Doctor Who (2005)
We've been to the present. We've been to the future. With this episode, we complete the trifecta as Doctor Who explores the past. It does so with a story set in an era that the BBC has a long history of recreating well: the Victorian Era.
It's also the first Doctor Who Christmas episode since 1965 despite not actually being broadcast at Christmas.
Summary
In Cardiff, 1869, the dead are walking.
In the funeral parlor of Gabriel Sneed, the body of the recently deceased Mrs. Peace becomes possessed by a strange blue gas. It rises from its coffin, murders Peace's grandson, Mr. Redpath, and wanders off into the night, much to the annoyance of Sneed.
The Doctor and Rose arrive (having missed their destination both by a few years and a few miles) and go to see a live performance by Charles Dickens, whose recitation of A Christmas Carol is interrupted by the arrival of the deceased woman who releases the blue gaseous "ghost" within her, which frightens away the audience. In the confusion, Rose discovers Sneed and his servant girl, Gwyneth, making off with the body. Sneed chloroforms Rose and they leave with her as well, pursued by the Doctor and Dickens.
Once back at the funeral parlor, Rose awakens to find herself being attacked by the corpses of Mrs. Peace and Mr. Redpath, rescued at the last second by the Doctor and Dickens. Again, the "ghosts" vacate the bodies, traveling into the parlor's gaslight system, although this time they speak before they do.
The Doctor talks with Dickens' whose rational worldview can't cope with the situation, insisting that it's a trick or illusion, while Rose speaks with Gwyneth, bonding with the girl and also learning that she possesses a psychic gift. The Doctor explains that the parlor is built on a rift in time and proposes a seance to contact the ghosts. The Doctor, Rose, Sneed and a reluctant Dickens gather with Gwyneth who reaches out to the ghosts, which reveal themselves to be an alien species called the Gelth, stripped of their physical forms during the Time War and desperate for new ones. The Gelth want to use the bodies of Earth's dead to have corporeal form again.
Rose is offended by this idea but is surprised to find that the Doctor is in favor of the plan. Their debate is settled by Gwyneth, however, who wishes to help the Gelth. They all travel down to the morgue, the most haunted location in the parlor, and Gwyneth opens herself up as a conduit for the Gelth to arrive, en masse. Unfortunately, the Gelth's intentions turn out to be less noble than implied. They possess all the bodies in the morgue, then proceed to murder and possess Sneed, planning to do the same to everyone else on Earth. Dickens, overwhelmed by these new, fantastical experiences, runs away while the Doctor and Rose lock themselves behind a gate, trying to escape the walking corpses.
Dickens has a change of heart when he realizes the Gelth can be drawn from the bodies into the gaslight system and returns, opening the gas valves in the morgue. Eventually it works and the corpses are vacated. The Doctor tells Gwyneth to send the Gelth back through the rift but she says that she can't. She can, however, hold them in this location and plans to destroy them by lighting a match in the gas-filled parlor. The Doctor sends Rose and Dickens away, planning on lighting the match personally, but allows Gwyneth to do so herself when he realizes that her body is already dead. He escapes the parlor just in time to escape the explosion. The three survivors are touched by the girl's sacrifice.
Dickens' imagination is fired by these experiences and he plans to write about them. After an emotional farewell, however, the Doctor reveals to Rose that Dickens will die later that year before he can do so. Still, for the time being, his zest for life is renewed as he leaves to spend Christmas with his family.
Crew Credits
Writer: Mark Gatiss
Director: Euros Lyn
Producer: Phil Collinson
Back to the Past
This is the first episode of the new series not to be written by showrunner Russell T Davies. Instead, it's written by Mark Gatiss, a talented television writer/producer/actor in his own right and a pretty unabashed Classic Who fan, having written Doctor Who novels and audio plays during the Wilderness Years when the show was off the air. You can see that love of the original in this episode which feels a bit more like a story from the previous iteration of the show, with an emphasis on horror, quirky characters and period recreation.
