The Unquiet Dead

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163 – "The Unquiet Dead"
Doctor Who episode

The Gelth break through the rift
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companion Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
Guest stars
Production
Writer Mark Gatiss
Director Euros Lyn
Script editor Helen Raynor
Producer Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s) Russell T. Davies
Julie Gardner
Mal Young
Production code 1.3
Series Series 1
Length 1 episode, 45 mins
Originally broadcast April 9, 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
"The End of the World" "Aliens of London"
IMDb profile

"The Unquiet Dead" is an episode in the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on April 9, 2005. It is the first episode of the revival to be set in the past.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The Ninth Doctor and Rose arrive in Cardiff on Christmas Eve, 1869 and discover that something is making the dead come back to life. The time travellers team up with a world-weary Charles Dickens to investigate Gabriel Sneed, the local undertaker and his servant girl Gwyneth — and come face to face with the ghostly Gelth.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor attempts to pilot the TARDIS to Naples in 1860 to show Rose the past, but misses short, ending up in Cardiff in 1869. While they land and Rose changes into more appropriate garb, there is trouble in a nearby funeral parlour run by Gabriel Sneed and his servant girl Gwyneth - the corpse of a grandmother has been taken over by a blue vapor, killing her mourning grandson Redpath, and then escapes the parlour. Gwyneth with her clairvoyance senses that the corpse, per her last desire, is going to see Charles Dickens at a nearby music hall. In the middle of his performance, the blue vapor leaves the woman, scaring the audience away and attracting the attention of the Doctor and Rose. Gabriel and Gwyneth arrive to retake the corpse as the blue vapor disappears into the pipes, and they also kidnap Rose by knocking her out with chloroform. Charles accuses the Doctor of ruining his performance, but after the Doctor gushes over his literary genius, and that an adventure is afoot, Charles gladly joins up to help.

At the funeral parlour, Rose wakes up and is borne down by the animated corpses of Redpath and his grandmother. The Doctor and Charles arrive, breaking into the parlour and rescuing Rose; the Doctor attempts to learn from the corpses why they are doing this, and determines that the parlour is built on a rift in spacetime, and the blue vapors are beings crossing through the Rift; they are able to use the corpses for a short time, but cannot sustain them. Rose talks more with Gwyneth, and her clairvoyance is discovered, an effect of living in the parlour since her parents died, according to the Doctor. Using Gwyneth as a channel, they hold a séance to directly communicate with the beings, who they learn are called "Gelth", their bodies destroyed as part of the Time War. The Doctor offers the Gelth temporary use of corpses only until he can transport them to a place where they can build new bodies, using Gwyneth as a bridge to cross the Rift.

As the process starts, the number of Gelth is much higher than anticipated, and their true motive is revealed: they are willing to kill the living to give themselves more hosts and take over the planet. Gabriel's neck is broken and his body taken over by a Gelth as Charles flees the parlour, leaving Rose and the Doctor trapped. Outside, Charles notes that the beings are affected by gas, and returns to the house, extinguishing the gaslights and turning the gas on full. The Gelth are forced to abandon the corpses and though the Doctor tries to encourage Gwyneth to send them back across the Rift, she cannot nor can she leave; instead, she takes out a box of matches, intending to ignite the gas and killing the Gelth along with herself. The Doctor, Rose, and Charles flee the parlour before it is engulfed in flames. As the Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS, Charles makes a commitment to patch up things with his family and finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood, though the Doctor notes later to Rose that Charles will die within the year, leaving that work unfinished, but they have made him feel more alive than he ever has been. The Doctor and Rose give their goodbyes and disappear in the TARDIS.

[edit] Continuity

  • When looking into Rose's mind, Gwyneth is frightened and breaks off contact when she sees "the things you've seen... the darkness... the Big Bad Wolf!" The phrase "bad wolf" recurred in all of the stories in this season, culminating in the episode "Bad Wolf" and finally explained in "The Parting of the Ways". (See Story arcs in Doctor Who.)
  • The Doctor suggests that Gwyneth's powers are due to her growing up near the time rift. Developing psychic abilities due to spending one's childhood near a time fissure was first established in Image of the Fendahl.[1]
  • The Cardiff rift reappears in the episodes "Boom Town"[2] and "Utopia", and is a direct or indirect element in many of the alien encounters in the spin-off series Torchwood, set in Cardiff.
  • The Doctor reacts visibly when the Gelth mention the Time War. Although the Doctor mentioned "the war" in his conversation with the Nestene Consciousness in "Rose",[3] and told Rose in "The End of the World" that his people had been destroyed in a war,[4] this is the first mention of the phrase "Time War" in the series. The exact nature of the Gelth's involvement in the Time War is not made clear. Further information about the Time War is revealed in "Dalek".
  • Just prior to panicking about how he is going to die in the dungeon in Cardiff, the Doctor claims that he has seen the fall of Troy (The Myth Makers, 1965), World War V and has "pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party" (which the First Doctor's companion, Barbara Wright refers to in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion of Earth[5]).
  • The Doctor gives Rose some very complicated directions to the TARDIS wardrobe: "First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on your left." This establishes that the interior corridors of the TARDIS beyond the console room still exist despite the redesign, and echoes a similar conversation between Romana and Chris Parsons in the uncompleted serial, Shada, about where to find the TARDIS medical kit. The presence of such mundane items as rubbish bins recalls The Invasion of Time, where the TARDIS interiors resembled an Earth-style building (complete with a swimming pool).[6]
  • The Doctor's partiality to the works of Dickens was indicated previously when the Sixth Doctor quoted A Tale of Two Cities in the last part of The Trial of a Time Lord (1986).[7] The Fourth Doctor also read out a description of Little Nell's dress (from The Old Curiosity Shop) in Shada.
  • When the old woman releases the Gelth in the music hall, Dickens cries out, "What phantasmagoria is this?" Gatiss also wrote the Doctor Who audio play Phantasmagoria for Big Finish Productions.
  • The TARDIS materialises and dematerialises without the flurry of wind that accompanies it in "Rose".

