Hard Time Lords

Well, I've just watched The Unquiet Dead for a second time, in the hope of seeing what people like Charlie Brooker and the good folks of Outpost Gallifrey saw in it.

What I saw, both times, was a rather dull and formulaic "the Doctor meets a historical character" story. Admittedly there was some fairly decent dialogue and (thankfully, as otherwise my Greenbelt talk on The Spirituality of Doctor Who was beginning to look a little sparse) some rather oddly-oriented christian imagery -- but the plot was nonsensical, the twist lame, and even the acting somewhat wanting, with Billie Piper significantly misemphasising some of her lines and Eccleston's mugging to camera striking more than one false note. Thank heaven for Simon Callow.

The episode simply didn't seem like anything special to me -- indeed, for the first time I felt that the Old Series did the same thing better, in Ghost Light. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of Mark Gatiss' writing: I've never been able to see why his Doctor Who novels and audios are so highly praised (although, ironically enough, I do rather like Invaders from Mars, which isn't), nor can I get into The League of Gentlemen.

Still, I was willing to give The Unquiet Dead a sporting chance. Gatiss is known for producing traditional Doctor Who stories, and there's certainly a great effort to make his episode such a thing. Unfortunately, this doesn't quite mesh with the conventions of the new series, in particular the 45 minute episode time.

Some of the scenes were moderately scary, but these were sabotaged by the apparent necessity to play the episode's hand right at the start. Any attempt to build up atmosphere was more or less demolished by the fact that the pre-credits sequence had already shown an old lady's corpse strangle her grandson and stagger out into the night vomiting ectoplasm. You can't really build a ghost story up from somewhere like that, and most of what followed was anticlimactic.

The plot was both clichéd (the aliens' request for help turns out to be a trick -- who would have guessed?) and nonsensical (there's no reason to suppose that flooding the room with unlit gas will "draw out" the creatures as Dickens imagines, and the fact that he turns out to be right is sheer inexplicable luck). Which I suppose fits in with the "traditional Doctor Who" motif.

(Speaking of clichés, why do zombies always have to stick their hands through walls to try and reach people whilst moaning dully? Has popular culture still not referenced Dawn of the Dead enough to satisfy everyone?)

Rose's line about Gwyneth as "a servant girl" who "saved the world", as well as providing material for Greenbelt speakers, seems to continue some of the class-politics themes of The End of the World. On the other hand it seemed a little odd, having established this Doctor and his companion as firmly working-class in their demeanour, to show them effortlessly infiltrating the middle levels of Victorian society. Apart from Charles' observation that the Doctor looks "like a navvy", none of the snobbery one sees in Dickens' books is on display; and Gwyneth at once accepts the Doctor and Rose as her social superiors. At least Rose is dressed for the part, athough her accent would make Eliza Dolittle wince: there's nothing whatosever about the Doctor's appearance or behaviour which would lead a Victorian to treat him as the professional gentleman whose status he implicitly claims.

Good things included much of the Dickens material -- the eventual (and, thankfully, still moderately subtle) segue into a Christmas Carol riff working particularly well. Many of Gatiss' characters are grotesques in the Dickens mould (Mr Sneed being a relatively lacklustre example), and he clearly has a strong sympathy with the novelist. Callow played him excellently, and most of his dialogue was splendid, even if at times the things he said were a little too much like those you might find in a biography of Dickens. "What the Shakespeare?" was anachronistic but terribly funny.

The warmth of the emotion between the Doctor and Rose ("Blimey!") still forms a welcome contrast from previous Doctor-companion relationships, although Gatiss' dialogue has less subtlety than Davies'. There were times when I wished they'd just get a sodding room. (The Doctor and Rose, that is, not Gatiss and Davies. Although if they wanted to I wouldn't, you know, have a problem with it or anything.)

And... well, that's about it. Certainly none of the imagination or thematic depth of The End of the World were on display, nor the clever structuring of Rose. Just some well-done Victorian set-dressing (if there's one thing the BBC invariably does consummately well, it's Victorian set-dressing) and some inoffensive special effects.

The Unquiet Dead was the first disappointment from this series -- although even this makes much of classic Doctor Who look straggling and inept. I do have high hopes of the series' first two-parter, though. Davies is back in the, erm, writer's seat, two episodes ought to give the plot room to breathe and shake its limbs a bit, and there's a really cool spaceship crash. The trailer [Edit to add: and, indeed, fake News 24 report] make it look enormous fun.