That said, The Unquiet Dead is still very much an episode of the new series. There are hints of a potential Doctor/companion romance, which never reared its head in the old days. There's also a reference to the Time War, with the Gelth playing off the idea that their race fell victim to it to gain sympathy from the Doctor. Oh, and the words "Bad Wolf" show up again, pretty blatantly this time. It's also the first "celebrity historical."
Or is it?
I have, on occasion, heard people express a dissatisfaction with their perception that the new series tends to build its historical stories around the meeting of famous people from the past, preferring a return to the days when historical stories were merely period pieces, simply steeping the viewer in the feel of the era.
But a quick glance at the classic series reminds me that a great many of the historical-set stories in the classic series were, indeed, based around the Doctor and his friends meeting important figures out of history too. The Reign of Terror: Robespierre. The Romans: Nero. The Crusade: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The Myth Makers: Pretty much everyone in the Iliad. (There are almost no characters who aren't famous in The Myth Makers.) The Massacre: Catherine de Medici. The Gunfighters: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday. The Mark of the Rani: George Stevenson. Marco Polo: Uh, Marco Polo...and Kublai Khan to boot.
Yes, the classic series sometimes featured stories that were set in the past but not based around an historical celebrity. But then so too will the new series do so.
Overview
Celebrity version or not, the BBC has long been masterful at recreating the Victorian Era, not just in Doctor Who itself but also in countless other period dramas. (Indeed, I suspect the ability to share props and costumes between shows is part of why they're so consistently good at it.) This is an era that those making the show knew the BBC could realize well and I suspect that played a part in why it was chosen for the TARDIS' first trip to the past. They picked an era they knew they could make look impressive.
Indeed, in my recent rewatch for this review, I was struck by how well the visuals for this episode stand up even now, almost 17 years alter. In fact, I'd say they hold up better than the previous two episodes. Not only do they recreate the feel of the era well, but the blue, gaseous forms of the Gelth remain effective to this day.
While it always behooves the makers of a series to realize their visuals as well as possible, I think there's a little bit more to it in this case. The first story of the new series was set in the present, the second in the future and now this one in the past. The show is highlighting he three respective "directions" a Doctor Who story can go: past, present, future. Technically, it can do a few more, but those are the three most common and the variety of potential stories using just those three is arguably infinite.
Why is it necessary to start off by highlighting those three possibilities? Because the first series of New Doctor Who is, while a dramatic unit unto itself, also a bit of a "crash course" in what Doctor Who is and how it works for those who are not familiar with the original series. With this structure for its episode order, it's continuing this crash course, telling the new members of the audience "Hey, this is what we can do." Much like Rose took its time to introduce the Doctor and what he was capable of, the season itself is slowly unfolding what the show itself is capable of.
So what is the show capable of in this story?
Well, to start with, it can give us good, creepy, pre-credits teasers. The whole sequence with Redpath mourning his lost grandmother, to his murder by her corpse, to her escape into snowy Cardiff accompanied by eerie blue gas escaping from her face is quite impressive.
The sequence highlights that brilliant Victorian Era realization. It also runs the emotional gamut from genuine pathos (Redpath's sadness), to dark humor (Sneed's beleaguered, eye rolling "Oh no!" marking the dead rising as a repeated and annoying inconvenience) to the horrific spectacle of Mrs. Peace wandering off into the city.
One of the shifts from the classic series to the new one was the loss of the serial format. I recognize the need to do that. Discrete serial drama wasn't much of thing in 2005. Building a whole, ongoing series around it was almost unheard of by that time. Classic Who's serial approach was simply not going to come back. But, as alluded to way back in my first post about Doctor Who, I love cliffhangers. I love that "What happens next?" feeling they invoke.
The addition of the pre-credits teaser, something that rarely reared its head in the classic days, feels like a small attempt to recreate that cliffhanger feeling, to engender the thrill of "What happens next?" even if only for a short time as the credits roll and, while the previous episode did have a pre-credits teaser too, this is the first time it really feels like it's captured that effect.
