Doctor Who Retrospective #3 of 10 “The Unquiet Dead”

The anticpation for The Unquiet Dead was pretty high and one of the reasons for this was the fact that this episode was written by the League Of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss, who has since kept his association with the show by penning The Idiot’s Lantern, narrating Doctor Who Confidential’s second season and playing Doctor Lazarus in the soon to be seen third season. TUD is also noteworthy for its star, Eve Myles, who went on to play PC Gwen Cooper in the spinoff series, Torchwood that was based on the very rift at the centre of this story (although we didn’t know any of that at the time). The episode also served to keep the show in the newspaper headlines following its harrowing opening scene when the corpse of Redpath’s grandmother comes alive, kills him and heads out into the street with a blood curdling scream, which drew complaints from viewers (and Mediawatch, if memory serves correctly) that only proved to be a good thing and got the fans all misty-eyed about Mary Whitehouse in the good old days.

In the episode, Simon Callow got the chance to play Charles Dickens and not for the first time in his career. He commented in an interview that his heart sank when he heard Dickens was to be portrayed in a show like this, presumably fearing that it would be fairly hackneyed part but, on reading the script, he had a complete change of heart because he felt that the writing of the character was so true and honest. He was certainly a joy to watch and stole every scene he was in.

You can see what Simon Callow liked about the script. It was a good ghost story (albeit with a typical Doctor Who, alien twist) but it had a real energy to it and a pace that you generally don’t see in Victorian dramas, interspersed with some great dialogue. For example, the coach scene with Charles Dickens and the Doctor when the latter realises who is sat next to him was perfectly executed… Dickens: “I thought you were my ‘number one fan’”, Doctor: “Well, you gotta learn how to take criticism”: an exchange that works on many levels. Visually, I wasn’t that impressed with the Gelth themselves but I think that is more to do with my own preferences rather than any detriment to the work of The Mill, who actually delivered a fantastic, if minor, special effect in this episode when the TARDIS dematerialised and the little accumulation of snow span away in tiny vortices. The kind of attention to detail that allows the viewer to enjoy the show on many levels.

The episode was also a good success in the ratings: TEOTW had seen the viewers drop from the heady heights of Rose’s 10.8m, back down to a still excellent fraction under 8.0m. However, this one saw a significant rise in viewers up to about 8.9m but bums on seats is not the only statistic of import. Audience share for the 3 stories had been 45%, 38% and 38%, and Audience Appreciation had been a monumental 76, 76 and (for this episode) 80!� I guess the main crux of events was once again the development of Rose as she learnt more lessons in her life as a time-traveller. She had found herself an ally in Gwyneth, Mr Sneed’s servant girl, but there was a clash of cultures (forshame) and while Rose befriended Gwyneth in a very modern manner, Gwyneth herself did not really know how to respond in kind. Her ultimate sacrifice led Rose to comment, “She saved the world. A servant girl. And no-one will ever know” and may be that was a nod towards her own future as well.

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Tags: Charles-Dickens, Doctor Who, Eve-Myles, Mark-Gatiss, Mary-Whitehouse, Mediawatch, Simon-Callow, TARDIS, The-Mill, The-Rift, The-Unquiet-Dead, Torchwood