Television Review: "The Unquiet Dead" sees the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Rose Tyler, and their good friend Charles Dickens take on spooky, smoky, zombie phantasms on Christmas Eve in 1869. I'm not saying Doctor Who is anything more than fun escapist fare, as with myriad other fandoms (to each their own). I do, however, appreciate the show's little efforts to take it one step better, as with the episodes recruiting famous English writers such as Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare, and here, Dickens. We first see him in "The Unquiet Dead" backstage, depressed at spending his Christmas Eve traveling on a reading tour. Dickens is brilliantly personified by Simon Callow (perhaps best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral). Callow's Dickens will be stuck in my head forever whenever I hear the name. Although at first put off by his brash manner, Dickens quickly warms to the Doctor's unfeigned enthusiasm for and flattery of his work. The plot centers around a funeral parlor which aliens (this is Doctor Who, after all) are using as a portal to enter our world through the "restless dear departed." A seance (Dickens, a known debunker of psychic phenomena, is at first skeptical) is used to contact the aliens. Initially, it seems that all will be resolved well and happily, but soon all goes bonkers (this is Doctor Who, after all). Of course Dickens, genius that he is, plays a key role in addressing the alien menace (and quotes Shakespeare). "The Unquiet Dead" is a more than usually excellent episode -- with a healthy dose of in-jokes and literary references for the initiated. Extra added bonus: the missing ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is revealed. 🐢
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