Doctor Who New Series 1.3 - 'The Unquiet Dead'

Before I begin this post, I would just like to provide a link to another blog which covers this episode, written by Lawrence Miles. When The Unquiet Dead was released, Miles read the text of this episode in a way which suggested that it was a huge advocate of racist bigotry. I am not going to discuss this interpretation of the text in this post, because quite frankly, I feel that Miles read too far into the metaphorical intentions of this episode. Also, I never made the comparisons myself, so there would be no point in talking about a view point which I never clocked on to. Nevertheless, Miles is a fantastic and insightful writer who has written probably the most detailed account of Doctor Who's history ever. Both he and his co-writer, Tat Wood, have written and released a series of books called About Time. All of these volumes comprehensively examine every single episode of Doctor Who from 1963 onwards. So here is a link to Miles' views on The Unquiet Dead. I also recommend checking out his published writings too.

Anyhow, enough with that. Time for my word on the episode.

Plot - The Doctor takes Rose on her first trip into the past. They arrive in Cardiff in the year 1869, where famous author Charles Dickens teams up to help investigate the strange sightings of gas-like creatures who live in the plumbing works of a funeral parlor.

This is the third episode into the New Who series and is also the third episode in what I like to call the introduction trilogy. Episode one (Rose) showed us how a present day Doctor Who story can transform the ordinary into the monstrous, whilst episode two (The End of the World) gave us a colorful adventure which simultaneously laid down some of the foundations for this series' story arc and character development.

The Unquiet Dead whisks the Doctor and Rose to Cardiff in the year 1869. This is the first episode of the new series set in the past and will make use of some characteristics which will become traditional features of such stories.

Firstly, the Doctor will team up with a famous face; Charles Dickens. This is something which happens on regular occasions in new Doctor Who and serves such plots in more than one way.

The use of a historical character can be a used as a great source of comedy. Meeting a famous face slots the Doctor and his companion cheekily onto the front pages of history. To place the protagonists right next to the major figureheads of the history books can lead to all sorts of  comical skullduggery. The Doctor could screw up the timelines, become jolly old chums with hugely controversial individuals and even inadvertently become solely responsible for huge historical breakthroughs.

The humor element in The Unquiet Dead is not so heavily applied in this episode. In fact, the only real humor is found in the scene where we discover that the Doctor is a huge fan of Dickens. The term fan - which the Doctor uses when expressing his admiration for him - confuses Dickens, as he has only ever understood this word in the context of a cooling device. But even then, this joke doesn't really have anything to do with the historical presence of Dickens. Instead, humor is derived from the misunderstanding of two characters from differing time periods. Dickens fails to understand what context the Doctor is using the word fan in, presumably because such a word is not yet associated with the admiration of celebrated individuals.

The use of historical figures can also help to support a theme for an episode. Simply put, the writer can take an element or theme which a particular historical figure is notorious for and then use it for the premise of that episode. In The Unquiet Dead, the villain is a ghost-like creature - known as the Gelth - which exists within the plumbing of an undertakers house which is supposedly haunted. A classic Dickensian theme in and of itself.

The second traditional feature which springs up in The Unquiet Dead is the exploitation of historically cultural/social myths. Similar to (yet not always the same as) the monster emulating a celebrated figure's imagination and themes, an episode set in the past will often take a well known, fear, fable or story from that era and apply a science fiction twist to it.

At the beginning of this story, the premise is that a house in 1869 Cardiff is haunted by ghosts who live within the gasworks and possess the bodies of recently deceased humans. Before the episode reaches its climax, however, it is established that they are not spirits, but alien life forms who're using a rip in time and space to venture from one part of the universe to another.

In addition to this, the rip in time and space in this episode is also known as the rift. This very same rift will be referenced more than once in this series and will ultimately go on to become a major plot point within Doctor Who's spin off show, Torchwood. I do plan on reviewing Torchwood, so I guess it would be an idea to make reference to the rift whenever it pops up.

Essentially, all episodes set in the past are strictly science fiction/fantasy stories, set within a historical context.

There was a time, as far back as 1963, where Doctor Who did try to do straight historical epics. Because you see, Doctor Who's original aim was to be an educational television show as well as an entertainment series. It's mission statement was adopted from the BBC's initial aim (coined by the first director general; Lord John Reith) "to entertain and educate".

As the show evolved and began to figure out exactly what it was, however, the creative force decided to scrap the historical epic format altogether and stuck instead to sci-fi/fantasy oriented monster stories.

