Doctor Who: "The Unquiet Dead"

[fajrdrako]

rosiespark and I have been discussing series 1 Doctor Who episode by episode. I started off with Rose, she followed up with The End of the World, and now it's my turn again here with The Unquiet Dead.

I might as well confess at the outset that "The Unquiet Dead" is my least favourite of all the episodes of Doctor Who I have seen. I can't entirely put my finger on why, though I think there are four reasons - five, maybe - all of which can be summed up as "Mark Gatiss' writing style". The fact that he himself refers to "the morbid, ebony-black grotesqueness of the nineteenth century" is not a good sign for his approach. I'll try not to dwell on the negative, because watching this again, I still enjoyed myself - it doesn't annoy me, or bore me, or make me want to watch something else instead. I still love the Doctor and Rose in it. It's more that I find the other characters dull and the story fairly weak - not really funny, not really scary.

Breaking it down into aspects:

1. Charles Dickens. I was disappointed by the way Dickens was portrayed. Yes, I know it's my own fannishness coming through here. It isn't that Simon Callow isn't a good actor - I've loved him in other things. It's the concept: Dickens as being old and jaded; or Dickens as a skeptic, despite the evidence of his own eyes; Dickens as a foil to the Doctor. I'd like to see him as smarter, snappier, wittier.
   
   On the plus side, I did love it that the Doctor is a fan, and happy to say so. (Despite Martin Chuzzelwit.) His fannishness didn't come across with the sincerity I saw in David Tennant's performance of the Doctor facing Shakespeare in The Shakespeare Code, and he seemed a little too willing to criticize Dickens.... If I were an eight year old who didn't know anything about Dickens, I wouldn't have been left thinking highly of Dickens from this.
   
   My favourite of his lines: "What phantasmagoria is this?"



2. The Story. The plot doesn't entirely make sense to me, though it's intriguing. I'm not very fond of Mark Gatiss' understated writing style; his characters seem to me a little smaller than life.
   
   But there are some aspects of the story I do like. One is the continuity between this episode and Torchwood; the Rift goes right through Sneed's house - does that mean his house was right on the site of what later became Roald Dahl Plass, with the fountain and the Millennium Centre? I like that. But the story implies that it has been only the Gelth trying to get through the Rift for many, many years - perhaps they blocked the entryway? When the Gelth say, "Open the Rift!" I thought of Bilis - and Owen. And when the Doctor said, "The Rift is getting wider," I thought; "That line was stolen from Torchwood!" Though I suppose it's really the other way round.
   
   As far as I know, this is the only episode of Doctor Who with a psychic character, aside from the Doctor himself.
   
   The Gelth reminded me of the Family in "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", except that they inhabit the living, while the Gelth favour corpses. Because of the gas. The gas connections weren't entirely convincing to me; but that's okay, it wouldn't be the only Doctor Who villains who didn't entirely make sense to me.



3. Interesting to see Eve Myles play Gwyneth. She doesn't remind me of Gwen Cooper, which is a sign of Eve Myles' grasp of characterization. At the same time, I don't find Gwyneth very interesting. I do like her private conversation with Rose about the butcher boy's bum, but there remains something limited about her - it doesn't seem to me that Gwyneth has much personality.
   
   I love it that she mentioned "bad wolf".



4. Again, I love it that the Gelth mentioned the Time War - a phrase calculated to trigger the Doctor's sense of concern and guilt. Did they know that? What, then, did they know of the Doctor? Were they using a psychic conduit trick, through Gwyneth, to know what phrase to use? Or were they in fact victims of the Time War, just not very nice ones?



5. There are many clues here to reinforce my belief that the Doctor is already very much in love with Rose, even if he doesn't know what to do about it - except feel guilty. Is there any other point at which he says she's beautiful?



6. I might add that I think Rose has a beautiful personality, but I thought she looked awful in that dress and bonnet. The boots were good. I loved the boots.



