1.3: The Unquiet Dead
Synopsis: In Victorian Cardiff, dead bodies are reanimating, zombie-like, and wandering away from the funeral home. Charles Dickens gives a reading of his new book, A Christmas Carol, in the middle of which, one of the lost corpses appears. Her head is encircled by swirling light, and she causes utter chaos before separating from the light source and falling dead once more. Rose and the Doctor jump into the fray, Rose is kidnapped by the undertaker, Sneed, and the Doctor surmises that the spirit is made of gas.
The Doctor and Dickens chase Sneed back to the funeral home, and he hears the spirits travelling via the gas in the walls. Meanwhile, Sneed's assitant, Gwyneth, is displaying stronger and stronger psychic abilities. The Doctor points out that a rift has widened between "this place and another," and organises a seance. Through Gwyneth, the "spirits," the Gelth, with child-like voices, ask the Doctor to help give them physical form by taking Gwyneth to the rift, to "make the bridge" so that they can live in the reanimated bodies in the long-term.
In the morgue, Gwyneth acts as medium and the Gelth come into our world and reveal themselves as evil, vicious beings set upon killing the human race in order to give themselves form. As the Doctor and Rose become cornered in the morgue, Dickens runs about turning off gas feeds to everywhere except the morgue. He floods the room with gas, sucking the Gelth out of the bodies. Gwyneth is unable to send them back to where they came from, but she claims she can "hold them." She strikes a match and the whole building goes up, closing the rift, binding the Gelth.
Golden Comic Moment: In the coach, chasing down the undertaker who has kidnapped Rose, the Doctor has a gushing fanboy moment with Charles Dickens. Until this point, Dickens is highly dismayed to have a strange man in his coach, but after listing of all of Dickens' work that he's loved, the Doctor exclaims, "You're a genius!" Dickens' attitude toward the Doctor changes by one-hundred-eighty degrees, and he then agrees to jump in with both feet, and help find Rose.
Golden Fangirl Moment: Can there really be any other? The moment when the Doctor sees Rose dressed for the Victorian age and his voice raises half an octave as he blurts out, "Blimey, you look beautiful!" Of course, he covers his tracks with "considering that you're human." But his initial reaction, as we all know, is the genuine one, it speaks both to the innocence of their early relationship and the evolving romance, such as it is. And it is Golden because Rose's later relationship with the Tenth Doctor is far too self-conscious to allow for such an honest moment.
Cringeworthy Moment: When the Doctor and Dickens track down Sneed, and Gwyneth comes to the door, Dickens is exceptionally rude. She claims the undertaker's services are closed for the day, to which Dickens replies, "Nonsense! Since when does an undertaker keep office hours? The dead don't die on schedule. I demand to see your master!" When she tells him, quite reasonably, that Sneed is not in, he retorts nastily, "Don't lie to me, child! Summon him at once!" If nothing else, his rudeness begs the question, why in the name of Rassilon does the Doctor just stand there and let the man speak to a mousy, frightened girl in such a way?
Golden Moment: When the Doctor and Rose become cornered in the morgue by the Gelth, he and Rose stand behind a grate and contemplate their dilemma. Numerous revelations come to light, tied in a neat little package in the form of the Doctor and Rose, in a tight spot, in mortal peril. The Doctor, in anger, yells at the Gelth, "I trusted you! I pitied you!" This is the first time we have seen the Doctor screw up in the new series, and it's probably the first time that Rose consciously realises he's fallible. In this moment, he also explains to Rose that she can be born in the 20th century and die in the 19th, and her face shows visible signs of, as they say, trying to wrap her head around it. Time paradoxes, history changing, the future changing - it's all right there. And finally, of course, the Doctor tells Rose emphatically, "I'm so glad I met you," and gives her a sincerely grateful, dazzling smile.
The Doctor makes mistakes. Timey is wimey. The Doctor may or may not love Rose already. And all they have to do is get locked in a cage for a few minutes. Hunh.
