Review: Doctor Who 1.3: The Unquiet Dead

"Pity the Gelth."

Mark Gattis has been a life-long fan of Doctor Who. Mainly a comedy writer in the League of Gentlemen Quartet, he often used his love for the program to influence his comedy during the Cancellation Era. His scripts for NuWho haven't always been up to scratch; his disastrous Victory of the Daleks is a good example. But he was chosen as the first writer of the series other than Russell T Davies, so this should be a marked difference from the first two episodes.
     The Doctor and Rose, heading for 1860 Naples instead end up in 1869 Cardiff, where corpses are coming alive sporadically, much to the chagrin of the Undertaker and his psychic maid (Gwenyth, played by Eve Myles of Torchwood fame}. By coincidence, the great Charles Dickens (Simon Callow} is in town, and one of the corpses interrupts a reading of A Christmas Carol. While the Undertaker has chloroformed Rose, The Doctor and Dickens {after a little flattery} head off in chase. Rose awakens to find herself in a room, where a mysterious blue gas animates another corpse. The Doctor figures out the nature of the creatures and manages to get her out of there. The corpses tell him to open the Rift, as they're dying.
     Charles denies the existence of these creatures. The Doctor explains the Rift for the first time (this episode is the base for Torchwood's entire mythos} explaining that there's something trying to come through. Charles listens to the gas and inspects the corpses, but The Doctor challenges his skepticism. Gwenyth and Rose talk, with Gwenyth talking about "big metal birds" and mentioning the Bad Wolf (this series' arc words}. The Doctor appears and reveals that because she grew up on the Rift, she's keyed into it.

What the Shakespere?

    They hold a "seance" and the aliens use her to communicate. They're called the Gelth, and claim that they've been removed from their own bodies by the Time War. They want to occupy the bodies of the dead. Rose is passionately against the idea but The Doctor wants to let them through. Gwenyth gets power of veto, and they head down to the Morgue to let them through. It turns out the Gelth actually want to take over the Earth, and so Charles escapes while Rose and The Doctor get trapped.
     As The Doctor apologises to Rose and informs her that she can in fact die before she was ever born, Charles works out how to defeat them, and turns all of the gas taps up in the house, which forces the Gelth to evacuate their bodies. Gwenyth, unable to send them back and already dead because of what's happened to her, she sacrifices herself by blowing up the house and trapping the Gelth. They mourn her, and then allow Charles his last Christmas present by letting him watch the Tardis materialise.
     This episode's guest cast are superb and provide some of the episode's best moments. Notable Literature-lover Simon Callow performs the role of Dickens perfectly, and his character undergoes a rather appropriately Scrooge-esque transformation over the course of the story. The moment at the end where The Doctor says that Dickens' work will live on forever is moving and well directed. Eve Myles, meanwhile, doesn't give us the over-the-top stereotype that the "psychic" archetype demands, and instead portrays a realistic 19th Century servant girl cursed with unusual circumstance.
       The Rift element within the Historical is not very well utlized here, but I don't hold that against the story as does introduce the device for later stories in this series and in Torchwood to do more with. The Gelth are an incredibly interesting species, their nature not only tieing into the ongoing idea of The Time War but also perfectly fitting the story's Dickensian Ghost motif.

The Doctor gets a stiff reception.

     Mark Gattis' first script for the series doesn't disappoint, with a clever and touching script that pays homage to one of the greatest writers of the 19th Century. For some, this is where Doctor Who "came back," and I understand why. The Unquiet Dead is a brilliant episode and surely heralds great things to come. What's that? The next episode is Aliens of London? Oh dear. Til next time.

Thanks.