Review - The Unquiet Dead

After action in the present and the future, we complete the time travel triumvirate with a trip to the past; specifically Victorian Cardiff in the delightful Dickensian romp, The Unquiet Dead.

Season 1, Episode 3 - The Unquiet Dead

Right from the cold open, this episode ticked along at a reasonable pace. We're immediately confronted with a murderous zombie and an undertaker for whom this is all just an annoyance. What is going on? Then we get smacked up side the head with Charles Dickens, show-stealingly played by Simon Callow. Seriously, Dickens owns this episode.

What the Shakespeare?

Gwyneth was an interesting character, and helped to draw out some of the season arc hints without being too obvious. I think this was the first "Bad Wolf" reference of the season, and it was subtle enough to leave you wondering what it meant without taking over from the current story. Eve Myles played that scene really well.

I was pleased to see The Doctor kick a door in rather than use the Sonic Screwdriver. Much quicker and certainly much more manly. In fact, I don't recall the Sonic coming out at all this episode.

The Gelth were a reasonable foe, highlighting more of the impact of the Time War. Of course even on my first viewing of this I knew The Gelth would turn out to be evil, but The Doctor was blinded by his own guilt about their predicament.

They're evil? How can you tell?

The Doctor and Rose had their first real lover's tiff here too, when Rose demanded The Gelth not use corpses, and The Doctor essentially told her to STFU. Coming on the back of The Doctor's treatment of Cassandra in The End of the World, it's hard to see why Rose wanted to stick around.

Overall though, I feel like not a lot actually happened in this episode. We had a couple of zombie attacks and a séance, with everything culminating in a big climactic confrontation of sorts, but it seems in retrospect to be more of an exposition piece, revealing more of the Time War and setting up the season arc. The talking was broken up with action at appropriate moments though, so it never got bogged down.

7/10

Can we fix it?

Not really. The Unquiet Dead is just an example of a wordier, less tense episode. It's structure reasonably well, but The Gelth never really felt like much of a threat. Perhaps if some zombies had escaped the morgue and started killing and possessing more people it would have been more tense, but that would have required a different solution.

I'd probably just leave it alone.