An Hour of Who a Day: 12/31/14

December 31: "The Unquiet Dead"

Present, future... and now past, in the first episode of the revived series not written by showrunner Russell T Davies. Instead we get Mark Gatiss (a member of The League of Gentlemen and the author of four Doctor Who novels) to give us a look at Victorian Cardiff.

So in some ways, we're again looking at another calculated episode, designed to show off the programme's format. But unlike the previous two episodes, "The Unquiet Dead" doesn't make this a focal point for the audience -- instead it chooses to place an alien element in the past and play with that. We're not a million miles away from stories like The Time Warrior or The Visitation here. So we get talk of time rifts and how they're responsible for ghost sightings and people with "the sight" (just like Image of the Fendahl -- and don't think Gatiss didn't know that), standing in for the unknown and the new, and on the other side we get Charles Dickens, taking the side of skepticism and rationality until he's forced to believe otherwise.

And yes, this is the first instance in the BBC Wales series of the "celebrity historical", where we travel back in time to meet a famous person. This had happened a few times in the 20th century version (e.g., Marco Polo in, er, Marco Polo and George Stephenson in The Mark of the Rani), but now it's going to become a staple of the show. It's nice that this first time out is so successful -- Charles Dickens is portrayed with great care by Simon Callow (who had already devoted part of his career to doing just that), and we find ourselves rooting for him even when we know he's wrong. This also gives us some great moments, such as the Doctor enthusing to Dickens about his work, declaring himself to be Dickens' "number one fan" or Dickens' renewed joy in life at the end of the episode.

This episode also succeeds in giving us an interesting look at the Doctor and how alien he actually is. The way he shuts down Dickens' skepticism ("If you're going to deny it, don't waste my time. Just shut up") is surprisingly brusque, and his attempts to justify using bodies as temporary hosts for the Gelth are really nice too. "It's a different morality," he finally tells Rose exasperatedly. "Get used to it or go home." And nice to see an episode that isn't trying to convey just how "damaged" he is -- some guilty looks when the Gelth mention they're victims of the Time War and that's about it. Plus it takes the time to dwell on Rose's first step into the past, which is also a good move -- there's a sense of magic about this moment.

Of course, because they only have forty-five minutes to tell this story, some things get truncated. Far and away the worst casualty is that once the Gelth activate Gwyneth to use as a gateway, they turn evil and start talking about their plans to take over the planet, because there are only about seven minutes left. It's ludicrously perfunctory (as well as a bad move in terms of internal logic -- if you're going to trick people into helping you, why would you start gloating about that at the first sign of aid?) and, worryingly, there's a subtext present suggesting that "nice" immigrants will turn on you as soon as they can -- an awfully xenophobic position for a series that's long been about experiencing other cultures on their terms and not judging by appearances. Gatiss has said that this subtext wasn't intentional and he simply wasn't aware of it (it turns out not paying attention to the deeper implications of his work will be something of a running theme in Doctor Who...); however, intentional or not, it's still there, with all its unpleasant implications.

But Gatiss likely wasn't aware of that because ultimately "The Unquiet Dead" is designed to be a pastiche of Victorian novels and television, and in pastiche the form is more important than the actual text. In this regard "The Unquiet Dead" succeeds -- it does feel like a piece of Victoriana, and there's certainly enough here to keep both casual and dedicated viewers entertained. This story demonstrates that the production team are just as comfortable in the past as they are in the present and the future.