I thought it was pretty good. I liked the bits like the reveal by the Doctor that they were not only in the wrong time, but actually in Cardiff. Or the bit in the carriage where he goes all fanboy on Charles Dickens, but inserts some criticism along the way. And once again, Rose talks to some of the locals, and thus getting an idea of their background and what they are like. I'm not sure if this was filler or deliberate. I think it could be said that Dickens actually saved the day, but I'm not totally sure.

I don't know... this is one of those episodes whose standing with fans seems to change over time. I remember being terribly disappointed by it when I was watching it. It just seemed so slow and uncomplicated. The Doctor just happens to stumble across the Gelth and Dickens' performance, and then is led straight to the Rift and then immediately works out what to do. Everything's in such a straight line except for the twist - which is signposted ages beforehand.

It's almost as if Gattiss was *too* aware of the 45mins format and stripped out more plot than he really needed to.

Still, it was hugely popular with all the other fans and it was a surprise to see it do so relatively poorly at the end of season polls. Indeed, a lot of the fans I talk to say it's one of the least rewatchable because there's so little going on.

This is probably my least favourite episode. There were some really good lines, but most of the guest cast was pretty weak (apart from Simon Callow). Also, some things didn't really make sense. It was never clear how much control the Gelth had over the bodies - sometimes it seemed like they were controlling them, (attacking Rose, for example), other times it seemed like the dead humans were in control (the old lady going to see Dickens like she'd been planning to, Gwyneth saving the day). And were the Gelth supposed to be made of gas, or did they feed on it? Because if it's the former, flooding the room with gas wouldn't have sucked them out of the corpses. This sort of thing really annoys me: Explain properly or not at all!

I thought it was good to see Doctor Who re-introduce elements of horror, which were largely phased out during Tom Baker's era when Mary Whitehouse* was at her busybodying height. Just having zombies in a story was a good start, but the shot of the reanimated old woman screaming her way into the opening credits? That's what the show's all about - scaring the crap out of little kids!

*For non-Brits: Mary Whitehouse was the head of the National Viewers' And Listeners' Association, a mainly Christian 'think of the children!' pressure group demanding the banning of all scary, rude, violent or sexy material from Britain's TV screens. Also a prime stirrer in the 'video nasties' furore of the early 1980s. Doctor Who was a particular bete noir of hers.

Of the first five episodes, this is my favorite of the set. It was my favorite of the new series until we saw Dalek...and well, that just blew everything else out of the water.

Concept wise, the story is a throwback to the classic days of Hinchcliffe and Holmes when there was a sense of Gothic to the show. It felt like a good distillation of the new sensiblity and the old sensibility when I saw it last year.

One thing it had was a sense of atmosphere. The Beeb is great at creating the period pieces and it shows here. That said, I think Empty Child and Doctor Dances trumped this one in terms of atmopshere later in the year and there were a number of memorable scenes that would make Bad Wolf and PotW more memorable from the fan persepctive.

I think this one will quietly go up in estimation as the years pass.

I actually think it was overrated. A lot of people seem to really love it. Maybe because it's more traditional Who, then the first two episodes were?

It had some really good scenes, but overall it didn't grip me particularly

Overall I liked this episode. The old lady zombie refusing to let death stop her attending Charles Dickens' reading was awesome.

I think they fed on the gas but I'm really not sure.

I've never understood the end of this episode. When Nine feels Gwyneth's pulse right before she lights the match, it's still, and he realises that she died as soon as she opened the rift. Nine tells Rose what happened and says something about how the unexplained happens sometimes, and leaves it at that. Is there more to it, some special significance to the fact that she died, yet could still talk so no one realised she was dead? Or is just a "hey, miraculous stuff happens sometimes" type of thing?

For me, it was partly because it's a historical episode.

Yes! But... how come the Gelth inside her didn't take control?



From what I remember, they were made out of gas but would be sucked into any other sources of gas that they mght come across.



It's just a "woo, spooky ghost!" ending to the episode. The whole episode draws on the old ghost stories that used to be on British TV every Christmas, and Gatiss presumably felt that he'd rather spoiled that aspect of it by revealing the ghosts to be aliens. So having Gwyneth save the day even after she is killed allows him to have his cake and eat it.

