Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Mutton Chop Madness

You just can't keep a good Welsh stiff down! I wasn't actually in the house when this episode was broadcast. I was in a pub. Watching Doctor Who. Let's just repeat that just to make sure, in a pub, watching Doctor Who. What kind of crazy mixed up world are we living in today when Doctor Who is on in a pub? I'll admit that ManU getting tonked by Norwich was a bigger draw amongst the not-we denizens of the Corner House but I was watching Doctor Who.

The opening sequence is rather superb as the old dear walks towards the camera, blue ethereal phantom ectoplasm spewing from her recently deceased gob, the cross fade into the opening titles vortex is rather neat too. It looks as if her esophagus is actually part and parcel of space-time.

The interior shot of the recently landed TARDIS is superb with the pair of them in fits of giggles lying on the floor. Just what have they been up to? And the TARDIS lies to the Doctor, it confirms it's Naples in 1860. But it's not. The external view of the arrival made me think back to last week's episode, where we didn't get to see any dematerialization or rematerialzation action.

Rose's first small step into the Cardiff snow of 1869 is rather like Neil Armstrong's first tentative step on the moon's surface, although he obviously had slightly less sturdy footwear on than Rose. The exterior settings are just perfect. And that comes from someone who spent 2 years in Swansea during the mid-'90s, and hated every minute, and now they're making Doctor Who in the town! Damn you fate, why couldn't they have mounted the '96 TV Movie in Sketty as opposed to San Francisco?

Sir Simon Callow (go on, your Majesty, you know you want to - after your nice trip out to Windsor last weekend you must be in a good mood - go on, knight the old thesp)  is wonderful. People have said that he was wasted a but but to those I say pish and nonsense. However, how on earth did the old dear manage to get into the theatre in the first place? She's got skin the complexion of George Best's liver.

Rose's conversation with Gwyneth was like a mini history lesson coupled combined with the teen angst problem pages from More magazine.

So the Gelth, gas monsters. Good job they didn't go for dual fuel and have to battle the electric eels of Vraal too. Aliens, always stuck in one rift or another, probably having gorged themselves on too much Ginsters pig'n'pastry at the interstitial equivalent of Granada Services.

The biggest zombie job since Michael Jackson's Thriller video shoot. There's a nice touch when Charles Dickens gets outside the house, closes the front door and the Gelth seems to form from the knocker on the door, just like Marley's ghost.

And with some slightly more adventurous direction (note to directors - this ain't Holby City guys), better music and - at last - some horror, and The Time War, and The Big Bad Wolf. It's all building nicely...

'Ready for this? Here we go...History'

You know, Doctor, you may just be right.

As always, first things first - this is a cracking episode, more than allaying fears that last week’s increase in thought-provoking storytelling was anything more than a blip. Right from that marvellous teaser - with the revived corpse’s ungodly scream merging with the title theme’s iconic sting - this is a fitting example of the show running at full speed, with a perfect blend of drama, scares and laughs for once utilising the period setting to maximum effect. Can this really be the same programme that produced the overwhelming disappointment of ‘Rose’ just a couple of weeks before?

‘The Unquiet Dead’ is certainly the most tightly plotted of the three episodes so far. Whether you liked the opening episode or not, you’d be hard pressed to disagree that it was a rushed mess; burdened too much by necessary introductions and heavy-handed exposition. While the more sedate pace of ‘The End of the World’ allowed for a marked increase in quality, it again disguised writer Russell T Davies’ current problems with plot execution. So whether it’s down to a change of authorship alone - with Who and Dickens-phile Mark Gatiss taking over writing duties for one night only - or whether it’s merely evidence of a production team getting into their stride, ’The Unquiet Dead’ is by far the best written Who for some twenty years. No mean feat for someone arguably as close to his subject as any of the writers on board this year.

And it’s also nice to see the show return to its roots of providing supernatural stories with rational, scientific explanations. The tragic Gelth - while recalling the similar circumstances of some race in Star Trek whose name escapes me - are an excellently executed threat. And their combination of minimalist make-up with some ‘Poltergeist’-style CGI make the scenes where they reanimate the recently dead chillingly effective (although, director Euros Lyn may have seen ‘Salem’s Lot’ once or twice, given his almost fan-boy recreation of that piece’s vampiric resurrections). It’s also increasingly impressive how this series seems to be tying all the individual threats into one, oppressive whole; with the Gelth joining both the Nestenes and (presumably) the Time Lords as ‘higher forms’ devastated by the almost mythical Time War. The payoff for this should be well worth waiting for.

