The Unquiet Dead
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DVD NTSC
Region 1
13-episode
box set
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DVD PAL
Region 2
13-episode
box set
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DVD PAL
Region 2
3-episode volume
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(Doctor Who Story No. 163, starring Christopher Eccleston)
- written by Mark Gatiss
- directed by Euros Lyn
- produced by Phil Collinson
- music by Murray Gold
- 1 episode @ 45 minutes
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Story: The Doctor, Rose, and a disbelieving
Charles Dickens investigate the supernatural when
a number of corpses walk out of a mortuary and create
havoc in Cardiff on Christmas Eve 1869.
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Buyers' Guide Review
by Martin Izsak
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(A more in-depth analysis, containing "SPOILERS" and intended
for those who have already seen the program, can be accessed
here.)
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Rather predictably, the new Doctor Who production team early on
try to balance their previous present-day and futuristic openers
with a story in a historical setting. "The Unquiet Dead" often
seems to be trying to capture the feel of previous stories like
"The Talons of Weng-Chiang" (story no. 91) and
"Ghost Light" (story no. 157),
both of which seemed to be fairly
popular with British audiences. Of the two of them, only Robert Holmes'
enjoyable characters from "Talons" (particularly Henry Gordon Jago)
did anything for me. The characters of "The Unquiet Dead" seemed
considerably watered-down by comparison, so it was not off to a great start
with me in its main content.
Add to that a tendency in Mark Gatiss's writing to take up a lot
of screen-time being self-indulgent, dialogue that's not great and
muddles into misunderstood time-theory, and a plot that does not satisfy
with heroics on the Doctor's part. The sum total is a story that will
not rank very high in my list of season favourites.
But all is not lost. The TARDIS is treated most fairly in this one,
the first story of the new production to give us all proper materializations
and dematerializations, lots of interior scenes, and even hints at the
wardrobe room deep in the interior maze. Very nice. The Doctor and Rose
are also very easy to get to know and like from this episode alone,
which works great.
But a little too much time is taken in such a short story to
introduce all the guest characters before the next interesting event
takes place. Most of the material surrounding Charles
Dickens is far too self-indulgent for my tastes, and most of the other
olde English charaters also fail to capture my interest when they get screen
time to themselves. It seems to be just the sort of thing of which
the BBC churns out way too much, and I find myself waiting impatiently
for an interesting plot element to kick in.
The one guest character that works for me is Gwynyth, who gets to
detail her very interesting period perspective on the events and
phenomena at hand, and what she believes her own role in that is.
Even then, her early one-on-one scene with Rose seems to go on too long.
But, all things said and done, these characters work much better
than those of "Ghost Light", all being solidly anchored in reality
until or unless the writer specifically demonstrates to us otherwise.
As much as I find the mindpower/interdimensional stuff interesting
and worthy of exploration,
these elements still disappoint by seemingly being
included more to freak the audience out than anything else, letting
down all the fine, beautifully balanced moral arguments that set much
of it up.
Normally, there would be room to build a decent plot around the Galth,
one or two story beats with a direct and gripping struggle, with twists
and shifting strategies. But the self-indulgent character bits have
squeezed such things out of the limited time the episode has.
Without getting into as many details and plot spoilers as you will
find in the In-depth Analysis version
of this review, let's just say that this story's climax and conclusion
leave a lot to be desired.
Then follows a lengthy self-indulgent coda that just won't move
forward and end. The dialogue also expounds some beliefs about time
which don't add up, and go unchallenged.
This 2005 writing team really seems to like to muck their way
through incongruent time-theory without really knowing what they're doing,
and flaunt it to a worldwide audience. Bizarre.
Well, although I'm not too impressed with Mark Gatiss's first writing
of an actual Doctor Who tv episode, do check out the "Global Conspiracy"
featurette he wrote and starred in on
"The Green Death" DVD (story no. 69),
which I thoroughly enjoyed. The self-indulgent style works much better in
this documentary parody, where it can combine with humour and really cut
loose. I think humour may be Mark's forté,
and the more he can tastefully
inject into his actual Doctor Who scripts, the better his stories may be
all round.
This story has become available on DVD:
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DVD NTSC
Region 1
13-episode box set
for the North American market:
in the U.S.
in Canada
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DVD PAL
Region 2
13-episode box set
for the U.K.
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DVD PAL
Region 2
3-episode volume
U.K. format only
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Note: The 13-episode box sets contain commentaries, behind-the-scenes
featurettes, and other extras.
The 3-episode volumes only feature the plain episodes.
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