In the story's defence, that's actually true. If you have two environments, in contact, containing gas and one has a higher density than the other then the gas will be drawn into the higher density environment. So, it's actually true science to say that raising the level of gas in the room to a higher one that the level of gas in the corpses would force the Gelth out of them.

Indeed, I loved that opener. And I do see everyone's points about the pace, but it suits the time period IMO. And both Simon Callow and Eve Myles are fantastic. (BTW, has anyone figured out if Myles's character in Torchwood will at all be related to Gwyneth? They could easily ignore the link, but it would be a neat reference. :D)

It has the BEST line ever "I love a happy medium" I mean really how much better can you get? And delivered with such glorious Doctor childish glee!

I enjoyed it immensely at the time. It was wonderul gothic horror. And really who can resist a zombie story? And I didn't predict the Gelth going the way they did.

Nuallain is correct on the science. I didn't think and neither did my scientist husband watching with me think there was anything flawed in this approach.



Well who is to say that the Gelth didn't want to go too?

I thought it was adequately paced, enough happened along the way... but maybe I was fangirling DIckens too?

I thought there were some lovely, lovely ideas in the episode, but it all felt a bit flat and unadventurous to me. I love the gas creatures, the idea of the seance (and it's a beautifully executed scene too with a fabulous performance from Eve Myles) and the argument between the Doctor and Rose. And the screaming dead woman into the credits is just great. But. I felt there was no real consistency in the characterization, particularly that of Gwyneth. She starts off telling Sneed that "something terrible is happening in this house" and "it's unGodly", and is one of the few people who's aware that the Gelth are killing innocent human beings, and yet makes the transition from that to "they're angels sent by my mam on a holy mission" in minutes with no real explanation as to why. And that got to me.

Yes, I'm sure one can come up with plenty of explanations for it (I favour "the Gelth are manipulating her psychically as well as verbally during the seance", personally) but it bugs me. A lot. Sorry.

But yeah, the "happy medium" pun is great!

I felt like incidents like the old lady still wanting to go to Dickens' reading, and Gwyneth resisting the Gelth were a result of electrical impulses left in their brains despite the Gelth reanimating their corpses. Whatever was foremost in their minds when they died was still trying to assert itself, so for the old lady that was going to the reading, and for Gwyneth that was helping the Doctor and Rose. I guess Gwyneth's would be stronger than the old lady's because of her abilities and because she had died more recently.

I loved this episode so much, partly because I'm a big Dickens fan, and because I love the period stories in the old series and the new. It's one of the episodes I rewatch the most, and I still always get misty-eyed when Dickens is asking The Doctor how long his stories will last, and with Dickens' final line. I kind of see the ep as an extra Christmas episode along with ‘The Christmas Invasion’.

Ah, thanks Nuallain and EllycatinOz! That makes me like the episode a bit more. As does this:



which makes perfect sense. I only wish it had been explained like that in the episode itself.

Just rewatched this episode, and I'm pleased to find that it was less frightening this time around. Perhaps it helped that I watched it in the afternoon, as opposed to right before bed. :)

I had forgotten the brilliance of the Doctor arriving and being frustrated that he had landed in the wrong place and wrong time from what he wanted, then hearing the screams from the theater, and saying "That's more like it!" Hee! And then upon seeing the first gas creature, his wonderful, gleeful "Fantastic!"

As for this:
I thought it *was* explained fairly well in the episode, but I guess the last part with Gwyneth's death was a bit ambiguous.

I'm looking forward to this ep, b/c if I had the ability to time-travel, I'd be all about going back into the past. Maybe go forward a 100 years or so, just to see what's coming up next. But 5 billion years? It's too distant to have any meaning to me (I'm not a big sci-fi person... probably the only person who never read Narnia or The Hobbit as a kid). Rose's whole "my mum's dead in 5 billion years" was a bit daft -- honey, your mother was dead about 4,999,999,930 years ago. Hope that number is right!

I've just realised that this is one advantage US viewers are going to get over us in the UK. You get to see it when it's dark outside. One thing that was missing throughout the last run in 2005 - and we'll miss it again this year too :( - was watching the first airing with the benefit of it being dark outside with the certain knowledge that somewhere out there in the dead of night shop dummies were stalking the streets, corpses were coming to life and little lost boys were out looking desperately for their mummy. One of the benefits we always had in years gone by, you're going to be lucky to get this year and believe me, it's going to help send shivers all the way up and down your spine.

