exactly the way Doctor Who could be!

This is the first celebrity historical story, a concept that has become a staple in the revived series. The Victorian Cardiff setting, ghosts made of gas, and Charles Dickens create a dark but exciting atmosphere, and RTD cherishes portraying Dickens per the history books while making the Doctor a big fan of him.

The main story tries to illustrate how the Doctor, tired of witnessing death everywhere, decides to assist an alien race without considering the possibility that he might be misinterpreting their true intentions. It also allows Rose to question the Doctor's choices yet again. I also love how Dickens is pivotal to the solution.

Knowing Mark Gatiss and his writing style, it's no surprise that he combined the fascinating Victorian era of British history with a ghost story at Christmas, throwing in Charles Dickens for good measure. He sets the template for the celebrity historical and delivers a very straightforward but atmospheric adventure for Nine and Rose.

POPULATION:

Simon Callows does look and feel like Charles Dickens, even if the character himself ends up being pretty unlikeable. He is hardly the best historical celebrity the show has given us. Nine being a big fan of his is hilarious, though, and Eccleston puts his heart into this aspect.

Seeing Eve Myles as Gwyneth here is so weird, knowing that she will later go on to play Gwen in Torchwood. Gwyneth's psychic powers and the way she connects with Rose make her the most interesting supporting character, though her abilities could have played into the plot even more, even if I loved the way she sacrificed herself to save the world.

So these Gelth are essentially weird gas aliens, and they aren't exactly the most interesting new aliens (they feel very Big Finish), but at least they have an air of creepiness to them and the reanimated corpses. The only thing that makes the Gelth interesting is how the Time War has left them without bodies, making the Doctor and his people inadvertently responsible for their current state.

PRODUCTION:

This is the first historical story in the modern series, and it immediately shows how great the BBC is at producing period drama. The costumes and sets look fantastic, and the performances are also believable. The CGI on the Gelth looks like an old computer game.

Somehow, I feel that the music in its jollier forms doesn't fit the era very well, while the more dramatic tunes are great.

ATMOSPHERE:

This one has a slower pace, and the script revels in the setting and the people, leaving the alien threat to be a secondary thought until it's time to hurriedly bring them back into play. There's some friction between Rose and Nine surrounding the ethics of using dead people to feed the needs of a dying alien race, but it's not major.

The Victorian setting is an effective one to create a creepy atmosphere, which the gas aliens help to strengthen. This episode isn't as funny as the previous one, and the excitement relies more on the creepy factor than in both previous episodes.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

Remember the times the Doctor used to insist on their companions changing their attire to fit the tile period? Those were good times!

That "I'm going to die in a dungeon in Cardiff" bit could've been a great cliffhanger!

This is the first script by Doctor Who and Sherlock writer and actor Mark Gatiss, who had already written audio plays for Big Finish (such as Phantasmagoria, 1999) and has a special knack for writing historical episodes.

If my memory serves me correctly, Gwyneth is a descendant of Gwen, who will later join Torchwood in Cardiff in the 21st century.

The rift in Cardiff is the reason so many alien invasions take place there, as well as the reason Torchwood establishes a base in the city later.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

The Unquiet Dead shows the potential of historical stories in this new era of Doctor Who, but it hasn’t aged particularly well and isn't quite as gripping or memorable as the two previous adventures.

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.

Episode 3 of the new series looks like it came from a completely different universe from episodes 1 and 2 which is exactly what you want from this beautiful, ever changing show. Everything should be possible, anything goes!

The first piece of 21st Century Doctor Who proper written by someone other than RTD and it’s by a smidge the best so far. Mark Gatiss creates a spooky and distinctly classic Who story. It’s a show that has always done the Victorian era justice. It channels Talons of Weng Chiang marvellously. Gatiss proves that back in time episodes are absolutely essential to the show’s formula. It is not the boring cousin of the alien world filled adventures.

The Gelth are a wonderful creation. A way to have ghosts (a Victorian era appropriate villain) whilst giving them an envelope pushing sci-fi twist. Eve Myles is a wonderful guest actor playing an innocent Victorian lower middle class character with a huge amount of star power. Her and Rose bounce off each other charmingly whilst talking about boys. Even better is Charles Dickens who is simply iconic. He saves the day without it feeling hokey or unrealistic. It feels true to a public consciousness version of Dickens. And The Doctor is still so bloody alien. He makes decisions that only someone steeped in alien culture would ever make and it’s so confusing for Rose. Eccleston is an incredible actor working with incredible material - it’s so exciting.

If anyone was unsure, now they know - Doctor Who is back!!