Doctor Who - The Unquiet Dead

episode 1.3

UK 2005
produced by
Phil Collinson, Russell T.Davies (executive), Mal Young (executive), Julie Gardner (executive) for BBC Wales/BBC
directed by Euros Lyn
starring Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Eve Myles, Simon Callow, Alan David, Wayne Carter, Huw Rhys, Jennifer Hill, Zoe Thorne, Meic Povey
written by Mark Gatiss, music by Murray Gold

tv-series
Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston), Doctor Who (new series), Rose Tyler

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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In his timemachine the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston) takes his new companion Rose (Billie Piper) back to Cardiff, 1869 (actually he planned to go to Naples 1860, but you know how inaccurate these timemachines are ...), where the 2 of them, along with the disillusioned writer Charles Dickens (Simon Callow), get involved with Mr Sneed's (Alan David), whose dead tend to rise, & every now & again emmit blue spectres ... which is a little unquieting. & while Charles Dickens soon dismisses it all as a hoax, the Doctor finds out that the süpectres are actually the dieing race of the Gelth, who need now bodies to escape extinction ... & they thougth the best solution would be to use the earth's corpses. But they also need a medium that channels them into the dead bodies ... & they believe to have found it in Sneed's servant girl Gwyneth (Eve Myles) ... & Gwyneth happily agrees to help the Gelth ... only Rose seems to notice this is not the best of ideas & there's something terribly wrong about raising the dead, but the Doctor dismisses her objections as misplaced sentimentality ...

Of course though Rose was right, as the Gelth need more & more corpses to bring all their population back to corporeal life ... & what better method to get corpses would there be to get corpses than to kill the living. Only Charles Dickens, who has found new vigours in this little adventure, rigures out that the Gelth could be drawn out of the corpses by simple gas, & once they are all collected in the mortuary's cellar, the Doctor blows it up. Unfortunately though Gwyneth had to give her life to save the earth, something nobody will ever hear about ... except if Charles Dickens makes good his promise to write about the goings-on.

Now honestly, do you know a Charles Dickens story about spectre-like aliens ?

Nope ?

Of course not, because Charles Dickens died in 1870, actually days after all this had happened. He simply didn't have the time to write it down.

A story that somehow combines famed writer Charles Dickens & zombies just can't be all bad ... & this one isn't, cleverly incorporating the writer into the horror-proceedings in a tongue-in-cheek way. Of course this doesn#t always necessarily work to the best of effects, some times the more serious aspects to the story do clash with the humour, & the spectre-like Gelth are not terribly convincing even in a sci-fi-context (though the effects are quite ok), but overall it's fine, hokey entertainment.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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