Doctor Who (2005) 1-03: The Unquiet Dead (Quick Review)

Episode:

699

|

Serial:

159

|

Writer:

Mark Gatiss

|

Director:

Euros Lyn

|

Air Date:

09-Apr-2005

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the 20th anniversary... of the third episode of the 2005 Doctor Who revival. The season had started airing a couple of weeks earlier with Rose, but I've already reviewed that one. I've also reviewed episode 2, The End of the World. But I haven't reviewed this one, so this is the story I'm writing about to celebrate 20 years of (additional) Doctor Who.

The first season of the revival had 13 episodes and 8 of them were written by showrunner Russell T Davies, so there wasn't much room for other writers to come in and make their mark, especially seeing as Davies had planned the season out in advance and was rewriting people's scripts. But there were other people who helped define this new Doctor Who, and one of them was Mark Gatiss. The guy kept coming back as a writer (and an actor) until season 10, and this was his first story.

That title, The Unquiet Dead, feels very classic Doctor Who to me, like there must be half a dozen serials that end in 'Dead'. There aren't though, not even one. There's The Seeds of Death, The Ambassadors of Death, The Green Death, The Robots of Death and City of Death, but if it's 'Dead' you're after, you have to go to the RTD era.

Wow, that is a surprisingly good collection of serials I just listed, each one (arguably) better than the last. I can say that now because I've watched all (existing) episodes of classic Who. I still haven't seen all of modern Who though, and Unquiet Dead was one of the ones I missed, so this was actually written after my very first viewing. I'd been spoiled on what happened though. Oh, that reminds me...

This is the kind of review that's full of SPOILERS.

Doctor Who (2005) 9-09: Sleep No More

Episode:

822

|

Serial:

259

|

Writer:

Mark Gatiss

|

Air Date:

14-Nov-2015

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm going through the first genuinely stand-alone episode in Doctor Who series 9: Sleep No More.

This one was written by Mark Gatiss, whose stories tend to gather around the lower half of episode rankings, but the sites I checked couldn't even decide if The Unquiet Dead is one of his worst or his absolute best so what do they know? Personally I can't say where I'd rank that as I haven't seen the episode, but I liked Robot of Sherwood and Cold War well enough to be hopeful for this one.

Another fact about this episode is that it was put together by a director and it stars actors, but they're trying to downplay that due to it's 'found footage' horror gimmick. The first rule of found footage is to avoid starting your video with a list of the people playing the roles as it kind of gives away that it's fictional, so this is the only episode in 52 years of Doctor Who to skip the opening titles and jump right into the story! Probably. I haven't personally checked all 822 preceding episodes.

The second rule of found footage is that shaky-cam makes for crappy screencaps, so I'll apologise for that now.

My writing will contain SPOILERS for the entire episode and maybe earlier ones too, but I'll give away nothing of what is to come after it.