Y'know what also makes a return in this episode? Death. Redpath, Sneed, and Gwyneth all perish in this episode. While Dickens is obviously spared death within the confines of the story, the episode ends by pointing out that his death is om the horizon. Death remains the Doctor's constant companion.
Characters
Speaking of Dickens, he gets a rather nice character arc over the course of the episode. Indeed, he's the most prominent guest star in the episode, third in focus after the Doctor and Rose, with only Gwyneth really rivaling him for plot importance.
Simon Callow turns in an excellent performance in the part but that's hardly surprising given that he'd already played Dickens several times before this in other productions (and Scrooge, as well.) He would later go on to write a biography of Dickens in 2012. To say he is familiar with the character is an understatement.
The term "celebrity historical" is especially applicable to Dickens, given that the story takes time to highlight Dickens as a performer and public figure during his own time. As someone who is fascinated by the telling of stories, I find the idea of Dickens' traveling from location to location, giving readings of his own work, an intriguing idea. It feels both like a throwback to the tradition of pure oral storytelling and a link to future mediums like films and radio. It's not quite a play, as it removes the interpretations of others from the author's work, but also allows the author themselves to assign extra nuance to what they've already put down on the page. I suspect I'd have been the perfect target audience for such a performance if I'd been around at the time. Heck, I'd probably go to something similar now. Callow invokes a wonderful sense of Dickens' bygone age through this performance.
Still, the performance is more than mere recitation. The Dickens of The Unquiet Dead is a hollow man, despairing of ever reaching the heights of his past, filled with regret for mistakes and resigned to eking out the rest of his days by replaying past glories for his audiences. Over the course of the episode, Dickens rediscovers the hope that the best of his life is not behind him. There is, of course, a bittersweet irony to that, given how little life Dickens actually has left and how the plans he has will never come to fruition. Rose and the Doctor offer alternate perspectives on whether this is a sad moment or a happy one. Is hope for the future when the future is so short a triumph or a tragedy? As with so many things in life, I suspect it's a matter of perspective.
Dickens' arc is not as simple as despair to hope, however. There's more to it than that. He also goes through a very understandable period of denial and terror when faced with the unknown. Like so many characters in Doctor Who, Dickens has been dragged out of the world of the normal and had his perspective forcibly widened to include things beyond what had been dreamt of in his philosophy. For Dickens, as with everyone, that experience is simultaneously wonderous and terrifying.
It's so terrifying, in fact, that he denies its existence for a while, sheltering behind the notion that it's all tricks and hoodwinkery. One of the things I rather liked about the episode is that the Doctor calls Dickens out on this attitude. Dickens may be the celebrity of this particular historical but, to the Doctor, he's still very small and limited, a single man, bound by his time. Even if the Doctor's his "biggest fan," he's not going to let him hold onto his pretense of his normalcy. The Doctor has never had much patience for ignorance and deliberate ignorance even less so. He forces Dickens to face up to this new, frightening world whether he wants to or not.
Fortunately, Dickens is up to task. Because that's the final part of Dickens' arc in this episode, not simply admitting that the extranormal exists but rising to the challenge of being able to cope with it. Overwhelmed or not, Dickens has paid attention to the goings on around him and, like the writer he is, he's grasped that the gaseous nature of the Gelth is the key to their defeat in the climax. Like Scrooge, he overcomes his fear and chooses to act to help others. It's quite a triumphant moment as his revelation plays heavily into the episode's climax.
Dickens is not the only one whose actions contribute the climax, of course. No, the primary instrument of the Gelth's defeat is Gwyneth.
Gwyneth is an interesting character. Like Dickens, she's very much of her time. The episode goes out of its way to make sure her that her attitudes and morays are very in line with those of the era. This is exemplified during both her casual conversation with Rose and then later when she insists on helping the Gelth despite Rose's desire that she shouldn't. She's more open minded about the supernatural than Dickens is but that's clearly because her life has forced that perspective upon her. When you've grown up with "the sight" and your place of work has been lately filled with ghosts and walking corpses, your capacity for denial goes down a lot.