May not seem like much but boy, what a difference the day makes.

Good point, particularly as there has always been at least one recurring horror aspect to Doctor Who: In the 30 (or so) year history of the show, there have only been three stories in which no one died. The Doctor Who body count is very, very high...

(trivia question for all for which three stories, but would request the answer be spoiler-texted)

Funny thing is SciFi Channel has been heavily promoting Ghost Hunters (a show about looking for ghosts in houses) and Mortuary (a horror movie airing tomorrow in the shock slasher style).

Yet from last week, a lot of new or casual viewers think Doctor Who is mostly farce and no fear. Tonight should be an interesting experience for them.

Me? I watched late one Saturday night, all alone in my room, no lights on. Scared the bejesus outa me. My sister's kids are terrified of Doctor Who because of this story alone.

Which is, seemingly, a decades long tradition.

Absolutely. I watched Dr Who from behind the sofa aged three, and it's done me absolutely no harm at all.

*twitch*

I'm going to be interested in the response to this episode. On the main Doctor WHo fansite Outpost Gallifrey it was hailed as a classic by a lot of people who had felt the first two episodes of RTD's vision of Who somewhat alien to their idea's about what constituted good Who. However as time passed it fell quite spectacularly out of favour as people "got" what RTD was doing with Who in the 21st century. It's not really an episode that stands up well, and the characterisation of the Doctor is awful in it. It's also not scary. Not in the slightest.

I really love TUD..In fact it's my favorite episode.I did find it scary...It felt like classic who to me..My kids aged 10-14 also found it good and scary..i do admit for having a soft spot for historicals...

My problem with it was after the amazing rush and "newness" of Rose and The End of the World, for me the show was up and running on full-throttle. The Unquiet Dead just felt like *thud* back down to earth doing a retro megamix of the Hinchcliffe and Holmes years. It just feels out of place in the flow of the season and I just hate the way the Doctor is the episode. His snivvelling in the basement waiting to die is so wrong that I actually thought maybe this is all going pear-shaped and this Doctor is going to become a wimpy, ineffectual idiot who needs other people to bail him out. Granted that does become a theme in the season, but its far FAR better written in the following stories. Dickens rescue of them feels contrived, similar rescues in episodes 7 and 8 don't ring as hollow because they are far better written and acted. Ecclestone gives probably his weakest performance of the season, the aforementioned scene in the basement being the nadir of the series. Luckily it gets much better.

It's that throwback to the HInchcliffe era that I loved... I haven't seen this epi since last April.. I'll keep my eyes open for the Eccleston issues you mention

It could just be me of course. I mean I actually like The Long Game!

What annoyed me was the passivity of the Doctor. I mean during the Hincliffe years the Doctor would never have blubbed in a basement like that. he'd have offered them a jelly baby then tripped them up with his scarf! If your going to do a Hinchcliffe homage at least do it right!

The story was a bit weak, but the creepy as hell atmosphere sure helped. And I'm a huge Simon Callow fan and own a DVD of his one man show about Charles Dickens, so it was a real treat seeing him.

I liked this episode.

I haven't seen any later episodes, but in reading some of the spoilers, I wonder if the Doctor took pity on the Gelth because he thought they were victims of the same war that destroyed his planet.

I thought Gwenyth and her butcher boy might've turned out to be the ancestors of Rose. In the past couple episodes, I thought a lot of people seemed to be dying (compared to US shows). Markeer, I didn't realize that was a long-standing Doctor Who tradition.

How cute was it when The Doctor called Rose "Barbarella"?

SciFi deleted one scene tonight to allow for an additional commercial. It takes place in the interior of the TARDIS after they've landed in 1869. Rose returns from the wardrobe room in her newly-found dress, and the Doctor tells her she looks beautiful...considering. "Considering what?" she asks. "That you're human," he replies.
She then asks him if he's going to change, and he replies that he already did change his jumper. They then go to the outer door, and Rose insists on going first because the Doctor's done this before. "This is mine!" And then the door opens and the scene goes on outside as seen tonight.

The horror element reminded me somewhat of "Horror of Fang Rock" which was pretty good. I got to see Rose in different wardrobe and it seemed like she had a pretty big smile. Felt sorry for the servant girl but Dickens' enthusiasm (people dying around him notwithstanding) was enjoyable.

