The Unquiet Dead

DOCTOR WHO is considered as something of a horror series and it's true to say that the most fondly remembered stories feature Cybermen walking down London streets , monsters coming out of the sea , giant spiders and that one with the mummies but this horror imagery was very much absent and didn't really feature in the show until the mid to late sixties . But it's fair to say that that DOCTOR WHO is summed up as the show that made children go running behind the sofa

The Unquiet Dead by THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN actor/writer Mark Gatiss is very much in the vein of the traditional type of story . It's atmospheric and features zombies and ethereal spirits and instantly reminds the fans of the golden era of the early Tom Baker stories though with even better production values and it's something of a pity that thescheduling of the series meant that it was broadcast on a spring evening . This would have been excellent to watch on a cold December Saturday night

It should be pointed out that in some ways that The Unquiet Dead mirrors the structure of a Hartnell tale in that The Doctor is something of a catalyst and that it's not The Doctor who saves the day while at the same time we're treated to a line that wouldn't have been broadcast in the original series : " First you drug me , then you kidnap me and don't think i didn't feel your hands having a quick wander you dirty old man "

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.

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 think the first two episodes were very good, but this is the early one I remember most fondly, this was an excellent episode. We get good value out of the unquiet dead, a bit of Gothic horror, corpses coming to life and bursting out of coffins, Simaon Callow's excellent interpretation of Dickens, the pluses continue. It is visually stunning, I love lots of the glorious filming locations, especially the streets of Swansea. The production values are extremely high, everything looks quality. Eccleston continues his brilliance. Billie Piper continues to impress as Rose, I didn't appreciate at the time how good Billie was and how much I liked Rose's character. Alan David is glorious as Sneed, and it's a good first Who related outing for Eve Myles. The Gelth are a great invention, Gwyneth gives us another reference to the bad Wolf.

I feel like stories and serials set in the past are always a very mixed bag with who but this is definitely one of the better ones. We get the first proper horror episode of the revival and I remember being genuinely unnerved and frightened by it when I first watched it back in 05. The whole idea of setting it at Christmas and having Charles Dickens who at the time is touring A Christmas Carol mixed in with the Ghost/Aliens is a stroke of genius and really makes this one stand out. The episode isn't without fault by any means, the pacing is a wee bit strange among other things but I'd definitely recommend this one for fans of the back in time stories. I'm going to give "The Unquiet Dead" a 7.7 to a 7.8