I may just wear out the word ‘marvellous’ by the end of this piece so - well, marvellous - this episode is. First of all, you’ve gotta love how the special effect boys and girls have established the TARDIS again as a powerful and unpredictable machine; with its spinning ‘n’ tumbling through time the most evocative depiction of interstitial travel since that very first episode back in 1963. Then there’s Billie Piper (again) keeping the viewer on the straight and narrow with her oh-so-believable reactions to the reality of time travel and the opportunities it offers (her first steps into Victorian Cardiff’s snow fair bring a tear to the eye). And she and Eccleston again excel in depicting a warm, trusting relationship that still has its fair share of wrinkles to iron out (their confrontation over the morality of the Gelth’s scheme - and the Doctor’s ‘donor card’ analogy - bring to mind the very best of Baker and Sladen’s ‘Genesis’ and ‘Pyramids’-style debates).

Lest we forget also Simon Callow as ol’ Charlie Boy himself. Dickens is a role that Callow could by now arguably play in his sleep, but it’s to his great credit that he never even comes close to doing just that. It was a good trick of Mark Gatiss’ to show Dickens at very much the fag end of his career; reduced to the ignominy of ‘selling his wares’ in the back-streets of Cardiff. For while this episode’s setting may seem contrived to allow RTD to pay homage to both his - and the new show’s - birthplace, Gatiss’ skilful writing, aided by Callow’s effortlessly melancholic turn, depict a weary, cynical writer who once more finds joy in the world around him (just like Scrooge in ‘A Christmas Carol‘ to boot). And isn’t it marvellous - that word again - to find even the Doctor is not immune to a bit of nerdy, critical fan-worship? Say what you like of Eccleston’s streetwise, working class re-imagining of the role, but can you imagine any other incarnation telling Charles Dickens to ‘shut it’ with such authority?

It’s not all perfect, of course. I still haven’t worked out if Billie Piper is deliberately doing a variable cockney (mockney?) accent or not, so inconsistent is her diction at times. And the fact that the Doctor seems blind of the Gelth’s evident villainy does somewhat belie the character’s otherwise faultless judgement of character (but then I could be missing the whole point that the Doctor’s pity for them - stemming from his evident guilt over the fate of Gallifrey - impairs his judgement, albeit temporarily).

But enough of that - these are mere scratches on an almost flawless forty-five minutes. And I simply haven’t even begun to get bored of using that word ‘marvellous’ yet. What about the hitherto much maligned music of Murray Gold, here all but unnoticeable except when rising to haunting and poetic heights? Or the breezy ‘Hi’ that the Doctor gives Rose when he breaks into the funeral parlour (after deadpanning to Dickens that ‘the dead are walking’). Then there’s the fan-ish references to the Doctor’s witnessing of the Fall of Troy (‘The Myth Makers’) and World War V (‘Talons’?) and the nice touch of leaving him unaffected by the leaking gas that does in the Gelth (due to that respiratory by-pass of his, no doubt). But best of all is how this episode more than stands by itself, while hinting at more epic things to come. Gwyneth - herself a thinly-veiled tribute to ‘Buffy’s Dawn (both being ‘keys’ to some mystical portal) - gives some tantalising hints that she knows who the Doctor and Rose are, and the events that are to shape their destinies (with Rose’s Dad, the resolution of the Time War and ‘Bad Wolf’ all - either explicitly or obliquely - name-checked along the way).

And, if nothing else, ‘The Unquiet Dead’ reminds us just how unique Doctor Who is - because where else in science fantasy could you redeem a legendary writer’s faith in life by showing him the horrors of death? And in what other show could you follow that writer’s renewed joy with news of his imminent death?

Oh, and Charles Dickens saves the world. Now how marvellous is that?

Great Expectations

My favourite thing in the whole world right now is the sound effect that accompanies the moment when the TARDIS jumps vortexes in the new title sequence. I don't know why, but it makes me grin from ear to ear every time I hear it.