One question though, what's so bad about Cardiff?

Oh yes, lots of people get slaughtered in Doctor Who. Especially during the years a man called Eric Saward script-edited the show. His stories often have huge massacres in them. There are quite afew stories during the shows history that have the Doctor and his companion/s as the only people left alive at the episodes conclusion. And companions aren't always safe either, two (possibly three) get killed off!

Drat the bastards at SciFi for deleting that scene.

Even though I watched the entirety of the first series, it wasn't until one of the SciFi Channel promos that showed a clip from "Father's Day", that I realized the Doctor had in fact been changing his jumper (shirt) every so often.

This of course led to going back and trying and see what color is his jumper in all the episodes. It's sort of hard to tell, since he tends toward darker colors and doesn't open up his jacket much.

This episode creeped me out and saddened me when I first saw it. I hadn't re-watched it til now, but the humor definitely pops out more when you aren't worried about what the hell is going on.

There's a fantasy subgenre sometimes called "Gaslight Romance" -- urban fantasies set in Victorian England. This episode contained the germ of an interesting twist on this subgenre, by combining literal gaslight with that era's invention of spiritualism. Shake and stir, and you get gas ghosts. Again, an interesting idea, but the trope needed more detailing.

Anyway, I enjoyed the period atmospherics, and Simon Callow as Dickens. Scary? No.

I loved this episode, though I'm so happy Dr. Who's back on I think I'd love a test pattern as long as it opened with the Dr. Who theme.

Maybe it was because the episode was set in 19th century England, but I had a very hard time catching and understanding the dialogue, much harder than in Rose and EotW.

Poor Gwyneth (or whatever the psychic servant girl was named).

So, to translate things into American, Cardiff=Toledo, Ohio?

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode (for several reasons mentioned by others, primarily the historical aspect), but was rather confused about one thing - how on earth did the Doctor know Rose was in the hearse? Sure, the last he saw of Rose was her chasing after the undertaker and Gwenyth, but that's a pretty big assumption. I guess from a storytelling POV, it makes sense to move the action right along with a minimum of "where did she go?" but it just seemed jarring. Was it just me?

That was an odd shift, wasn't it?

Overall the show was enjoyable, Dickens especially. What seemed out of place was how easily the doctor was hoodwinked. Hello? They want dead bodies (never a good sign) and felt free to create more. That should have been a tip-off the Gelth were up to no good.

Yeah, I'm a bit confused about the Doctor falling for the Gelth's trickery, too. I guess, though, the Time War issue and his involvement in it clouded his judgment. I think that makes sense.

The Gelth are,or were, an intresting species. I noticed that they referred to the time war, and I couldn't help but notice that the Doctor was touched by what they had said. And once again the great mystery that is the Doctor rears its head.

I thought that Gwenyth was an intresting character, and I enjoyed the fact that she could tell that Rose thought that she was, well, stupid.

And I enjoyed Dickens being in the episode, the actor played the character with respect and not some really, out there where the buses don't run, kind of way.

All in all I thought the episode was enjoyable.

Broomsedge, if there must be an explanation, I think it is more likely the fact that the hearse was the only closed vehicle moving when the Doctor ran out of the theatre. It was a fairly open space and he didn't see Rose walking anywhere, so he figured she must be in the hearse.

It isn't a perfect explanation, but after 900+ years I think the Doctor just concludes that upon first arrival in a strange place, his companion is not going to disappear unless she's been kidnapped.

Generally I thought it was a good nostalgic story, but I don't think it's the kind of story Doctor Who can tell well in a single episode. The horror stories usually made the best use of the cliffhanger ending, and going to an artificial commercial break isn't the same.

I also like the pattern that has presented itself in the first three episodes: In "Rose," the Doctor needed to be rescued from the show's bad guy; in "TEotW," he was definitely in charge and did the rescuing, when possible; in "The Unquiet Dead," he's back to needing to be rescued himself. I'm watching these as SciFi shows them, so I'll be interested to see if the pattern holds.

For some reason, though, after seeing this episode I feel the need to rewatch "Ghost Light," which is odd because Sylvester McCoy is my least favorite Doctor and I don't remember liking that episode all that much. Over to Netflix . . . .

