Saturday 22 March 2014

The Unquiet Dead


Loving the way these pre-credits sequences give us a mini-cliffhanger into each episode.

I remember certain corners of the fandom, pre-NuWho, wanting cliffhangers. The trailers gave them this.


A Victorian funeral parlour. Somehow this seems very already!

Love Sneyd's reaction. Not the first time this has happened then! And the ghostly granny takes off...

Remember all the "is it too scary for kids" fuss ahead of this episode going out?


no wonder the ratings went up! the whitehouse effect



The Doctor decides to give Rose her 1st trip back in time, meanwhile the stiffs are getting lively again...

Lovely TARDIS materialisation. Never gets old that.

Gwyneth's got the sight. "Look inside girl" sounds a bit... gynocological.

Reminded me of The Satan Pit ... which, admittedly, sounds gynocological too.



she is very good no wonder they wanted her for torchwood



What the Dickens! It's only the great man himself...

The Doctor makes Rose dress up as some sort of Ripper victim, and she takes her first steps into history.

It is worth noting that Jack Harkness would have been in Cardiff during the events of this episode. Time for fan-fiction!


or a farce where they just keep missing each other



Dickens is on his greatest hits tour, love the solo in A Christmas Carol.

"Phantasmagoria." Great stuff. Mark Gatiss' dabs are all over each and every lyrical line from Chuck D.

"Doctor? You look more like a navvy!"

I prefer Jack's "U-Boat captain".



The ghost inhabiting granny Redfern is made of blue gas.

The Doctor pinches Dickens' cab. Once he's called Dickens a genius "he can stay."

"The American bit in Martin Chuzzlewit, what's that about?"

Loved that bit. That was the Dickens version of Classic Who's running upo and down corridors ~ padding.


The blue gas ghost possesses Redfern, who rises from his coffin. "Are you alright?" asks Rose. Not the brightest.

Simon Callow is world's apart as Dickens. "Tommyrot!" Wonderful.

"Echoes in the dark, queer songs in the air..."

What...Scissor Sisters? How modern.


The Doctor tells Dickens to shut up, so he slips out to do some investimagating of his own.

Gwyneth gets paid £8 a year. Pretty sure that's below minimum wage.

I'd have settled for six.


Rose goes for a girly chat with Gwyneth, which reveals a mention of her dead Dad... and the big bad wolf.
 

The Bad Wolf meme. Presumably, the Doctor explained about memes to her in the previous epsiode.


It's all meme meme meme with this series...

Dickens dislikes mummery, but the Doctor loves a happy medium, so it's seance time.
 

Pity the Gelth...

Now say that in your best Mr T impersonation.


I like the bit where he tells Dickens to quit his jibber jabber.

I prefered the part where one of the Gelth said '"I ain't getting in no plain corpse"


Tantalising glimpses of the Time War in the Gelth backstory.

The Gelth recycling system doesn't go down too well with Rose. The Doctor tells her to get used to it or go home. THAT WAS YOUR CHANCE, DOCTOR!

The Doctor is a little too desperate to save the Gelth... Betraying his guilt over them being rendered bodiless by the time war, and blinding him to the truth...

some people say this is an anti immigration tale, what do you think?


Reading far too much into it. Is every story with alien invaders "about" immigration? No.

i cannot say i noticed it but it seems to have become a fan debate around this story


Bloody foreigners coming to this country, taking all our corpses :-P


Bloody Foreigner, coming over here, wanting to know what love is...

The Doctor's greatest fear... dying in a dungeon in Cardiff.

Dickens works out that the Gelth can be drawn out by turning up the gas.
 
 
 

So it's another story where the Doctor doesn't actually save the day, and where someone else has to sacrifice themself.

The first season of the new series always felt like this I needed the Dr to save the day more


Gwyneth was dead from the moment she stepped beneath the arch. Like many an Eastender.

Pity the Gelth didn't start saying '"fam'ly" and "Get owt of ma pub".


The Doctor and Rose bid farewell to Dickens. He hasn't much more time and will never complete Edwin Drood. It's his Shada.
 

It's OK, in 150 years' time Ian Levine will animate it.




TTFN! K.
Coming Soon... The Gunfighters, Planet of Fire

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