The Unquiet Dead

I feel like stories and serials set in the past are always a very mixed bag with who but this is definitely one of the better ones. We get the first proper horror episode of the revival and I remember being genuinely unnerved and frightened by it when I first watched it back in 05. The whole idea of setting it at Christmas and having Charles Dickens who at the time is touring A Christmas Carol mixed in with the Ghost/Aliens is a stroke of genius and really makes this one stand out. The episode isn't without fault by any means, the pacing is a wee bit strange among other things but I'd definitely recommend this one for fans of the back in time stories. I'm going to give "The Unquiet Dead" a 7.7 to a 7.8

The Unquiet Dead doesn't quite live up to to the first two episodes of the new Doctor Who series (especially the superb The End of the World), but it does feature ghosts, wit and the first example of a recurring gimmick throughout the series: the Doctor's interaction with historical figures.

The interaction is actually caused by accident: the Doctor wanted to take Rose to Naples for Christmas, but somehow the TARDIS has something to say about it and the two find themselves, much to the Doctor's dismay, in 1860 Cardiff. Trouble isn't very far away, either, since corpses have been mysteriously revived in the past few weeks, and the only people who can do something about it are the Doctor, a girl with psychic powers and a certain Charles Dickens (Simon Callow), who now makes a living performing magic tricks and hosting public readings of his body of work.

The main fascination of The Unquiet Dead is its postmodern approach to Dickens, something that was entirely to be expected from writer Mark Gatiss, given his experiences on The League of Gentlemen (the TV show, not the Sean Connery-starring nonsense): the great writer is depicted as a mixture of A Christmas Carol's Scrooge and Hard Times' Gradgrind, i.e. a man who has lost all faith in the magic he used to write about and now believes firmly in scientific facts. And all that goes without mentioning his wonderfully clever comment on the supernatural incidents in the story: "What the Shakespeare is going on here?". That line might also be a reference to the fact that Callow, always reliable for these parts, appeared in Shakespeare in Love and reportedly made a provocative statement about Hamlet in the original version of Four Weddings and a Funeral (Richard Curtis subsequently removed that scene, along with the back-stories of all the other characters as well).

On the flip-side, the episode has a darkness to it (given the zombie-style premise) that doesn't really sit well with the general tone of the show (Steven Moffat's two-part story later on in the season shows how to use that darkness in a good way), the (inevitable) gallows humor being more suitable for a Monty Python sketch or, given Gatiss' involvement, a League of Gentlemen story than Doctor Who. However, Eccleston's charisma manages to lighten up the mood when necessary, and Piper's natural warmth contributes hugely, too.

So no, it's not really good as the episodes written by Davies or Moffat, but what the heck, it's got Charles Dickens - that ought to be enough.

I think the first two episodes were very good, but this is the early one I remember most fondly, this was an excellent episode. We get good value out of the unquiet dead, a bit of Gothic horror, corpses coming to life and bursting out of coffins, Simaon Callow's excellent interpretation of Dickens, the pluses continue. It is visually stunning, I love lots of the glorious filming locations, especially the streets of Swansea. The production values are extremely high, everything looks quality. Eccleston continues his brilliance. Billie Piper continues to impress as Rose, I didn't appreciate at the time how good Billie was and how much I liked Rose's character. Alan David is glorious as Sneed, and it's a good first Who related outing for Eve Myles. The Gelth are a great invention, Gwyneth gives us another reference to the bad Wolf.

I had higher hopes than i should have for this episode. While it has the potential to scare the younger viewers like the Classic Who did; for the adult viewers it drags on a little too long and so loses some of the grip.

Still an above average episode however, as it does have a catching ending

I can't think of anyone who could have played Dicken's better. Just like the the future Matt Smith episode with Van Gogh, absolutely perfect casting. This episode was very intriguing indeed, I thought it was brilliant.