Some egregiously inept plotting there -- why is Rose kidnapped in the 1st place? Because she saw an undertaker with a corpse?

And what was he planning to do with Rose anyway? If he was worried about explaining the corpse to the police, how was he going to explain away a kidnapping?

According to Sneed, because she saw too much.


That had been walking around a few minutes earlier.


That might come under the "cross that bridge when we come to it" category.

I assume the Cardiff disdain was just an inside joke as the show is filmed in Cardiff.

I enjoyed it. Not scared, but I enjoyed it.

Am I correct in thinking this ep used a device from the 4th doctor? I think it was the one with the stonehenge like rocks but specifically I'm half remembering that the old lady in the story had a certain amount of supernatural sensing ability because SHE had grown up by a rift or paranormal nexus of some kind. I remember she gives the doctor some rock salt to use in a shot gun because that was what would destroy the monster of the week. Anybody remember this and has this concept (about psychic ability being given to those growing up near a nexus of wierd energy) been used elsewhere in Who?

I liked the historical sets. The Brits always have been able to do good period pieces and it shows here.

Didn't find it so much scary as atmospheric but still liked it. I thought the difference of opinion between the Doctor and Rose reg the proper use or misuse of corpses interesting. I think that had the aliens been what they appeared to be (although they didn't fool me for a second) that Rose WOULD have been too closed minded. Saving the living should take presidence over honoring the dead...however, I was a little shocked at the Doctor's attitude of Well if you don't like it go home! It was harsh. I think that the destruction of his planet is having a real psychological toll on the doctor. I don't think the doctors I'm familiar with would have had the same reaction to desent.



Oh like when Laugh In would make fun of Burbank? Now it makes sense.

BTW Slightly tangential but Charles Dickens giving a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol reminded me that I saw Tom Baker (the 4th doctor) do the exact same thing. It was really entertaining. Mr Dickens can rest easy that his stories are remembered.

This one blended aspects of the older series I once watched - the BBC's comfort level with placing adventure, especially Whoish-style, in Victorian England is unmatched - with the new series that I've quickly decided I like: Rose's real personel interest in Gwyneth (a lot of the Dr.'s previous companions always seemed extraordinarily self-absorbed to me, although I recognize I didn't see all of them), and the fact that the actor who played Dickens did such a bang-up, respectful job (the actors seems to be known to others, especially Brits, but not to me), just for starters.

I *liked* that it was Dickens who rescued them with quick thinking, and it didn't ring too awfully false to me that The Dr. got hoodwinked. It seems as if the gas guys pegged who he was, and when they brought up the Time Wars it almost felt like they were deliberately playing on his sense of guilt. Even near omniscient immortals make mistakes. Just because you *know* a lot doesn't necessarily mean you *interpret* what you know the right way....

(I fully expect The Dr. to be fine in handling things as long as a couple of his buttons don't get pushed.)

And it didn't surprise me that Gwyneth would have a bad feeling about the house and a good feeling about her "angels"...inconsistency thy name is humanity. And it sounds as if her innate good sense was what gave her the bad feeling, and that a bunch of sweet-talking cosmic nasties were the beings which fooled her into thinking they were nice.

That the Gelth control their hosts with varying degrees of success seems perfectly reasonable. If the old lady was stubborn, then off she'd go to see Dickens, especially if it was some poor Casper Milque-Toast type of Gelth who was trying her on for size. As for Gwyneth, they could stop her heart in order to make her a good bridge, but they couldn't force out her consciousness, and that was strong enough to force her own dead fingers to do what they had to - after all, the Gelth were more interested in using her to get across than as a carrier body, so no Gelth was probably "in" her long enough to stop her from doing what she did.

Anyhow, that's my fanwank, and I'm sticking to it.

Because Rose saw too much, Sneed is going to kidnap her and bring her back to his mortuary -- zombie central? She's not going to see even more there?

There is no sensible Sneed motive, only the need for the scriptwriter to get Rose, the Doctor, and Dickens to the scene as quickly as possible. Again, inept plotting.

I interpreted it as pure panic on Sneed's part. Panicked people do nonsensical things that aren't in their self-interest all the time.

Is it incredibly wrong that every time they said the creatures were gaseous I heard the word geisha...and then went to a really weird mental image?




Pretty wrong, I'm betting..

you have now scrambled paradigms quite successfully for me. Heh.