The Unquiet Dead

Dear Gary—

“Here we go. History.” We’ve had the present and the future, The Unquiet Dead brings us the past. This is not the historical of William Hartnell, however. Those days are long gone.

“You can go back and see days that are dead and gone, a hundred thousand sunsets ago,” Rose says before stepping out of the TARDIS and into what she believes is 1860 Naples but turns out to be 1869 Cardiff (I love how the TARDIS still doesn’t quite get it right). But the time period is just a backdrop; the tidal wave of history never does engulf them as it would that earlier Doctor.

What The Unquiet Dead does, however, is engulf history, in the persons of Charles Dickens and the servant girl Gwyneth, in the Doctor’s time swirl. A new twist on the historical, but with some good old fashioned Doctor Who fun.

“What phantasmagoria is this?”

Christmas—Dickens—ghosts—what could be more fun?

We meet Dickens near the end of his life; Christmas Eve 1869; brooding in his dressing room about the sad and lonely rut he is living; the creative spark is dying. Then he meets the Doctor and inspiration returns.

“What the Shakespeare is going on?” The game’s afoot and Dickens throws himself into the adventure, fighting against his natural skepticism along the way. He is initially drawn in by the gushing Doctor’s enthusiasm (“Number one fan, that’s me”).  Then he is affronted by the Doctor who dismisses his doubts and he therefore begins an investigation on his own. He is slowly converted by an apologetic Doctor who begins to explain things on a logical, scientific level. “Can it be that I have the world entirely wrong?” Dickens enquires. “Not wrong,” the Doctor replies. “There’s just more to learn.” With the evidence of his own eyes before him, Dickens believes; however: “This new world of yours is too much for me.” The Doctor’s time swirl engulfs him and he fights against it as it carries him along, fearful of drowning. But then the light bulb goes on (or more accurately the gas flame), and armed with the knowledge the Doctor has imparted along with his own intellect, he dives back in and saves the day. (“I hope that this theory will be validated soon.”)

The real hero, though, is Gwyneth; Gwyneth the lowly servant girl with second sight, calmly going about her daily work that is far from routine.

“Mister Sneed, for shame,” she quietly chastises her mortician employer when told that yet another corpse has become animated. “How many more times? It’s ungodly.” Loyally she follows Sneed through the streets, tapping in to her secret gift to track their errant cadaver. When the Doctor arrives with his answers about the rift and the trapped gas creatures, Gwyneth lets the information wash over her; at last she has an explanation for the voices in her head, for the angels that sing to her. She takes it all in on the same even keel as she lives her life. And with the same composure she sacrifices herself to save others. 

“She saved the world,” Rose says. “A servant girl. No one will ever know.” The unsung hero. Dickens is assured that his books will go on forever; Gwyneth is not only forgotten, she was never known. That is the story of history—great men and small, the famous and the anonymous, all making their equally important contributions, some to loud acclaim and some to nameless silence.

But The Unquiet Dead is not about history. The Doctor and Rose come swirling in to the lives of Dickens and Gwyneth; it matters little if they landed in 1860 Naples or 1869 Cardiff or 2014 Milwaukee, for that matter. They swirl into peoples’ lives, uncover an alien plot much like any other they happen upon, and swirl back off, on to the next adventure. The time and place have not much more than a tourist impact on them.

They take a moment to soak in the snow covered streets, the carolers, the horse drawn carriages; but then they hear a scream and the Doctor exclaims, “That’s more like it,” and he tosses away the newspaper he had casually picked up. The Doctor delights in meeting Charles Dickens; but then he tells him to shut up when Dickens writes off the possessed body as an illusion. Rose gets decked out in the best period costume the TARDIS wardrobe has to offer, but it is the outer trappings only that she dons; she never tries to understand or relate to Gwyneth on Gwyneth’s own terms.

What we do get in The Unquiet Dead is a deeper insight into the Doctor’s and Rose’s characters.

I’ll start with Rose. In her dealings with Gwyneth, Rose displays more of that patronizing Lady Bountiful attitude that she adopted with Mickey at the end of the first episode. She starts to draw Gwyneth out, but Rose is more interested in reforming and shaping Gwyneth than in truly getting to know her. Rose feels that she knows what is best for Gwyneth regardless of Gwyneth.

Gwyneth: “Don’t I get a say, Miss?”

Rose: “Look, you don’t understand what’s going on.”

Gwyneth: “You would say that, Miss, because that’s very clear inside your head, that you think I’m stupid.”

Gwyneth perceives more about Rose from their brief acquaintance than Rose gets about Gwyneth, even when Rose makes a great show and effort at familiarity.

“Things might be very different where you’re from,” Gwyneth continues, putting her finger on Rose’s parochial viewpoint, “but here and now I know my own mind.”

Rose is young, only nineteen; the Doctor is starting to expand her world, but she is still full of herself and her preconceived principles. The Doctor points this out to her when they discuss the Gelth desire to inhabit human corpses. “It’s a different morality. Get used to it or go home,” he tells her.

The Doctor has his own issues to work through. We have been given hints about the Time War that destroyed the Doctor’s home and people. With his interaction with the Gelth we begin to comprehend the extent of his survivor’s guilt. It is this which causes him to misread the Gelth; he is so anxious to atone that he therefore takes the Gelth at their word and pities them, thus placing Gwyneth and the world in grave danger. He has his doubts, suddenly displayed at the last moment, but it is too late. Confidently Gwyneth stands in the archway, the heart of the rift, and the Gelth reveal their true intentions. It is not the Doctor’s best moment, but it is understandable and forgivable. In hindsight, Sneed and Gwyneth should have mentioned the fact that the first Gelth they encountered in the old woman killed her grandson. This might have given them pause before trusting the Gelth so completely. But the Doctor is clearly still shell shocked, so perhaps not.

“I’m so glad I met you,” the Doctor tells Rose when they are facing death together. “Me too,” she replies. They need each other; they each have much to teach the other. Rose is the Doctor’s lifeline in his lonely and guilt-ridden journey; the Doctor is Rose’s sage guide on her path to maturity.

In a way, The Unquiet Dead reminds me of The Talons of Weng-Chiang with its blend of period piece, fun, and serious; although Dead is not quite up to the standard set by Weng-Chiang. I am impressed, however, with the new series so far. With shorter, more action based stories, the show still manages to develop character and indulge wit and humor.

And so I send this out, Gary, into that swirl of the Doctor’s that sweeps into people’s lives, changing them forever . . .