Episode #162 : The Unquiet Dead

"I saw the Fall of Troy! World War Five! I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon...  in Cardiff!"

Episode 162:   The Unquiet Dead.
Companions:   9th Doctor and Rose Tyler.
Air Date:         9th April 2005.

The dead are roaming the streets of 1869 Cardiff when the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler arrive, just in time for Christmas. Teaming up with Charles Dickens, the TARDIS team encounter the Gelth, creatures sucked through the Cardiff Rift from the other end of the universe, their home lost. Surely inhabiting dead bodies is wrong, though! Can both sides be helped, or are these gaseous creatures not to be trusted?

The Unquiet Dead is an excellent story that focuses on a horror element to good effect. I've always enjoyed the horror stories in Doctor Who but the new series does it so much better. Here we have a story based featuring Charles Dickens, aliens spirit creatures animating the bodies of the dead and another reference to the Time War. Three episodes in and finally I think the new show has found its new roots with this one.

We get more interaction between the Doctor and Rose as they discuss the morality of allowing these entities to use dead human bodies to continue existing. It is a tough question and is handled well here within the confines of the story. Ultimately however the Doctor continues to come across as a little arrogant here and it is hard to like this incarnation at times.

The Bad Wolf reference here comes from the serving girl Gweneth, who has the psychic gift, who sees into the future for Rose and mentions the big bad wolf. Gweneth is played by Eve Myles who would later appear in Torchwood, which ironically is based around the very time/space rift that the alien Gelth use in this episode. I do wonder whether Torchwood was first thought up around this episode and then much later transferred into it's own show.

The Undead Quiet is a very good episode, of much better quality than the previous two. I don't think there are any faults to this one at all though more of the Gelth might have been interesting.