Despite all this, Gwyneth's viewpoint is very...simple. She has no great aspirations like Dickens. She doesn't want to be rich or famous. She just wants to live her life and help her "angels." I say "simple" and that's exactly what I mean. Her goals and desires are uncomplicated. I don't mean "stupid." Indeed, one of the better moments in the episode is when Gwyneth points out that Rose thinks she's stupid. (Rose's half-hearted, pouty attempt to defend herself is well done too. Can't really argue with someone who reads your mind, can you?) As with Dickens' fate at the end, the episode doesn't pick a side, just presenting them and noting that Gwyneth is within her rights to act on her perspective regardless of what Rose thinks of it.
All of this is aided greatly by Eve Myles, whose performance as Gwyneth is very sympathetic, giving her both an innocence and an inner strength that are extremely compelling. It's easy to see why Myles was asked back for Torchwood later.
And, of course, Gwyneth sacrifices herself to save everyone in the end. This element is one of the things that, at the time of broadcast, felt very "Classic Who" to me. Story-specific characters engaging in self-sacrifice to stop (or delay) the threat of the narrative is something of a tradition in Doctor Who, stretching all the way back to The Daleks.
Last of the significant episode-specific characters is Sneed. He's certainly less powerfully drawn than Dickens and Gwyneth, played largely for dark comedy. In a sense he's more of a pure plot-function character than the other two, existing to help progress the story from one plot point to the next. (Though that distinction is less clear-cut than a lot of people think. The truth is that all characters serve a plot function. What varies is how obvious that tie to the plotting is. While all characters serve the plot, some are so distinct that it doesn't feel like they do.)
Still, if you're going to have a plot-function character, Sneed's not a bad one because most of his dark comedy lands well. Alan David manages to portray him as genuinely feeling as though he's put upon and the victim in the situation despite his own complicity in the events. Sneed's consistently shown as a man who thinks in the short term. He doesn't try to solve the overall issue, just the individual symptoms. When Mrs. Peace escapes he just wants to recapture her. When Rose discovers them he kidnaps her with no thought as to what to do with her after. He even ponders seeing if they can get an exorcism on the cheap.
That last is an example of what's probably Sneed's saving grace in story terms. He's funny. His humor is very dark, of course, but it would have to be, given the subject matter of the episode. Still, that eyerolling "Oh no!" he has when walking in to see Mrs. Peace snapping her grandson's neck is the perfect character establishment. He's not terrified. He's annoyed at the inconvenience of it all, as if corpses coming to life and attacking people were akin to a squeaky door hinge.
Sneed also gets killed himself and his corpse possessed by one of the Gelth. Such "karmic deaths" for selfish and/or shortsighted characters are also a Classic Who tradition.
But what about our time travelers themselves?
This is Rose's first trip into the past. As with her trip to the future, she's giddy with anticipation, enough so that she's not even bothered when she learns that they haven't landed in the time and place the Doctor had aimed for (Cardiff joke aside.) Rose is still in that honeymoon period of TARDIS travel. Sure, she's learned there's danger involved, but it's still consistently thrilling and exciting.
As she has during the first two episodes, Rose is still somewhat representing the audience's perspective, learning about how the Doctor's universe works so that the new viewers can learn as well (and the old ones can refamiliarize ourselves.) She's learning as she goes and the audience is learning with her.
So what have she and we learned?
She's learned that the TARDIS doesn't always end up exactly where the Doctor directs it to go. This was something of a staple of the classic series (and a constant during the '60s) but it's the first time it's come up in the new one. I, for one, was very happy it did.
She's learned about the somewhat silly tendency for companions to dress for the era they've arrived in and the Doctor not to bother. Indeed, more attention is drawn to it in this episode than tended to be in the classic series.
She's learned a bit more about how time works, specifically that traveling to before her birth doesn't protect her from the threat of death. Honestly, this one felt pretty obvious to me, but it's not a bad idea to spell it out blatantly to dispel any notions the audience might have had that Rose is somehow "safe" any time the TARDIS travels into the past.