[edit] Production

  • According to Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts, the working titles for this story included The Crippingwell Horror and The Angels of Crippingwell.[8]
  • Mark Gatiss stated in the Radio Times that the original script was more bleak and frightening, but that he was advised by Davies to "make it more of a romp."
  • Although the story is set in 19th century Cardiff, the production was actually filmed in Swansea and Monmouth, as there were not enough Victorian-looking buildings in Cardiff. Coincidentally, writers Mark Gatiss and Russell T. Davies were both born in Swansea.

[edit] Cast notes

  • Simon Callow, who plays Dickens, has also written extensively about the writer and is well known for playing Dickens on television as well as in a one-man show. See celebrity appearances in Doctor Who.
  • Eve Myles, who plays Gwyneth, subsequently stars in the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood as Gwen Cooper. There is supposedly no connection between the two characters other than both characters living in Cardiff.[9].

[edit] Outside references

  • The address on Snead's hearse indicates his mortuary is located in Llandaff, where, coincidentally, the BBC Wales production offices are. Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, was also born there.
  • There are several literary in-jokes during Dickens and the Doctor's conversation in the coach. The "American bit" in Martin Chuzzlewit which the Doctor thinks is rubbish and "padding" was indeed inserted by Dickens to spice up the original serialised story when sales were disappointing, but did not improve sales by much. The death of Little Nell (from The Old Curiosity Shop), which the Doctor says always "cracks [him] up," is cited (notably by Oscar Wilde in 1895) as an example of excessive sentimentality and purple prose that becomes unintentionally amusing.
  • Dickens also cries, "What the Shakespeare?", a play on the common exclamation, "What the Dickens?" Contrary to popular belief, the phrase has nothing to do with Charles Dickens; "Dickens" is a euphemism for the Devil as in a minced oath. Riffing on this comment, in the 2006 Big Finish Productions audio drama The Kingmaker, William Shakespeare cries, "What the Chaucer?".

[edit] Broadcast

  • Author and Faction Paradox creator Lawrence Miles posted a damning review of this episode on the Internet within an hour of its broadcast, focusing on a perceived political subtext suggesting that asylum seekers (the Gelth) are really all evil and out to exploit liberal generosity (the Doctor). The review produced considerable backlash in various Internet forums, especially in light of his favourable reviews of "Rose" and "The End of the World", mainly over his comments about writer Mark Gatiss. Miles conceded in a later edit of the review that the subtext was probably unintentional, but still felt it should have been detected and edited out of the script. The original review has been replaced by a placeholder.[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Image of the Fendahl". Tom Baker, George Spenton-Foster, Chris Boucher. Season 15. British Broadcasting Corporation. 1977.
  2. ^ "Boom Town". Christopher Eccleston, Joe Ahearne, Russell T Davies. Series 1. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2005.
  3. ^ "Rose". Christopher Eccleston, Keith Boak, Russell T Davies. Series 1. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2005.
  4. ^ "The End of the World". Christoper Eccleston, Euros Lyn, Russell T Davies. Series 1. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2005.
  5. ^ "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". William Hartnell, Richard Martin, Terry Nation. Season 2. British Broadcasting Corporation. 1964.
  6. ^ "The Invasion of Time". Tom Baker, Gerald Baker, Graham Williams, Anthony Read. Season 15. British Broadcasting Corporation. 1978.
  7. ^ "The Ultimate Foe". Colin Baker, Chris Clough. Season 23. British Broadcasting Corporation. 1986.
  8. ^ Gatiss, Mark (2005). Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts. BBC Books. ISBN 0-563-48641-4. 
  9. ^ Cook, Benjamin (2007-01-31 cover date). "Whoops, Apocalypse". Doctor Who Magazine (378): p. 34.  "Is there a special link between the similarly named characters of Gwen and Gwyneth? 'None at all,' says Russell. 'Maybe it's a Welsh thing, but those are completely different names to me. We're not about to reveal that she's a parallel-Gelth-ghost-from-the-Time-Rift, or something; just two names beginning with "G". It could have been worse: I could have called her Gina. Or George.' "
  10. ^ The Beasthouse

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
The TARDIS Index File has information related to:

[edit] Reviews

v • d • e
Doctor Who series 1 episodes
"Rose" • "The End of the World" • "The Unquiet Dead" • "Aliens of London" • "World War Three" • "Dalek" • "The Long Game" • "Father's Day" • "The Empty Child" • "The Doctor Dances" • "Boom Town" • "Bad Wolf" • "The Parting of the Ways"