The Unquiet Dead (2005) Review

DOCTOR: "Hey, I remember you lot. Didn't you all die out when you discovered fire?"
GELTH: *angry fart noises*

The Unquiet Dead(or as I like to call it: the Ninth Doctor Christmas special), is a charming spook story and tribute to Charles Dickens.

WRITTEN BY

Mark Gatiss, the workman writer of modern Doctor Who. I find him to be somewhat underrated as he tends to avoid overblown dramatics in his stories in favor of old-fashioned fun.

PLOT

The Doctor takes Rose to see Earth history, ending up in 1869 Cardiff. There, the two stumble onto the living dead and join forces with Charles Dickens himself to uncover the truth in the nearby mortuary...

ANALYSIS

The Unquiet Dead continues the trend of familiarising Rose with the life of a time traveller, and the bigger picture that they have to consider.

I love how allowing the Gelth to possess human corpses poses an ethical dilemma for her, but not the Doctor, showcasing the difference between the two and the wider perspective of the latter. Of course it wouldn't matter to an experienced intellectual like him, but Rose isn't entirely wrong in her demand for respect for the dead either, as it's part of Earth culture.

The love for the works of Charles Dickens also shine though. This episode would establish the "celebrity historical" formula, where an adventure with the Doctor would provide the framework for what that person would later go on to do, but uniquely, Dickens here is already at the end of his life and the story functions as a sort of happy ending for the man, which I really like.

On the technical side of things, this episode has to be praised for its creepy atmosphere! The zombies are suitably macabre and I love the glow of the gas lanterns in the Victorian winter night and inside the draped mortuary. It's stylized and gorgeous, and immediately puts you in the right mood for a horror.

CHARACTERS

For the first time, I feel like Chris Eccleston struggles a little with the script, and to be honest, I'm not even sure why. He is the best at being dark and brooding, and that would certainly fit what Gatiss has written, but instead, Eccleston seems to try and keep up the chipper attitude from the previous, more lighthearted episodes.
Maybe it's just the way he was written(the whole "I'm your number one fan" bit with Dickens was a bit cringeworthy), but if anything was tonally a little off from this story, it was the Doctor. Actually, now that I think of it, maybe I'm just subliminally upset at him wearing a leather jacket and not a Victorian outfit.

Billie Piper looks so effin' fantastic in that outfit. And the bond she forms with Gwyneth is lovely, I like that Rose seems to find it really easy to relate to servant girls, no matter which era she lands in. As a companion, she doesn't actually do much in this episode aside from being the damsel in distress, but the interactions between her and the more demure Gwyneth, and especially her and the Doctor during their argument, were on point.

Simon Callow was fabulously theatrical in his performance as Charles Dickens, and I feel like he really did get the spirit of the man across. Even though Callow wasn't that old, there's a certain stiffness in his body language and raspyness in his voice that just makes you sense Dickens' exhaustion, and the reversal he has in his attitudes by the end of the story is wonderfully portrayed.

Alan David's brilliantly named Mr Sneed is tons of fun. I like that though he's clearly kind of an idiot, he isn't portrayed as an antagonist and his slimyness is just sort of a character quirk and not his defining trait. He's just a slightly odd guy running a very odd mortuary.

Eve Myles's Gwyneth is really where the Victorian era shines through in this episode - she's exceedingly polite, interprets the events in a superstitious fashion and is perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for the rest of the group. She's meek, but not without a backbone.

NOTES

*The 2005 TARDIS is super shaky and prone to malfunction, isn't it? Funny how all these problems disappeared in the more fragile console rooms with books and everything...

*I love it when they show shots of the TARDIS flying through the Time Vortex in the actual episode.

*The TARDIS wardrobe is apparently "1st left, 2nd right, past the bins(?), 5th door on the left."

*Why would the Gelth-possessed corpses go to places the actual dead person would go to, such as Charles Dickens' performance?

*The way Piper plays Rose's first step in the past is incredible - she's utterly in awe at making a literal footprint in history.

*The Ninth Doctor likes his tea with two sugars.

*You can see mr Redpath's eyes twitch as Dickens removes the lid of the coffin. Which I guess technically makes sense, given the possession storyline, but not so much in this scene, where Dickens is checking the corpse for life signs.

*I'm not really sure why Dickens feels that him having spent his life for charity would be a waste in a realm where ghosts exist. Not to mention, he hops from "ghosts aren't real!" to "is my life a lie?" pretty fast, doesn't he? And then he goes from that to questioning the seance! Were a few script pages switched around or something?

*I love the use of the Time War here as a way for the Gelth to emotionally manipulate the Doctor. It's kind of funny how the Time War never pops up now that the arc's over.You'd think we'd still run into aliens devastated by it.

*The very first time we hear "Time can be rewritten.", with an added warning of "Nothing is safe. Remember that." A bold statement that the modern era would really run with.

*The Gelth transforming into fiery Draculas as soon as they betray the Doctor is just silly.

*Maybe I've just seen too many time travel films, but I never understand those people who protest that they can't die if they haven't even been born yet. Like... obviously you'll be born, you travelled back in time and now you're here as an adult who can very clearly still be hurt!!

*The gas drawing the ghosts out of the bodies is a bit of a stretch. Wouldn't it just fuel them? Actually, wouldn't the absence of gas be preferable?

BEST QUOTE

"It's a different morality, get used to it or go home!" - What a way to introduce a companion to the universe.

CONTINUITY ADVISOR

1) Nothing special other than the Doctor vaguely referencing their trip to the future in The End Of The World, implying this adventure takes place immediately after that, maybe with a small break in-between.

CONCLUSION

Somehow, I feel like this episode touched the Christmas spirit more closely than all the sugary specials to follow.