7. The voices of the Gelth sounded like the fairies in "Small Worlds" and the petal-aliens in "Fear Her". Are there no other ways to do group-personality aliens?



8. Interesting that Rose thinks the bodies of the dead should be respected, and the Doctor doesn't. Is it that he thinks the needs of the living outweigh the needs of the dead? This episode skirts on some life and death issues that are very interesting, but never quite comes to grips with the articulation of any of them. It isn't that this is beyond the scope of a kid's show, since other episodes do it well. It's more that this particular episodes hints at meanings and then backs off.



9. The best thing about this episode was its discussion of time. There are some terrific quotes. For example:

   Rose: Think about it, though. Christmas 1860 happens once, just once, and then it's finished. It's gone, it'll never happen again. Except for you. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone. A hundred thousand sunsets ago. No wonder you never stay still.

   And despite my rude comments about Mark Gatiss a while back, I think that is a beautifully written passage, both for content and wording: a hundred thousand sunsets. It says a lot about Rose, and he intelligence and insight, not to mention her sense of beauty. It also conveys something about the Doctor himself; his sense of priorities, the way they dovetail with hers.
   
   I wonder, though: "You can go back and see days that are dead and gone." I assume he can't go back to the same day over and over - no Groundhog Day here? Or can he? Captain Jack implies he has gone back to Volcano Day and the Blitz more than once - is he carefully trying to avoid himself all the time, or is the timeline more complicated than that?



10. Other good aspects about that scene: the Doctor says, "Give the man a medal. Earth. Naples. December 24th, 1860." But it turns out it isn't. Presumably the controls on the TARDIS aren't very accurate. Or is the TARDIS lying to him? I like the notion that the TARDIS sees and finds its own trouble spots, and might have spotted the problem with the Rift and the Gelth from afar. Or maybe the TARDIS was trying to keep them out of trouble - it was clear that the Doctor hadn't a clue what was happening in Naples on Christmas Eve, 1860, but it seems to me that around that time Garibaldi was advancing on the city with his armies of liberation. The TARDIS might have been trying to keep them out of a war zone. - Oh, I just noticed: Garibaldi and those soldiers were actually in an early draft of this story. Heh.



11. And the following phrase strikes me as utterly romantic:

    Rose: ...It's Christmas.
    The Doctor: All yours.

    Which, in keeping with the overt tone of the show, is said lightly, but really has depths and layers: he's making a gift to her of time and space. Or, in fact, this time and this space, in all its unique specialness which she articulates so perfectly. And then the punchline, after her speech:

    The Doctor: Not a bad life.
    Rose: Better with two.

    ...And I can't help thinking, what perfect articulation of romance, or Romance with a capital R, worthy of the greatest of poets and writers, and delivered subtly and casually in a somewhat macabre horror story written so as not to bore the 8 year olds.
    
    This is echoed by the heroic dialogue later on:

    Rose: But we'll go down fighting, yeah?
    The Doctor: You bet.
    Rose: Together.
    The Doctor: Yeah. I'm glad I met you.
    Rose: Me too.

    It's anyone's guess as to the levels of self-awareness there, at least on Rose's part.



12. I love it that the Doctor calls Rose "Barbarella". But does he worry about what she wears in other episodes? Do fashion choices only matter in connection with the past, not the future? Personally I wish he'd dressed in some elegant fashion of 1860 because he's look terrific, but I like the way Nine dressed anyway. No complaints about that jumper from me.

Comments

Re: emotion and HN/FOB

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No, I don't have the DVD of the Second Coming - that sounds wonderful. And shows how amazing Eccleston is.

I liked that they walked away because if they'd stayed, it would have meant that he was even more godlike and they were even more obsessed

Yeah. I see it differently... Consistency on their parts, and less godliness on his. Because they link him to his humanity, so with them, he is more human, less remote.