Oh and she learned that sometimes the Doctor's alien perspective can be so radically different that it's completely opposed to her own. Yeah, that's a bit of a big one there...
In a sense, the clashing viewpoints of the Doctor and Rose on the Gelth situation are just a continuation of what's been going on during the previous two episodes. The Doctor takes a wide view of the situation, wanting to act for the good on a grand scale and willing to ignore or even flout individual sensibilities to achieve that greater good. Rose is seeing things from a more personal level. She's defending the perspective of the individuals, both in respect for the dead themselves and those who loved them.
But the conflict, in this story, whether or not to let the Gelth inhabit the bodies of the dead, is one in which can't fall between those viewpoints. Either they're going to let the Gelth do it or they're not. (Although, given the Gelth's actions in the early part of the episode, one wonders what they'd have done if the Doctor hadn't agreed.)
Rose's viewpoint in this episode, is very individualistic. This is true even before the question of the Gelth comes up. From the beginning of the episode, Rose is focused on her individual experience of the trip, with what it will "feel" like to step out of the TARDIS into the past, with how it feels for the past to be accessible. She's so focused that she forgets things like needing to switch into period dress until reminded. Later, when the Gelth's desires have been explained, she retains that experiential perspective. She doesn't want the Gelth to inhabit the dead because it feels emotionally wrong to her.
That limited perspective touches everything Rose does in this episode. It colors her interactions with Gwyneth, whom she clearly regards with a sort of "kind" condescension. Because she's from a more advanced age, Rose is dismissive of Gwyneth as effectively being stupid (something Gwyneth calls her out on) but, ironically, Rose isn't really making use of the wider knowledge of her own time, but just her own personal impressions. Helping the Gelth "feels" wrong so it's wrong. Letting Gwyneth be their conduit feels like it's too dangerous for poor, primitive Gwyneth to understand, so it's wrong. She has a vague feeling that she can't die if they're in a year prior to her birth so that must be so.
I should point out that I'm not saying Rose herself is being stupid in this episode, simply that she's viewing things from a very personal, experiential perspective. Indeed, it's Rose's perspective that gets vindicated by the end of the episode, not the Doctor's. Rose is simply engaged with and espouses her own point of view on the situation and is making little to no allowance for the points of view of others. That's why she's so surprised when the Doctor supports the Gelth's plan.
And why does the Doctor support their plan? There's some irony in that the Doctor's perspective in this episode comes off as somewhat cold-blooded, like he doesn't really care much about individual people (again.) He clearly doesn't care about the human morays and sensibilities regarding how their dead are treated. He has little patience for Dickens' prevarications about disbelief in the supernatural. He expresses little actual sympathy for Sneed and Gwyneth and, indeed, is willing to use the latter as a medium through which to contact the Gelth.
The irony comes in that all of this stems, not from a lack of empathy on the Doctor's part, but rather the presence of it. The Doctor, unlike Rose, is allowing himself to see things from the perspective of others...it's just that the "others" in this case are the Gelth. He is seeing them, not the humans, as the victims in this situation and is motivated to help them. (And, in his defense, the humans in the situation are already dead. The murder of Mr. Redpath is an early sign to the audience that the Gelth are not quite what they purport themselves to be but there's no evidence that the Doctor knows about that incident.)
So, interestingly, we get two dynamics at play in terms of the perspectives of the Doctor and Rose. As in the previous episodes, the Doctor has a wide perspective while Rose has a ground-level one but, in this case, it's also one in which the Doctor's viewpoint is widely empathetic and Rose's more closed to outside points of view.
In examining the Doctor's empathy in this situation, it's worth looking at why exactly the Doctor is so sympathetic to the Gelth. Of course, the Doctor has 26 or so previous seasons of championing the underdogs and victims but it's quite rare that he takes a pro-invasion stance where Earth is concerned and that's effectively what he's doing here. A mass migration of the Gelth into the Earth's dead in 1869 would alter the dynamics of the Earth on a monumental scale, changing both history and humanity's place in it immensely. Yet the Doctor seems onboard with the idea. Why?
