The Unquiet Dead

159 – "The Unquiet Dead"
Doctor Who episode
The Gelth break through the rift
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companion Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
Others Alan David – Gabriel Sneed Huw Rhys – Redpath Jennifer Hill – Mrs Peace Eve Myles – Gwyneth Simon Callow – Charles Dickens Wayne Cater – Stage Manager Meic Povey – Driver Zoe Thorne – The Gelth
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	45 minutes
Originally broadcast	9 April 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The End of the World" "Aliens of London"

"The Unquiet Dead" is the third episode of the first series of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 9 April 2005 and is the first episode of the revival to be set in the past. In Victorian Cardiff, the dead are walking, and creatures made of gas are on the loose. The Doctor and Rose team up with Charles Dickens to investigate Mr Sneed, the local Undertaker.

Plot

The Doctor attempts to pilot the TARDIS to Naples in 1860 to show Rose the past, but misses, 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 the late Mrs. Peace has been taken over by a blue vapour; she kills her mourning grandson, Mr. Redpath, and then lurches away from the parlour with a wailing shriek as glowing blue vapour flows from her mouth. 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 vapour leaves Mrs. Peace, scaring the audience away and attracting the attention of the Doctor and Rose. Gabriel and Gwyneth arrive to retake the corpse as the blue vapour disappears into the pipes, and they also kidnap Rose by knocking her out with chloroform when she confronts them. Dickens accuses the Doctor of ruining his performance, but after the Doctor gushes over his literary genius, and learning that an adventure is afoot, Dickens gladly joins up to help.

At the funeral parlour, Rose wakes up, and suddenly, so do the corpses of Mrs. Peace and Mr. Redpath. The Doctor and Dickens arrive, breaking into the parlour and rescuing Rose; the Doctor attempts to learn what is happening by questioning the corpses, and determines that the parlour is built on a rift in spacetime, and the blue vapours are beings attempting to cross through the Rift; they are able to use the corpses for a short time, but cannot sustain themselves in these forms. Rose talks more with Gwyneth, and learns of her clairvoyance, 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 the 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 greater than anticipated, and their true motive is revealed: they intend to kill the living to give themselves more hosts and take over the planet. One of the Gelth-animated bodies strangles Sneed to death, allowing another Gelth to possess his body. Dickens flees the parlour, and Rose and the Doctor trapped in a part of the basement. Outside, Dickens 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 then determines that Gwyneth is, in fact, already dead; the process of becoming a bridge for the Gelth was fatal. The Doctor, Rose, and Dickens flee the parlour before it is engulfed in flames. As the Doctor and Rose head back to the TARDIS, Dickens thanks them for their help and makes a commitment to patch up things with his family and finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood, changing the end of the story so that Drood will not be killed by his uncle but rather by something supernatural (though the Doctor notes later to Rose that Dickens 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. An astounded and delighted Dickens walks away through the streets of Cardiff, greeting everyone he passes and quoting A Christmas Carol, "God bless us, everyone!"

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 most 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.
• The Cardiff rift reappears in the episodes "Boom Town" 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", and told Rose in "The End of the World" that his people had been destroyed in a war, this is the first mention of the phrase "Time War" in the series. 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".
• 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). In The Eleventh Hour the Eleventh Doctor would reveal that this incarnation of the TARDIS retained the swimming pool, "in the library."
• 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). 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.
• In "Journey's End" the Doctor makes note of Gwen Cooper from Torchwood looking like Gwyneth as they are both played by the same actress, although he describes it as "spatial genetic multiplicity".
• In the 2011 episode The Wedding of River Song, Simon Callow returns to reprise his role as Charles Dickens briefly.

Production

According to Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts, the working titles for this story included The Crippingwell Horror and The Angels of Crippingwell. The story's final title is a reference to Cyril Connolly's book The Unquiet Grave.^{[citation needed]} 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. Cardiff's New Theatre was used for the theatre Dickens is telling a story at in the beginning of the episode; it did not require much dressing as it resembled a Victorian-style theatre already. An empty Victorian house in Penarth was used for Sneed's parlour.

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. In "Journey's End" the Doctor alludes to a connection between Gwyneth and Gwen by asking Gwen about her family history.

Outside references

• The address on Sneed's hearse indicates his mortuary is located in Llandaff, where 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?".
• Dickens quotes Shakespeare near the end of the episode, saying to Rose, "There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V)

Reception

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.

External links

• The Unquiet Dead on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• BBC Doctor Who Homepage
• "The Unquiet Dead" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "The Unquiet Dead" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "The Unquiet Dead" at TV.com
• Doctor Who Confidential — Episode 3: TARDIS Tales
• "Fantastic!" — Episode trailer for "The Unquiet Dead"
• Interview with director Euros Lyn at Sci Fi Wire
• "The Unquiet Dead" at the Internet Movie Database

Reviews

• "The Unquiet Dead" reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• "The Unquiet Dead" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide