Before that, though, I watched my first classic Dr. Who last night. That is, I watched ten minutes and got bored. I'm not saying the old series is bad. I haven't watched nearly enough to make a judgment. Bear in mind that it was the middle of the night, too. I chose The Time Warrior: Part 1, because it was Sarah Jane's first episode and seemed like a good place to start. (I tried to go from the very beginning, but it's tough to find those online.) I'm not sure how I feel about Pertwee's Doctor, though ten minutes isn't really enough to go by. If all I have to go on in regards to the Doctor's personality are Eccleston's and Tennant's performances, I don't think Pertwee's Doctor is quirky enough, although I know his personality shifts a bit with every regeneration. He's like Richard Harris's Dumbledore: Everything but the quirks. (Although Richard Harris was exponentially better than whatever the hell Michael Gambon is doing. He doesn't even deserve the name "Dumbledore." But that's a whole 'nother post.) More on old Doctors later.
On to Episode 3:
Series/Episode: 1/3
Title: The Unquiet Dead
Writer: Mark Gatiss
"Sneed and Company" either attracts no business or attracts quite a lot out of curiosity.
Set sometime in the past, a young man grieves over his dead grandmother's coffin.
"She was so full of life." She's going to come alive, isn't she?
Yup. There she goes, choking her grandson.
"Gwyneth! Get down here now! We've got another one!" That can't be good.
The dead old woman has wandered out into the snow.
Titles! Oooo-EEEEE-ooooooooooo...WAAA-eeeee-ooooooooooo...That's what I hear, anyway.
The Tardis is shaking around. It is in flight.
Sweet! We're going to the past! To 1860.
Back in the past...Oh, hey Gwen Cooper. Nice doily you've got on your head there.
Apparently the grandson is now dead as well. Choked by his undead grandmother. Such a way to go.
Gwyneth alludes to creepy happenings at the funeral home.
Sneed and Gwyneth set out to find the old lady.
"Get the hearse ready. We're going body snatching." You need a sense of humor in Sneed's line of work.
The Tardis has landed, presumably in Sneed's time.
Rose: "But it's like...think about it, though. Christmas, 1860, happens once. Just once and it's gone, it's finished. It'll never happen again. Except for you. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone a hundred thousand sunsets ago. No wonder you never stay still."
It's speeches like this that make me upset that time travel isn't real.
The Doctor: "Not a bad life."
Rose: "Better with two."
A moment of contemplative silence.
They probably love each other.
Sneed and Gwyneth aren't having much luck on their search.
Sneed makes Gwyneth use "the Sight" to look for the old lady. She's reluctant, but complies when he threatens to fire her.
Before she died, the woman was going to see "a great man." The Doctor? Jesus? Tom Hanks?
Or Charles Dickens.
Ol' Charlie is backstage, "brooding" as he himself states.
"Christmas Eve. Not the best of times
Dickens is frustrated with the routine of his life, his old age, and his tired imagination. All valid points, but I can't help thinking this is not the time. He's late for his call.
Rose reemerges dressed to blend in with the times.
The Doctor: "You look beautiful!...Considering."
Your typical show emotion, freak out, cover it up cycle.
The Doctor: "I got the flight a bit wrong."
Rose: "I don't care."
The Doctor: It's not 1860. It's 1869."
Rose: "I don't care."
The Doctor: "And it's not Naples."
Rose: "I don't care."
The Doctor: "It's Cardiff."
Rose: "...right."
Dickens is narrating A Christmas Carol on stage. I'm kind of getting into it when the dead lady appears in the audience.
She glows and moans and the audience flees.
The Doctor and Rose hear their screams outside. "Now that's more like it!"
A blue ghost-like entity is swirling around inside the theater. The Doctor proclaims it is "fantastic!"
Dickens is angry because he thinks the Doctor created the ghost as a trick.
Rose runs off after Sneed and Gwyneth who have taken the old woman's body.
The Doctor asks Dickens for info.
The Doctor: "I'm the Doctor, by the way."
Dickens: "Doctor? You look more like a navvy."
The Doctor: "What's wrong with this jumper?"
When Rose realizes the old lady is dead, Sneed knocks her out and sticks her in the hearse too. How grim.
The ghost thing disappears into a gas lamp.
The Doctor and Dickens take off after the undertakers in Dickens' coach where Dickens is revealed as his famous self.
Apparently the word "fan" didn't exist in the 1860s the way we know it because Dickens asks how the Doctor is a manner of keeping oneself cool.
Is "fan" really short for "fanatic"? I never put that together.
Rose is only nineteen? That's awesome because I'm nineteen! (Well, eighteen the first time I saw this.) Where's my time traveling alien friend?
The Doctor: "Thatta boy, Charlie."
Dickens: "Nobody calls me Charlie."
The Doctor: "The ladies do."
Dickens: "How do you know that?"
Sneed sticks Rose on a table. He suggests that since he did the bishop a favor that he might "do us an exorcism on the cheap!"
Now the dead grandson's moving around, and the Doctor and Dickens barge in despite Gwyneth's inhospitable attitude.
"What the Shakespeare is going on?" HA HA HA HA!
The dead guy's gonna get Rose OH CRAP!
And the grandmother OH CRAP!
And there's something inside the gas pipes.
It's alright, Rose is fine. Dickens still thinks it's all a trick.
The Doctor: "Hi."
Rose: "Hi. Who's your friend?"
The Doctor: "Charles Dickens."
Rose: "...okay."
The ghost things speak through the dead folk then disappear into the gas lamps again.
"First of all you drug me, then you kidnap me, and don't think I didn't feel your hands having a quick ones-y, you dirty old man!" The Doctor just thinks this conversation is funny.
Sneed reveals the house has a reputation for being haunted, but he wasn't concerned until "the stiffs...the, um, the dear departed...started getting restless."
How does Gwyneth know the Doctor likes two sugars in his tea if he's never told her?
There's a rift. A weak point in time and space. A connection between this world and another. The setting for Torchwood. The Doctor thinks it's getting stronger, and the ghost things are getting through.
Dickens is poking around for wires or mechanisms. He still thinks it's fake.
Dickens: "Can it be that I have the world entirely wrong?"
The Doctor: "Not wrong! There's just more to learn."
Dickens: "I've always railed against the fantasists. Oh, I loved an illusion as much as the next man. Reveled in them! But that's exactly what they were: illusions! The real world...was something different. I dedicated myself to that. Injustices. The great social causes. I hoped that I was a force for good. Now you tell me that the real world is a realm of specters and jack-o-lanterns...in which case, have I wasted my brief span here, Doctor? Has it all been for nothing?"
Rose: "How much do you get paid?"
Gwyneth: "Eight pound a year, miss."
Rose: "How much?"
Gwyneth: "I know! I would have been happy with six."
Rose and Gwyneth are bonding over complaints about school and how Gwyneth has a thing for the butcher's boy. She's starting to pick up that Rose doesn't quite fit here.
Gwyneth is comforted about the loss of her parents by the thought that she will see them again someday. She suggests that Rose's father is waiting for her as well.
But how did she know?
Gwyneth: "You're from London. I've seen London in drawings, but never like that. All those people rushing about. Half naked, for shame. And the noise. And the metal boxes racing past. And the birds in the sky, no...no, they're metal as well! Metal birds, with people in them! People are flying! And you, you've flown so far. Further than any of them. The things you've seen...the Darkness...the Big Bad Wolf...!"
That whole scene has a very creepy vibe to it. The way she says "the Darkness" makes me feel like it needs to be capitalized.
Oh, hey, Doctor. How long have you been standing in the doorway listening?
He guesses correctly that Gwynnie's power of Sight has been getting stronger. He says it's because she grew up on top of the Rift. She's part of it. She is "the key."
I know Gwyneth and Gwen Cooper look alike because they are played by the same actress, but I like to think that in the world of these stories the two characters look alike because they are distantly related. It is then interesting to think that Gwen Cooper's life ended up tied to the Rift as well.
They are having a seance. Dickens doesn't wish to participate. The Doctor calls him a humbug. Ha ha.
"Seances? Nothing but luminous tambourines and a squeeze box concealed between the knees." Sounds kind of dirty. I bet Dickens learned that from those women who call him Charlie.
The phrase "squeeze box" always makes me think of that song by The Who.
"Now don't antagonize her. I love a happy medium!" Rose can't believe the Doctor just said that. Neither can I.
Gwyneth makes a connection to the ghost-things who are actually Gelth, beings from across the universe. (Jai guru deva...om...)