The answer to that can be summed up in three words: The Time War. The Doctor was already sympathetic to finding out what was going on with the Gelth but as soon as he learns their current condition was caused by the Time War, he becomes intensely motivated to remedy it. There's another factor at work here than just empathy and that factor is guilt. The Time War had been mentioned in the previous episode but this is the first (of a few) indications that its effects stretched beyond the destruction of the Time Lords.
The Gelth describe the Time War as having no effect on "lower species" but devastating to "higher forms." That they are effectively using the former term to describe humans and the latter for themselves could actually be an early indication that they're not quite as innocent as they seem. Sure, they could just be describing levels of technology and awareness of the universe but they could also be tipping their hand about their moral perspective. What's interesting, though, is that the Doctor doesn't pick up on this. Guilt again.
It's also interesting to ponder how actively the Gelth were manipulating the Doctor. They have access to Gwyneth, who is psychic. Were they actually reading the Doctor's mind and sensing his guilt about the Time War, bringing it up specifically to gain his sympathy? Certainly their previous tactics had been less...conversational, simply hijacking bodies whenever they could, The most cynical reading of the situation would posit that the Gelth were never even affected by the Time War at all but just said they were to get the Doctor to help them. On the other hand, they could legitimately be victims of the fallout from the Time War, just ones who don't care what they do to humanity in their quest to have form again. The episode doesn't give us answers to this. It just shows us the Doctor's guilt affecting his decision.
In retrospect, given the hindsight of later episodes, the Doctor's guilt about the Time War is pretty evident but, at this point, all that's been established is that the Doctor and his people fought a terrible war and lost. This is the first serious indication that the Doctor may feel a sense of personal responsibility for those events and for related consequences of them. This is clouding his judgment, weighing down his general wide-but-empathetic perspective with a level of guilt that is preventing him from seeing potential dangers that, I suspect, he'd otherwise have noticed. There are little hints that he might have second thoughts, such as when he tells the Gelth that this won't be a permanent solution, offering to take them to another world and build new bodies for them, but those ideas are afterthoughts. Once the Gelth start coming through en masse it's too late. Sneed is murdered, the dead are waking in droves and Gwyneth is dead. The Doctor, Rose and arguably the world only survive because Dickens finds his courage and Gwyneth sacrifices herself. The Doctor's guilt has proven to be not simply troublesome but downright disastrous.
I actually rather like all that. The Doctor's fallibility has always been something that I've enjoyed about the character. Indeed, I often find myself perplexed when I see criticisms of the series that center on the Doctor making some sort of ethical mistake. The Doctor's morals are not and have never been perfect. Somewhere, deep inside the character, there's always the old man who considered murdering a caveman with a rock.
Little Tidbits
-The episode opens with a shot of a gas lamp being lit. The key to it all in the very first frame of the story.
-As happened occasionally with companions in the original series, the Doctor gives Rose elaborate directions to navigate to the wardrobe within the TARDIS, verbally detailing its massive size but not actually showing it to us (likely to save on budget.) This feels very Classic Who to me. While the classic series did, occasionally show us parts of the TARDIS interior beyond the Console Room, such instances were relatively rare and it was usually handled in a similar fashion to this one. The ship's size was usually referenced but not depicted.
-Another link to the classic series is the basic premise of a weak point in time, the Rift, where there is bleedthrough between two time zones and that the effect of that is perceived as ghosts. This was most prominently featured in Image of the Fendahl though similar, if not identical, phenomenon take place in Day of the Daleks, The Time Warrior and The Awakening. The notion also rears its head in a lot of the spinoff media.
-We also get mention of the malleability of time, with the phrase "Time is in flux" used to sum it up. This notion, that the past is not set but can be affected by the characters' actions, is pretty central to the series' premise, otherwise adventures in the past would either be entirely pointless or confined to the characters simply playing out predetermined roles. This phrase is shorthand for the Doctor showing Sarah Jane the "destroyed future" version of 1980 in Pyramids of Mars.
