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: Torchwood characters...

[nina-ds.livejournal.com]

I started out expecting to like Crockett and Tubbs, and did like Don Johnson, but it was Edward James Olmos who caught my attention and kept it.

Me, too. Looking back, I find it ironic that a song and dance man won an Emmy for a role in which he stood still and didn't do anything! I remember particularly the episode when his wife showed up again. He had a fight scene in that, and I definitely thought, "Okay, he's either a dancer, or he's got a black-belt in something." Dancer. As a dancer myself, that's a definite plus.

As for what they're doing with Adama - to be honest, I'm not sure where they're going with anyone at this stage...and maybe they aren't either. I can see them taking the Captain Queeg route with Adama, though. It makes a certain sense, especially since we've been led to believe it's Roslin who'll be the one who loses her grip first.

I agree that Toshiko is better as someone who has something to do. Sometimes, she looks disturbingly like a scared rabbit, and it's just all a little too stereotypical to be comfortable. I'm still confused by GDL, but then I hated Cyberwoman with the fire of a thousand suns... I just find him "not there" most of the time. His relationship with Jack doesn't read to me - not just the shift between "I hate you I want to kill you" and playing stopwatch games. Their body language just doesn't seem at all intimate or even comfortable. So I'm not sure what they're going for (this seems to be a common theme with RTD these days!).

I think BG may be miscast as Owen, but I still find him an interesting character, even if I dislike him. Even as derivative as it is, I rather liked Combat because he seemed to find his feet in that one. Fight Club ripoffs are a dime a dozen, but that one actually seemed to have some purpose for the characters at hand. Noel Clarke also seem to be a better writer than he is an actor!

I mean, he came across as less of a 'type', more of an individual. This tends to be a good thing.

Indeed.

Re: Torchwood characters...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Edward James Olmos has a remarkably presence. That Miami Vice episode with Castillo's wife was remarkable, and one of the few ones I remember clearly.

It does seem that Adama, who was close to perfect for a long time, might be losing it - stress? Drink? If Tighe is a Cylon, how will he take that? It will be interesting to see. Since I adore Adama, I'm hoping he won't slip - that he will heroically triumph over his own personal flaws and weaknesses, and the horrors life throws at him. We shall see.

I hated Cyberwoman with the fire of a thousand suns...

As did many fans! But it's one of my favourite episodes of Torchwood, and it's the episode that made me love Ianto. Insofar as I do love Ianto, and I'm not sure how much that is. I loved him in that episode, and in bits and pieces throughout series one, but if he never turned up for series 2 - I'm not sure I'd mind, as long as they had a satisfactory explanation of the ending of his relationship with Jack.

But of course we know he will be back in series 2, and I'm happy about that. I just hope they add some depth and punch to his character. I'd like to see Ianto do something that shows a lot of initiative or courage or unexpected heroism. And spend less time standing around watching what's going on. The Jack/Ianto makes a lot of thematic sense to me, but the problem is, we didn't see it as it was happening - it has to be retroactive extrapolation, and what kind of story-telling is that? I can piece it together just find, but I shouldn't have to do that, it should have been more clear as it happened. And I think we should have had, before "End of Days" came along, a far clearer sense of how much Ianto loved Jack.

I don't think I've seen any Fight Club rip offs before - and I liked "Combat" a lot, partly for that, partly for the bits with Gwen, partly because it gave Tosh a bit of action in the warehouse, partly because I liked the way it used Weevils sympathetically without minimizing their dangerousness.

I agree that Noel Clarke is a better writer than actor - that episode raised my respect for him by a factor of ten!