Furthermore The Unquiet Dead is the first episode of New Who that is written by someone other than the program's head writer. Whilst Rose and The End of the World were Russel T Davies scripts, this story was penned by The League of  Gentlemen co-star Mark Gatis.

Gatis is a long time Doctor Who fan who'd already written material for the show during the wilderness years of the 1990s. Yet despite his passion and knowledge of the program's history, he was not exempt from an error which has occurred amongst the writers of Doctor Who since it began back in 1963.

I am referring, of course, to continuity contradiction.

Now I'm not going to discuss continuity errors in detail here - seeing as countless words have already been dedicated to this very subject - but I'd still like to point out a few rules that Gatis establishes in this script which are inevitably dropped several episodes later.

One rule is the requirement that companions must comply with when visiting historical time periods. Before Rose is allowed to step from the doors of the Tardis, she must change into clothing that reflects that specific era; as her 21st century outfit will supposedly cause - in the Doctor's words - a riot. The wardrobe authenticity requirement is ditched by all other writers in the new series and it is only used one more time by Gatis himself (in series two's The Idiot's Lantern) before he abandons it completely.

Another rule is the laws of rewriting time. When the Doctor offers to help the Gelth transition through the rift - where they can co-exist with humans in the dead bodies of our recently deceased loved ones - Rose reacts, arguing that earth did not co-exist with such creatures during her time period. The Doctor responds by stating that history can be re-written in a flash.

By the eight episode of this series, this rule is completely ignored, as it turns out that altering the past will pretty much result in the entire destruction of time and space itself.

But the time can be/can't be rewritten rule is forever changing throughout Doctor Who's exceedingly long narrative. At one moment the rules state that a paradox will result in the collapse of everything, whilst at the next moment, the whole paradox warning simply becomes nothing more than a rule which can naughtily be broken by the Doctor and his chums.

In recent years, they have tried to formulate a compromise for this time can/can't be rewritten rule; declaring that some points in history can be rewritten, whilst events which are labelled as fixed must never be interfered with. This compromise is a fair attempt to deal with the continuity contradiction, however it is not a perfect solution. However I shall talk about this further when I finally arrive at the Steven Moffat era (Series 5 onward).

But as I have already mentioned, contradictions in Doctor Who are prevalent throughout the entire show's canon. It is a part of the show which you eventually become accustomed to; plus there are so many continuity errors that it will cause nothing but frustration if you spend too much time thinking about them.

When I first saw The Unquiet Dead, I didn't much care for it. At this point, I still had a trivial amount of interest in this series and my passion toward the show was still several episodes away from its inevitable ignition.

Watching this episode again, however, has made me realize just how good it is; mainly because of Simon Callow's wonderful performance as Charles Dickens.

In the episode, Dickens is a man who is lonely, aging and convinced that the creativity within his imagination has grown stale. When the Doctor and the Gelth enter his life, Dickens' world view is confronted head on. This historical figure's imagination as a writer is no comparison to the cynicism which also lingers within his mind. Suddenly the universe has become too big for his liking and he ultimately expresses just as much fear and confusion as any other human would during such a surreal situation.

Callow apparently refused to play the role of Dickens throughout his entire career, stating that he would only take on the role when he read a script which he felt was interest enough to partake in. What charmed him over to take up the role in this episode, was the fact that it explored the flaws of this hugely celebrated icon. In this script, Dickens' character is portrayed through his humanity. He is a human being, with flaws, fears and doubts. This, in Callow's eyes, showed the man more than the icon.

The progression of Dickens transcending from fear to enlightenment-of-the-known is a beautiful narrative progression and despite the story ending one week before the date of Dickens' real life death, the episode still manages to maintain its feel good persona right up to the end credits.

Episode three also mentions the time war for the third time since the series began. By now it is becoming quite clear that this highly referenced off-screen war is building toward some sort of grand revelation, but now is not the time to discuss that. It will be episode six which finally blows the lid on that particular can of worms.

The Unquiet Dead also contains the words "Bad Wolf" in one of its scenes. Now this is a word which will inevitably build toward the series' major story arc. "Bad Wolf" was also a phrase which was also uttered in The End of the World. These two words will be used frequently over the duration of the next ten episodes of the first series. I will discuss the "Bad Wolf" reference in the next episode that I explore; as it is during this story that the words are dragged (somewhat distractingly) to the forefront of the narrative, making viewers highly aware of the existence of this phrase.

All in all, The Unquiet Dead is a wonderfully plotted character piece set in a historical time period. Despite many claiming that the history based stories are the dullest of Doctor Who stories, this one gives such a claim a run for its money. The episode shows viewers that such stories can be far from boring, so long as they are executed in the correct manner.