One of my favourite lines from Nine was, "I would make a very bad god," and then in New Earth, Ten declares that "there is no higher authority" than him

I certainly liked Nine's attitude better.

What I liked about John and Joan in HN/FOB is that they weren't bad people; for their time, they were average, maybe even a little more sensitive

They didn't have the typical racist/classist attitudes of their time, no, but they didn't to my eyes have a lot of heroism or individuality either - which many people of that time did have. I didn't like the way John Smith clung to what he had. It was also an exciting and dynamic time and they didn't reflect that - they maybe didn't share the flaws of the age but they didn't share its strengths, either. I found them both bland.

Re: emotion and HN/FOB

[nina-ds.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I see it differently... Consistency on their parts, and less godliness on his. Because they link him to his humanity, so with them, he is more human, less remote.

Maybe we're not seeing it so much differently, as branching off at a different place. I definitely think they are his link to humanity (or at least not delusions of godhood - because I refuse to think of him as a god), but as of LOTL, I think I see him as having gone so far that he broke the link and may be irretrievable. I would love to see them rescue him, thematically, but then again, maybe they've reached a point where they don't have a handle on him anymore and it's the equivalent of the beach scene. They can't get back, so they have to let go. Maybe this is a set-up for reeling him in next series. It's the best face I can put on it.

I always think power is a very dangerous thing. The characters who handle it best seem to be the ones who know when not to use it. It also helps to have an actor who can "fill up" that power. Eccleston just needed a look. Tennant needs CGI and even then doesn't really pull it off. Simm was riding it like a bucking bronco and it wasn't a pretty ride, but I don't think he ever got completely bucked off.

Re: emotion and HN/FOB

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

maybe they've reached a point where they don't have a handle on him anymore and it's the equivalent of the beach scene.

It looks that way, and I hate it. I want something both more emotive and more positive.

I like the godhood angle when it started - it seemed playful and imaginative. But the more they - the producers, the writers - seemed to be taking it seriously, and not necessarily just on a symbolic level, the more annoying it seemed. Too grandiose, and not leading anywhere I wanted to go. Gallifreyans are not gods, they're people - I loved the notion (from series 1) that the Doctor was both different and the same as humanity. By the end of series 3, I feel that's been lost: having a planet of people praying to him and having their prayers answered by a major miracle - that puts him apart in a rather dramatic way, in a way where he can't be 'one of us', injecting a sense of hierarchy that I don't think should be there....

I'm not sure if this thought or feeling is very clear, but it adds up to: if the Doctor is a god, then he is something lesser than when he was a person of unusual knowledge and abilities. I heard it said even back in series 2 that the Doctor was 'too much of a superhero'. Though I didn't understand - I think the implication is that back in the 1960's he was a simply a wise man with a TARDIS? - I begin to see the progression. Superheroic tricks (like a sonic screwdriver that can do anything) don't bother me, but to step from 'enhanced human' to something greater than human ... isn't what I want to see.

It does look as if Martha and Jack have both written the Doctor off as unreachable. I hate it, and can only hope that series 3 changes the imbalance, and they can be affectionate friends (if not lovers) again.

Simm was riding it like a bucking bronco and it wasn't a pretty ride, but I don't think he ever got completely bucked off.

Simm was zany and crazy and fun and stole the attention so much that I was fristrated because I didn't want to be seeing a show called "Master Who", I wanted the Doctor. Simm reminded me of the Joker - who is fun, and has some great scenes with Batman, but he shouldn't take the spotlight away from the hero, or camera-time either, which Simm's Master did. And when I didn't think they were redoing Batman, I thought they were redoing Blackpool with the song and dance routines grafted on an action-based story.

Really, I thought it was a bit of a hodge-podge; thematically inconsistent. Obviously a lot of fans didn't mind, but it made me squirm because it wasn't the characters I'd come to see, presented in the way I wanted to see them.

The Doctor loved the Master - and I couldn't bring myself to care. I didn't want to not care. By that point it all felt like a game.