They want Gwyneth to form a bridge through the rift.
Their species is endangered. Many were wiped out in the Time War. They used to have a physical form before the War.
"The whole universe convulsed. The Time War raged invisible to lower species but devastating to higher forms." What IS this War?
The Gelth are trapped in a gaseous state. They want to use the bridge (Gwyneth) to enter our world and inhabit the bodies of the dead.
Rose is opposed to this. The Doctor is in favor of it because it might save the Gelth. He also probably feels guilty about the effect the Time War had on the Gelth. (Seriously, what is this Time War all about?)
NOW Dickens believes.
Sneed: "But what did you say, Doctor? Explain it again. What are they?"
The Doctor: "Aliens."
Sneed: "Like foreigners, you mean."
The Doctor: "Pretty foreign, yeah. From up there."
Sneed: "Brecon?"
"Incredible. Ghosts that are not ghosts but beings from another world who can only exist in our realm by inhabiting cadavers." Old Charlie Boy clarifies in case anyone was confused. (Actually, given prior information, I'm not going to call him Charlie anymore.)
Gwyneth decides she wants to help the Gelth. She refers to them as her "angels," which kind of weirds me out. She thinks they were sent to her by her mother on a holy mission. I think this whole thing is sketchy.
The weakest part of the Rift is in the morgue. Of course.
Gwyneth creates a bridge, and the Gelth swarm in through her.
Oh shit. They're scary, and they lied.
Apparently there are a few billion Gelth. The ones who have passed through begin inhabiting the dead bodies.
One of them gets Sneed!
The Gelth-zombie army wants the live people to sacrifice themselves to the Gelth.
Dickens has run away because he's scared. Fair enough.
Rose questions whether or not she can die if she hasn't been born yet. The Doctor explains that time isn't a straight line and that it can be bent.
Dickens has an epiphany about the gas.
The Doctor: "What about me? I saw the fall of Troy! World War Five! I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party! Now I'm gonna die in a dungeon! In Cardiff!"
Dickens is running around doing something to the gas lamps.
"I'm so glad I met you." Because he loves her.
Dickens tells the Doctor to turn up all the gas.
Filling the room with gas will draw the Gelth out of the host bodies.
Gwyneth is disappointed that the Gelth are liars and that they are not angels sent to her.
The Doctor asks Gwyneth to send the Gelth back. She says she can't, but she can hold them there while the others escape. She pulls a box of matches out of her pocket.
Rose and Dickens have escaped. The Doctor realizes that Gwyneth is dead and tells her he's sorry. He runs out.
Gwyneth lights a match.
The Doctor escapes the resulting explosion just in time.
He explains that Gwyneth couldn't be saved, but that she closed the Rift.
When Rose questions how Gwyneth could talk and save them if she was dead, Dickens says, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That's Shakespeare, though, right?
The camera swoops up, and the three characters have a silent, momentary tribute to Gwyneth.
After his experiences this evening, Dickens decides to go home and spend Christmas with his family, since nothing could be more vital.
He wants to incorporate the Gelth into his writing. He wants to call his story "The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals." What's funny is that shortly before watching this I had just heard of Edwin Drood for the first time. It's funny how life sometimes gives you information just before you'll need it.
Rose kisses Dickens on the cheek. "Oh...how modern!" He's all flustered.
"On my soul...Doctor, it's one riddle after another with you. But after all these revelations, there's still one mystery you haven't explained. Answer me this: Who are you?" Hence the title of the show.
Dickens: "But you have such knowledge of future times. I don't wish to impose on you, but I must ask you...my books, Doctor, do they last?"
The Doctor: "Oh, yes!"
Dickens: "For how long?"
The Doctor: "...forever!"
That last part sometimes brings a tear to my eye.
Dickens: "In the box? Both of you?"
The Doctor: "Down, boy!"
It turns out there are no blue elementals in Edwin Drood because Charles Dickens died the next year and never got to finish his story.
Rose feels bad about this because Dickens was so nice, but the Doctor remarks that he was already dead in Rose's time, but they had the opportunity to bring him back to life. They gave him a new outlook on life.
The Doctor thinks Dickens deserves one last surprise....
The Tarids dematerializes, and Dickens walks away laughing to himself.
A passerby wishes him a merry Christmas, and Dickens, still laughing, says to the night, "God bless us, every one!"
The End.
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