Doctor Who: 1x03 "The Unquiet Dead

Welcome to the third episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE THREE: “THE UNQUIET DEAD”

A fun little ghost story romp into the past with Charles Dickens.  Unfortunately the twist at the end is how idiotic everyone but Rose was.

Doctor Who: 1x03: “The Unquiet Dead” Written by Mark Gatiss

The Summary:

Meaning to land in 1860 in Naples, the Doctor takes Rose to Cardiff, 1869.  There, a funeral home director, Mr. Sneed, and his maid, Gwyneth, are dealing with the corpses rising, attacking people, and taking their bodies on joy rides.  Meanwhile, Charles Dickens is performing A Christmas Carol.  The latest zombie, Mrs. Peace, ends up in his audience, where the Doctor, Rose, Mr. Sneed, and Gwyneth all end up to fix whatever’s wrong.  When Rose confronts Gwyneth about stuffing an old woman into the hearse, Mr. Sneed kidnaps her.  The Doctor enlists Charles Dickens’s help in saving Rose.  When Rose wakes up, she is nearly killed by two zombies and narrowly escapes thanks to the Doctor.  While Charles Dickens complains the entire that what he’s seeing isn’t possible, the Doctor tries to figure out how to stop what’s happening.  After they figure out Gwyneth is psychic, he has her host a séance.  The zombies turn out to be created by an alien called the Gelth possessing them; the Gelth claim to be near extinction victims of the Time War and ask for the Doctor’s help in giving them dead bodies to possess permanently.  Despite the séance company including a genre savvy genius, the genre savvy genius, a man whose entire income is dependent on dead people staying dead, and a very religious woman who thought this was all unholy witchcraft until two seconds ago, and despite the first thing the Gelth have done once they get into a body is (attempting) to murder somebody, only Rose protests that this might not be a good plan.  The Doctor ignores Rose’s protests and has Gwyneth open the rift in time and space so that the Gelth could come through.  Surprisingly-not-surprisingly, the Gelth are actually not anywhere close to extinction and want to kill everyone in the world, starting with the Doctor and Rose, in order to take over.  Charles Dickens comes up with the idea to blow them all up at the last second and Gwyneth, who died a bit earlier, does it.  This episode is the second instance of the Bad Wolf meme and a more overt set-up for “Father’s Day.”

The Women:

Rose, Gwyneth           

The Conversations:

1. Rose and Gwyneth:  Rose confronts Gwyneth about stuffing Mrs Peace into the hearse.  Gwyneth tries to reassure Rose that everything’s fine before Mr. Sneed interrupts them to knock-out and kidnap Rose.  The conversation can barely be considered one, so the rating: 1

2. Rose and Gwyneth:  Rose and Gwyneth end up in the kitchen while the Doctor and Charles Dickens investigate the zombies.  While the essence of their conversation is comparing their lives and pushing forward the idea that Gwenyth is psychic as well as presenting the Bad Wolf meme again, the vehicles for their conversation are men – Mr. Sneed, the Doctor, Rose’s father, the butcher boy Gwyneth has a crush on.  The rating: 0.5

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:

“You would say that, miss, because that’s very clear inside your head, that you think I’m stupid … It’s true though.  Things might be different where you’re from, but here and now I know my own mind, and the angels need me.” – Gwyneth (to Rose)

Feeling empowered for possibly the first time, Gwyneth delivers this awesome line to Rose who is doing the same thing she always hates when it’s done to her – talking about Gwyneth like she isn’t there and has no say.  I wish this had more of a pay-off because Rose is, of course and really rather obviously, right, and Gwyneth really does not understand at all.

The Tally:

Episode 1x03 Total: 1.5

Series 1 Total: 8

9^th Doctor Total: 8

Rose as Companion Total: 8

Russell T Davis Era Total: 8

For Further Discussion:  Facts vs. Faith

I’ve said before that I think Rose’s biggest strength is her ability to quickly analyze all the facts she’s given and come to a usually correct idea about what’s going on.  This is often brushed off as her having a “feeling” about something, an annoyingly sexist concept that men have ideas and women have feelings, and it’s definitely done so in this episode.  Rose takes all her givens about zombies and how to treat the dead and analyzes that along with the Gelth’s attempted murder of her and figures out that this is not a great plan.  Of course, the Doctor doesn’t listen.

But I think the real battle of wills in this episode is between Rose and Gwyneth.  Rose’s greatest weakness is self-righteousness, and her assuredly in her own cleverness has only grown since she’s begun traveling.  Gwyneth, on the other hand, is all compassion and selflessness and faith in the goodness of others.  And Gwyneth delivers a great blow at Rose’s self-righteousness that ultimately… doesn’t pay off at all.  The audience can’t even entertain the idea that Gwyneth could be right, the set-up for the Gelth being not just out for their own self-interest but full on evil was way too obvious.

What really bothers me about this isn’t that one character was wrong; it’s that they set up Gwyneth’s downfall as being symptomatic of a lack of education and belief in God.  It’s not just the “educated” who are right, and what could have been a wonderfully feminist discussion ends up being rather classist.