Why I Beg To Differ: DWM chose the moment when the Gelth come forth at the seance, showing themselves in a dazzling display of special effects, and begin speaking with the voices of children. It is a spectacular example of how the new series differs from the classic series. Simply put: computer animation. Voila. I disagree with this choice because it is not revealing (except perhaps plot-wise), it is not particulaly interesting in retrospect and it holds no direct implications for the future. For that, we look to the Doctor and Rose facing down death together.
The Doctor and Dickens chase Sneed back to the funeral home, and he hears the spirits travelling via the gas in the walls. Meanwhile, Sneed's assitant, Gwyneth, is displaying stronger and stronger psychic abilities. The Doctor points out that a rift has widened between "this place and another," and organises a seance. Through Gwyneth, the "spirits," the Gelth, with child-like voices, ask the Doctor to help give them physical form by taking Gwyneth to the rift, to "make the bridge" so that they can live in the reanimated bodies in the long-term.
In the morgue, Gwyneth acts as medium and the Gelth come into our world and reveal themselves as evil, vicious beings set upon killing the human race in order to give themselves form. As the Doctor and Rose become cornered in the morgue, Dickens runs about turning off gas feeds to everywhere except the morgue. He floods the room with gas, sucking the Gelth out of the bodies. Gwyneth is unable to send them back to where they came from, but she claims she can "hold them." She strikes a match and the whole building goes up, closing the rift, binding the Gelth.
Golden Comic Moment: In the coach, chasing down the undertaker who has kidnapped Rose, the Doctor has a gushing fanboy moment with Charles Dickens. Until this point, Dickens is highly dismayed to have a strange man in his coach, but after listing of all of Dickens' work that he's loved, the Doctor exclaims, "You're a genius!" Dickens' attitude toward the Doctor changes by one-hundred-eighty degrees, and he then agrees to jump in with both feet, and help find Rose.
Golden Fangirl Moment: Can there really be any other? The moment when the Doctor sees Rose dressed for the Victorian age and his voice raises half an octave as he blurts out, "Blimey, you look beautiful!" Of course, he covers his tracks with "considering that you're human." But his initial reaction, as we all know, is the genuine one, it speaks both to the innocence of their early relationship and the evolving romance, such as it is. And it is Golden because Rose's later relationship with the Tenth Doctor is far too self-conscious to allow for such an honest moment.
Cringeworthy Moment: When the Doctor and Dickens track down Sneed, and Gwyneth comes to the door, Dickens is exceptionally rude. She claims the undertaker's services are closed for the day, to which Dickens replies, "Nonsense! Since when does an undertaker keep office hours? The dead don't die on schedule. I demand to see your master!" When she tells him, quite reasonably, that Sneed is not in, he retorts nastily, "Don't lie to me, child! Summon him at once!" If nothing else, his rudeness begs the question, why in the name of Rassilon does the Doctor just stand there and let the man speak to a mousy, frightened girl in such a way?
Golden Moment: When the Doctor and Rose become cornered in the morgue by the Gelth, he and Rose stand behind a grate and contemplate their dilemma. Numerous revelations come to light, tied in a neat little package in the form of the Doctor and Rose, in a tight spot, in mortal peril. The Doctor, in anger, yells at the Gelth, "I trusted you! I pitied you!" This is the first time we have seen the Doctor screw up in the new series, and it's probably the first time that Rose consciously realises he's fallible. In this moment, he also explains to Rose that she can be born in the 20th century and die in the 19th, and her face shows visible signs of, as they say, trying to wrap her head around it. Time paradoxes, history changing, the future changing - it's all right there. And finally, of course, the Doctor tells Rose emphatically, "I'm so glad I met you," and gives her a sincerely grateful, dazzling smile.
The Doctor makes mistakes. Timey is wimey. The Doctor may or may not love Rose already. And all they have to do is get locked in a cage for a few minutes. Hunh.
Why I Beg To Differ: DWM chose the moment when the Gelth come forth at the seance, showing themselves in a dazzling display of special effects, and begin speaking with the voices of children. It is a spectacular example of how the new series differs from the classic series. Simply put: computer animation. Voila. I disagree with this choice because it is not revealing (except perhaps plot-wise), it is not particulaly interesting in retrospect and it holds no direct implications for the future. For that, we look to the Doctor and Rose facing down death together.