Dan Owen reviews

Episode 3: "The Unquiet Dead"

Director:

Euros Lyn (Cutting It, Casualty)

Screenplay:

Mark Gatiss (The League Of Gentlemen)

Cast:

The Doctor: Christopher Ecclesto
Rose Tyler: Billie Piper
Charles Dickens: Simon Callow
Gabriel Sneed: Alan David
Mrs Peace: Jennifer Hill
Gwyneth: Eve Myles
Driver: Meic Povey
Redpath: Huw Rhys

The Doctor takes Rose back through time to Cardiff, circa 1869, to find that the dead are walking and they have to enlist the help of Charles Dickens (Simon Callow, above-right) to restore order to a local funeral home.

Well, three episodes into the new series and Doctor Who finally manages a strong episode. This is fundamentally down to Mark Gatiss, writer and performer with The League Of Gentleman, whose lifelong interest in Who and the Victorian era pays dividends with a story that is full of pace and peppered with good dialogue.

The series has always worked best when set in the past, usually due to budgetary limitations when trying to create believable futuristic worlds. As we all know, Britain’s rich history means recreating the past on-screen is far more within the BBC’s abilities – and the production team excel themselves with engrossing scenery and set-design that wouldn’t look out of place in a lavish period drama such as Pride & Prejudice.

An inspired decision to involve Charles Dickens into proceedings immediately elevates the entire episode to the realm of pulp fantasy, and with a plot that uses Victorian ghost stories, 19th-Century séances and alien zombies, you really do have an immensely enjoyable spectacle. The only real complain is that the Doctor Who of yesteryear could have allowed the story to breathe over a four-part serial, but the new Who is far more interested in quick, breathless action beats. By and large, I prefer the new direction, but does mean that (yet again) some elements of the story are somewhat brushed over.

Billie Piper (right, with Eccleston) seems to be having great fun, and it’s obvious she’s becoming more relaxed with the role. Likewise, Christopher Eccleston manages a more mannered approach to the material and leaves The Doctor’s incessant grinning behind, thanks primarily to the fact there’s some meaty dialogue to get stuck into. Mark Gatiss’ script is littered with witty lines and choice moments – particularly The Doctor’s star-struck discussion with Dickens in the back of a coach.

The special-effects are wonderful throughout, with ghostly apparitions brought to life with well-implemented CGI, and some good make-up for the titular unquiet dead of the funeral home. It’s refreshing to see an episode play to the show’s strengths and careful construct a decent story and characters around visuals. In previous episodes the plots have been pedestrian and the effects patchy at best – but "The Unquiet Dead" corrects this unbalance.

Overall, this was a genuinely entertaining episode that is the current benchmark for future instalments. There was barely a bad note through the whole 45-minutes, and it was also intriguing to see a 'Time War' mentioned – obviously pushing the show’s new mythology that the Time Lords have been destroyed and The Doctor is the last of his kind. Hopefully, we’ll begin to unearth more on this promising facet to the series in the weeks to come.

Next week, The Doctor and Rose return to present day London to find that a UFO has crashed into The Houses Of Parliament in "Aliens Of London".

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Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2005.