Revival Series 1,
Episode 3: The Unquiet Dead
After a long wait, here’s the third episode!
We open in a 1800’s era funeral home, while a young man
mourns his aunt. Suddenly, she wakes up
, and starts on a rampage, knocking the director and the nephew out cold. She leaves the building with a terrifying
yell.
We then find the Doctor and Rose having some sort of issue
on the TARDIS, but it gets cleared up quickly as the doctor decides to go to
1860. Rose asks why, and he’s like: “I
dunno, let’s find out!”
We cut back to the funeral home, where the director calls
his houseclerk to help him find the walking dead woman.
The TARDIS touches down, and before the exit, the Doctor
tells Rose she has to change, seeing as you don’t want to get thrown in jail
for being indecent, now do you? He gives
her crazy directions involving no less than six turns, but she figures it out,
and comes dressed in a very fancy 19th century gown.
Back with the director and houseclerk, we learn that the
houseclerk has an ability: she has some sort of telepathy, and the director,
Mr. Sneed, tells her to use it to find out where the old woman went. Turns out, she wanted to go see a special
reading at the theater of A Christmas Carol, read by none other than…
Charles Dickens! Who
is terrible depressed at this point, since he is old, and has no more ideas, or
some such thing. He sucks it up and goes
on stage anyway, though.
The Doctor starts to walk out, but Rose calls him back. She’s going out first, going to enjoy the
amazingness that is Christmas in 1860.
The go, arm in arm, to explore the new area. Unfortunately, the Doctor realizes they aren’t
exactly where he expected, and are instead in Cardiff in 1869, but Rose doesn’t
care.
We then see Charles Dickens reading his story, and
suddenly! The old woman makes herself
known, and she starts howling like a banshee.
The theater-goers start screaming as well, and the Doctor and Rose are
right outside the door, ready to jump into action. Mr. Sneed and his houseclerk, Gwyneth, are
there as well, and take the woman out, with Rose in hot pursuit. They forcefully take Rose, and the Doctor
figures out that the possession of the dead is make of gas.
He runs out to tell Rose, and sees her being taken by Mr.
Sneed, and commanders Charles Dickens’ carriage to give chase. Dickens jumps in as well, and the Doctor has
a slight fangasm that he’s in with Charles Dickens, but soon they focus on
catching up with Rose.
Who has now ended up unconscious at the funeral home. Mr. Sneed and Gywneth stash Rose with the
undead lady, and are soon interrupted by a loud knock at the door as the Doctor
and Dickens arrive.
They demand to come in, and the Doctor notices something
funny with the gas, all while Rose is trapped in the room with two undead,
since the woman managed to kill her nephew on her first rampage. She freaks out and starts screaming, alerting
the Doctor to her whereabouts.
In a close call, the Doctor gets Rose out just in time, and
attempts to figure out what the possessors want by, of all novel things, asking
them. Turns out ‘we’re dying, the rift
is closing!’ and poof, they’re gone.
Next we see, Rose is mighty pissed at being drugged and left
for dead with the undead people. Mr.
Sneed starts explaining that the house had a reputation for being haunted, but
they hadn’t seen anything until three months before. Gywneth shows off her telepathic abilities a
bit, before Dickens goes off in an unbelieving rant, and goes to explore more
to figure out what is going on. The
Doctor follows, and tries to convince him that it’s real.
Cut to the washroom, where Rose goes on all feminist on
Gwyneth, and tries to convince her that she should want more for her life. Gywneth then gets all telepathy on Rose, and
freaks her out just a bit with Dad talk, and the whole coming a long way, and
people running half naked around London.
Gwyneht freak herself out too, and outs herself to Rose, while the
Doctor listens in the door. The Doctor
isn’t surprised, and tells her she’s the key, and that they are going to have a
séance.
Dickens is still being all disbelieving, but when Gywneth
calls out to the sprits, they appear, and everyone is astonished when a light
being pops up behind Gywneth, asking for pity for the Gelf. They want the rift to be opened, and tell the
group that they lost their physical form due to the Time War, which strikes the
Doctor the hardest. He is insistent that
Gwyneth open the rift, and the dead bodies in the basement be allowed to be
used as hosts.
Rose is not impressed, and tries to convince the Doctor that
it’s not right, but he is insistent some more, even as Gwyneth faints
away. Rose won’t let Gwyneth fight the
Doctor’s war, but Gwyneth wants a say.
She’s not impressed that Rose thinks she’s stupid(yay telepathy!), and
wants to help her ‘angels.’
The group make their way to the morgue, were the majority of
the sightings were. Rose knows that the
Gelf weren’t walking around in 1869, but the Doctor tells her time is always in
flux. Gwyneth opens the gateway, and
tons of the Gelf come streaming through her now glowing mouth.
The Doctor asks about their numbers, and that’s when things
go sideways. The Gelf turns red and
demonic, and the Doctor concedes something may have gone wrong. They lock themselves in a room, and get ready
to die. Rose is freaking out, saying
that she can’t die, she’s not even been born yet. The Doctor tells her that time isn’t a
straight line, it can twist around in on itself. They steel themselves for the end, but then
Dickens comes back from his little ‘run away’ jaunt realizing that the
creatures are gas, and if they fill the room with gas, it’ll draw them out of
the bodies, so they do that.
The Doctor gets Gwyneth to close the rift, but she can’t
send them back. She can hold them,
though, and they decide to blow up the room.
The Doctor shoos Rose and Dickens, and goes to get Gywneth, but when he
takes her hand, he decides not to. She
lights the match, and whole place goes up.
The Doctor makes it out with Rose and Dickens, and tells
Rose that Gywneth had been dead for probably the entirety of her rift
opening.
The Doctor and Rose then take their leave, with a newly
invigorated Dickens talking about how he’s going to tell the world the story of
the other worlds. He asks the Doctor if
his books last, and the Doctor assures him they do, forever.
The get in the TARDIS, and Rose wonders about changing
history, but the Doctor tells her that Dickens dies next year, so nothing
gained or lost, and we end with a ‘God
bless us, every one.’
This was a fun episode.
The ‘ghosts’ were sufficiently creepy, though the Gelf were not as
creepy, they made me laugh more than be freaked out.
It was interesting to me how Rose was right about letting
the Gelf use the bodies, but not for the reason she stated. She’s still the strong woman we met in the
first episode, but her 19 year old self shines through in interesting places,
like when they were leaving the TARDIS to start the episode.
The Doctor hasn’t changed much yet, though he does seem to
really care for Rose. Their dynamic is
fun, and I hope it stays that way through the season.
All in all, a good episode.
The effects were strong, the philosophical ideas were not too
overwrought, and the story was serious, but not so serious that there was no
fun at all.
As always, feel free to comment below, but no spoilers,
please!
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