I'm stalling here. You see, I really don't know what to say about this episode. It's just so damn... perfect. Too perfect. Doctor Who by numbers, even. But is that really such a bad thing? Oh, it's also an advert for the BNP, if you believe Mad Larry Miles. Which I don't.

The Unquiet Dead ticks all the right boxes with a big fat gold marker pen. It's got aliens, zombies, time travel paradoxes, historical figures, silly jokes, and lashings of sexual tension. Wait a minute, that can't be right.

And it's got scenes of people dying horribly. To be honest, I was shocked. You could even hear their necks snapping, and we didn't even get that with the post-watershed moments in 1996 TV Movie. Would Mary Whitehouse have stood for Shaun of the Dead invading her mind's eye in the cosy tea-time slot if she was still alive/reanimated? Come on, Mediawatch, what are you waiting for?

I was beginning to worry that the new series would be all thrills and no chills, but I think I can safely assume that Mark Gatiss and company successfully managed to emotionally scar a few kids for life last Saturday. Well done.

At this point in my review I should probably tell you plenty of stuff you already know, like how Simon Cowell was great (much better than his appearances on Pop Idol), that Billie Piper was spot on again (oh, and it appears that 'waking up in a locked room' is the new spraining your ankle'), and that Chris Eccleston was slightly less over-the-top this week (but only ever so slightly). To be fair, I could probably spend a whole paragraph waxing lyrical about how the snowflakes which have settled on the TARDIS spiral in the air as the ship dematerialises, which is my favourite image in the series so far (and I mean the whole series).

Instead, let me poke some holes in the rather flimsy plot. Was anyone really fooled by the Gelth? It's the oldest trick in the alien invasion handbook. Maybe the kids, who probably think the Doctor knows it all, were fooled, but the Gallifrey Massive know that this is basically par for the course.

And let's face it - the Doctor is a bit crap in this, wasn't he? He fails to find the solution (thank god for Charles Dickens), he misreads the situation completely (probably out of guilt for what he did in the [drum roll] TIME WAR!!!), he gets one of the leading ladies killed, and he can't even find his way to Naples. Even his choice of jumper is wrong.

What a daft pillock. In sheep's clothing, perhaps.

The ending annoyed the hell out of me, too. Was the Doctor lying when he claimed that Gwenyth had been dead all along, or was he telling the truth? If he lied to Rose then it's very, very interesting (shades of ACCCEEEEE!!!!!). If he told the truth then WTF? And I'm inclined to believe the latter (why bother checking for the pulse otherwise?) but that means either a) the sacrifice was sanitised for da kids or b) something else is going on.

It's driving me up the wall, and I've got enough on my plate trying to work out what the Bad Wolf refers to. I'll give even money on an obscure 80s villain who is extremely bad at chess.

And next week looks... fantastic!

PS - Was that Mark Gatiss wishing Dickens a 'Merry Christmas' at the very end?

My full Unquiet Dead review

So after an adventure in the present day and a trip to the far future, we finally get our first episode of the new series to be set in what has always been one of the most fruitful areas for Doctor Who scriptwriters’ imaginations – the past. Perhaps surprisingly, given how well the series always seems to work in the time period, this is only the fourth time that the TARDIS had landed in Victorian times in the TV series proper. While it’s certainly no Talons of Weng-Chiang, it is a damn good episode, and easily carries on the high standard set out in the first two episodes.

The setting, I have to say, looks marvellous. It has become something of a cliché to say that the BBC is good at creating historical settings in its drama programmes, but it’s true. That fine tradition of costume dramas serves the production team well here as they create a perfectly convincing 1860s Cardiff – well, as convincing as it can be given that none of us have ever been to that time and place to be able to compare it! Euros Lyn’s fine direction shows off the mocked-up Victorian streets to their fullest, and even though this was obviously done on a tight series budget rather than that of a film or lavish Sunday night Andrew Davies serial, it never feels small or enclosed or anything less than epic. I think the snow probably helps to add a great deal to the atmosphere, of course, but throughout Lyn’s direction is never less than accomplished, and it’s a shame this is his final episode of the season. I hope he returns next year.

