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Dan Owen reviews
Broadcast on BBC1, Saturday April 9th, 2005
Director:
Screenplay:
Cast:
The Doctor takes Rose back through time to Cardiff, circa 1869, to find that the dead are walking and they have to enlist the help of Charles Dickens (Simon Callow, above-right) to restore order to a local funeral home. Well, three episodes into the new series and Doctor Who finally manages a strong episode. This is fundamentally down to Mark Gatiss, writer and performer with The League Of Gentleman, whose lifelong interest in Who and the Victorian era pays dividends with a story that is full of pace and peppered with good dialogue. The series has always worked best when set in the past, usually due to budgetary limitations when trying to create believable futuristic worlds. As we all know, Britain’s rich history means recreating the past on-screen is far more within the BBC’s abilities – and the production team excel themselves with engrossing scenery and set-design that wouldn’t look out of place in a lavish period drama such as Pride & Prejudice.
Billie Piper (right, with Eccleston) seems to be having great fun, and it’s obvious she’s becoming more relaxed with the role. Likewise, Christopher Eccleston manages a more mannered approach to the material and leaves The Doctor’s incessant grinning behind, thanks primarily to the fact there’s some meaty dialogue to get stuck into. Mark Gatiss’ script is littered with witty lines and choice moments – particularly The Doctor’s star-struck discussion with Dickens in the back of a coach.
The special-effects are wonderful throughout, with ghostly apparitions brought to life with well-implemented CGI, and some good make-up for the titular unquiet dead of the funeral home. It’s refreshing to see an episode play to the show’s strengths and careful construct a decent story and characters around visuals. In previous episodes the plots have been pedestrian and the effects patchy at best – but "The Unquiet Dead" corrects this unbalance. Overall, this was a genuinely entertaining episode that is the current benchmark for future instalments. There was barely a bad note through the whole 45-minutes, and it was also intriguing to see a 'Time War' mentioned – obviously pushing the show’s new mythology that the Time Lords have been destroyed and The Doctor is the last of his kind. Hopefully, we’ll begin to unearth more on this promising facet to the series in the weeks to come. Next week, The Doctor and Rose return to present day London to find that a UFO has crashed into The Houses Of Parliament in "Aliens Of London".
Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2005.E-mail Dan OwenThe following is a list of all the Doctor Who content reviewed to date : 2008 Series 30, Episode 13 - "Journey's End", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 12 - "The Stolen Earth", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 11 - "Turn Left", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 10 - "Midnight", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 8 - "Silence in the Library" (part 1 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 7 - "The Unicorn and The Wasp", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 6 - "The Doctor's Daughter", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 5 - "The Poison Sky" (Part 2 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 4 - "The Sontaran Stratagem" (Part 1 of 2), by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 3 - "Planet of the Ood", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 2 - "The Fires of Pompeii", by Dan Owen 2008 Series 30, Episode 1 - "Partners In Crime", by Dan Owen And the Audio CDs : 2000 04: The Land of the Dead 2000 06: The Marian Conspiracy 2000 10: Winter for the Adept 2000 12: The Fires of Vulcan 2000 14: The Holy Terror 2000 15: The Mutant Phase 2001 16: Storm Warning 2001 18: The Stones of Venice 2002 28: The Chimes of Midnight 2002 30: Seasons of Fear 2002 31: Embrace the Darkness 2002 35: ...Ish 2002 39: ...Bang-Bang-A-Boom!
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier. PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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An inspired decision to involve Charles Dickens into proceedings immediately
elevates the entire episode to the realm of pulp fantasy, and with a plot
that uses Victorian ghost stories, 19th-Century séances and alien zombies,
you really do have an immensely enjoyable spectacle. The only real complain
is that the Doctor Who of yesteryear could have allowed the story to
breathe over a four-part serial, but the new Who is far more interested in
quick, breathless action beats. By and large, I prefer the new direction,
but does mean that (yet again) some elements of the story are somewhat
brushed over.