-We also get verbal references to the Doctor's previous adventures in the forms of the Doctor referencing having seen the Fall of Troy (The Myth Makers) and World War V (a reference to a reference, the Doctor having mentioned the near-start of World War VI in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.)
-On the New Who side of things, we get the first real bit of ship-tease in this episode with the Doctor telling Rose she looks beautiful and then backtracking by adding that he means for a "human." Even with that retraction though, it's far more of a hint than we got in 26 seasons of the classic series. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to the viewer, I suppose. I'm fairly neutral on the idea of Doctor/Companion romances. I'm not bothered by the idea but I don't find it the most compelling dynamic of the series either. It does amuse me, though, that this first blatant tease of a Doctor/Rose romance comes, not at the hands of Russell T Davies, but those of a guest writer.
-When reading Rose's mind, we get the first really prominent mention of "Bad Wolf." The Moxx of Balhoon did rattle the term off in the previous episode but it was very quick and, until it's repeated here, there was no reason to think it had any significance outside that specific scenario. We get nothing in the way of hints as to what it means but the mere repetition of the phrase marks it as significant.
-I know I mentioned this above but I think that, again, Eve Myles' performance as Gwyneth deserves special praise. She manages to convey a whole array of emotions from shame to fear to hope to confidence to resignation brilliantly. Once more, it's easy to see why she was tapped to return for the spinoff.
-I mentioned above that the story leaves it a bit ambiguous as to whether Dickens' newfound hope for the future is cause for celebration or sadness, given his impending death. What doesn't strike me as ambiguous is the perfection of the moment when he asks the Doctor how long his books will be remembered and is answered with "Forever." That is, quite simply, the most beautiful a compliment that could ever be paid to a writer.
-Mark Gatiss manages to have Dickens use the word "Phantasmagoria" in this episode. It's an accurate description of what he's seeing at the time and also just happens to be the name of the first official Doctor Who audio play he wrote a while back.
-Silly or not, I laughed my head off at Dickens saying "What the Shakespeare is going on?" I know that the phrase "What the Dickens?" does not actually actually have anything to do with Charles Dickens but the joke comes simply from Dickens trying to express the same sentiment without using his own name.
-Good thing Gwyneth's sacrifice sealed that Rift up. Nothing that will ever come up again, I'm sure.
-As she did with Raffalo in the previous episode, Rose takes the time to have a friendly one-on-one chat with a working class girl, in this case Gwyneth, and find some common ground. The nicer side of that ground-level perspective at work.
-Within that scene we also get the first mention and confirmation that Rose's father is deceased. We've seen her only living with her mother but hadn't known, until now, if her father was dead or had simply left. Here we learn that he has, indeed, passed away and that he did so when Rose was very young.
-The seance works surprisingly easily, requiring very little effort on the parts of those participating. Basically everybody holds hands, Gwyneth mutters a few catchphrases she heard from a spiritualist (that likely have nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of the situation) and the Gelth just appear. One presumes this is because, as the Doctor mentioned, the Rift is widening.
-For the record I have no idea whatsoever if Dickens' theory about turning up the gas to draw the Gelth out of the bodies would actually work. Chemistry, physics and I very reluctant bedfellows.
-Several times, I have seen an interpretation of this episode that casts the Gelth as metaphors for immigrants and thus interpreting the Gelth's ulterior motives as a statement about how immigrants, particularly those seeking asylum from war-torn areas of the world are not to be trusted. This is not an interpretation I subscribe to, nor have I ever particularly gotten the impression that it's a viewpoint that Gatiss intended. Still, if people wish to view the episode through that lense, that's their prerogative, Death of the Author and all that. (Though, at the same time, the Death of the Author mindset allows one to reject that perspective just as easily. We're no more bound by the perspective of other viewers than we are that of the writer.)
-For a final Christmas image, the snow slowly falling to the ground after the TARDIS dematerialize is quite lovely.
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