The Unquiet Dead

I had higher hopes than i should have for this episode. While it has the potential to scare the younger viewers like the Classic Who did; for the adult viewers it drags on a little too long and so loses some of the grip.

Still an above average episode however, as it does have a catching ending

Whilst I would consider this episode marginally superior to the episodes that precede it, it still has that same quality to it. It is slightly more fantastical and scary, although it is still child friendly, and it is a very entertaining episode.

I can't think of anyone who could have played Dicken's better. Just like the the future Matt Smith episode with Van Gogh, absolutely perfect casting. This episode was very intriguing indeed, I thought it was brilliant.

The Unquiet Dead doesn't quite live up to to the first two episodes of the new Doctor Who series (especially the superb The End of the World), but it does feature ghosts, wit and the first example of a recurring gimmick throughout the series: the Doctor's interaction with historical figures.

The interaction is actually caused by accident: the Doctor wanted to take Rose to Naples for Christmas, but somehow the TARDIS has something to say about it and the two find themselves, much to the Doctor's dismay, in 1860 Cardiff. Trouble isn't very far away, either, since corpses have been mysteriously revived in the past few weeks, and the only people who can do something about it are the Doctor, a girl with psychic powers and a certain Charles Dickens (Simon Callow), who now makes a living performing magic tricks and hosting public readings of his body of work.

The main fascination of The Unquiet Dead is its postmodern approach to Dickens, something that was entirely to be expected from writer Mark Gatiss, given his experiences on The League of Gentlemen (the TV show, not the Sean Connery-starring nonsense): the great writer is depicted as a mixture of A Christmas Carol's Scrooge and Hard Times' Gradgrind, i.e. a man who has lost all faith in the magic he used to write about and now believes firmly in scientific facts. And all that goes without mentioning his wonderfully clever comment on the supernatural incidents in the story: "What the Shakespeare is going on here?". That line might also be a reference to the fact that Callow, always reliable for these parts, appeared in Shakespeare in Love and reportedly made a provocative statement about Hamlet in the original version of Four Weddings and a Funeral (Richard Curtis subsequently removed that scene, along with the back-stories of all the other characters as well).

On the flip-side, the episode has a darkness to it (given the zombie-style premise) that doesn't really sit well with the general tone of the show (Steven Moffat's two-part story later on in the season shows how to use that darkness in a good way), the (inevitable) gallows humor being more suitable for a Monty Python sketch or, given Gatiss' involvement, a League of Gentlemen story than Doctor Who. However, Eccleston's charisma manages to lighten up the mood when necessary, and Piper's natural warmth contributes hugely, too.

So no, it's not really good as the episodes written by Davies or Moffat, but what the heck, it's got Charles Dickens - that ought to be enough.

It is 1869, the Doctor and Barbarella Rose materialise in Cardiff on Christmas Eve where those passed are reanimating, leaving Charles Dickens hyperventilating, and a little bit flustered and confused. What are the gas light spectral forms that raise the dead from their coffin box dorms, enlivening cadavers into zombified forms. Friend or foe, we just do not know, until Gwyneth starts to radiate and glow, breaching the rift to set up the flow, a torch to a darker side woodn't you know.