What is nicely small and contained this week, however, is the guest cast – there are only three roles of any great significance, those being Alan David as Sneed, Eve Myles as Gwyneth and of course Simon Callow in the role he was apparently born to play, Charles Dickens. All three are superb – David bringing just the right balance of comedy and the macabre to his unfortunate undertaker; Myles having a lovely combination of innocence, spirituality and instinctive intelligence; and Callow… Well, what can I possibly say about Callow that hasn’t already been said? The transformation of Dickens from world-weary author despairing of the state of his life and career to reinvigorated adventurer with a lust for life is one of the highlights of the episode, and the ending as he strides off with a, of course, “God bless us, every one!” is delightful. It makes it all the more bittersweet and sad that the Doctor, Rose and of course we in the audience know that sadly he’ll be dead within the year, but at least he got this life-affirming glimpse at the greater picture of the universe before he went.

Much of the excellent of the guest cast comes from the script they’ve been served up with from Mark Gatiss, who provides an interesting contrast to the first two episodes as of course he’s the first writer apart from Davies whose work we’ve seen in the new series. The script is a delight – full of lovely one-liners from all of the characters, with Sneed being particularly well-served. His knowledge and love of Dickens and his work also shines through, and even if having him say “What the Shakespeare is going on?” may be historically dodgy – the expression ‘what the dickens?’ apparently pre-dates the author by some centuries – I don’t think anybody cares, as it’s the line of the episode for me.

There’s plenty of good material for the Doctor and Rose as well, with Rose’s delight and wonder at finding herself in a history she has only read about or seen on television being particularly well-conveyed. Once again, however, one of the highlights for me are the little hints and suggestions about the wider picture of the season we keep getting. Rose’s reaction to discovering that they’re in Cardiff was intriguing, and I’m sure there’s going to be some sort of link between her and Cardiff picked up on later in the season, judging by it. The Gelth’s mention of the ‘Time War’ is the third episode in a row when what is presumably the same conflict has been mentioned, and the Doctor’s look when the war is mentioned does indeed suggest that this was the conflict which destroyed his home planet. I love this sense of mythology building, and I hope we continue to get these teasing suggestions throughout the rest of the season. Gwyneth seeing a ‘big bad wolf!’ in Rose’s mind also picks up on what seems to be another on-going theme, so there’s plenty to keep those who follow all of the episodes interested without ever threatening to alienate more casual viewers, which is surely how good episodic drama series should work.

The Gelth’s involvement in the Time War provides a nice explanation for why the Doctor is to quick to trust them and wants to help them. This seems to be a more battle-scarred Doctor than we’ve seen before, still reeling perhaps from the loss of his planet and his people, and eager to help a race who seem to be in the same situation as himself, lost and alone, and suffering from the effects of the same conflict. Of course it turns out that he is too quick to trust them which leads to the drama of the episode’s conclusion, as the Gelth flood through into our world and only Charles Dickens can save the day.

I must admit I did find it a bit disappointing that the Doctor simply seems to give up when faced with the crowd of Gelth-possessed bodies, being more keen on mourning the fact that he’s going to die in Cardiff of all places than actually trying to do something about it. It would be nice if the Doctor could be a little more pro-active at saving the day, but as the episode ends so well I think I can forgive it this, as long as it doesn’t happen too often.

Poor Gwyneth dies, and with another sense of mystery – if she was dead in that archway, how was she speaking and seeming alive those last five minutes? It’s left unexplained, apart from a Shakespearean quote from Dickens of course, but her death is very affecting, particularly as she’d been so likeable. The scene where she points out that Rose thinks she’s stupid just because she’s from a different time highlights what I think many of us subconsciously end up thinking about people who lived in generations prior to ours.

The nice little coda to the episode, of Dickens asking the Doctor about the future and seeing the TARDIS dematerialise, is structurally unnecessary perhaps, but I wouldn’t get rid of it for the world. It was a little uneasy when I first heard Dickens was going to appear in this episode as Doctor Who often works better in the shadow of actual history and real people rather than confronting them head on, but his appearance worked perfectly and the ending to the episode is one of the best we’ve had in the whole series I think. The new series seems to be developing a habit of nice little coda endings if the past two episodes are anything to go by, and that’s not something I think I’ll complain about as it all adds wonderfully to the characterisations.

In short then, another terrific piece of all-round entertainment, and another example of this new series failing to put a foot wrong so far.

Meanwhile, elsewhere

I'm playing away this week, so my review of The Unquiet Dead can be found posted at Off The Telly.