Dr who ep 3

[burntcopper]

This week, Unquiet Dead. Zombies! In Victorian Cardiff! With Dickens!

It was a very fabulous episode. Great performances, Simon Callow hamming it up something terrible as Dickens, Rose trying to come to terms with all this insanity as well as being clear-headed, but also understandably peeved at being chloroformed and locked in a room with a dead body that zombified - and yelling whilst backing the undertaker into the corner for doing this once she got out. Then her trying to persuade Gwyneth out of doing anything that could endanger her, and seeing her societal norms bashing up against everyone else's. The bodies bit, and the pay, and so on.

'Follow that hearse!'
'Excuse me, this is my cab.'
'Well get in then.'

Loved the bits where the Doctor fanboyed Dickens, then explained what 'fan' meant, and stroked his ego.

Gwyneth the psychic maid was very cool, great performance. Loved loved loved the fact that she had this religious certainty that couldn't be shaken. Then came that bit where they mentioned the Time War, and you could see the Doctor flinch about it and it renewing his decision to let them have the bodies (though he'd already obviously decided it). But that bit where they turned evil... I'd been half suspecting it as a twinge (it happens a *lot* in british sci-fi and sci-fi comics) eeep. And then the bit where the Doctor checks Gwyneth's neck and suddenly realises she's been dead for the last few minutes. Meep.

Effects damn cool, as were last week's, so I'm actually suspecting that the crappy wheelie bin and Nestine consciousness were done on purpose to give people something to pout about. Also loved the bits of logic - I thought when Dickens was turning on all the gas it was so that he could set them on fire, but making the air so thick with gas so they'd actually disperse out of the bodies? Go Dickens. But meep, the matches. Definitely a stomach-hitter. Russell Davies *likes* these bits. And so on top of his form, and the jokes are fucking class.

'What the Shakespeare is going on?'

ETA : The undertaker admitting that the rumours and chills and voices were good for business for an undertakers'. Hee!

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Gwyneth! I loved her.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

The way you thought she was just a naive servant girl, then the cannyness and 'I'd have been happy with six', and the psychic, and the angels, and admitting she'd been to a lot of spiritualists, not to mention being a bit shocked by Rose's forwardness and the determination and the realisation and horror and then the fatalism and determination at the end with the matches... :hugs Gwyneth:

Send Aziraphale to be nice to her while he's following Dickens around on his reading tour. you know you want to.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I fell asleep and missed it. And it looked so cool in the trailer with the Victorian-ness and the ... stuff. *cries*

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Hie yourself to btefnet.com, darling, and bittorrent it.

[(Anonymous)]

Russell Davies *likes* these bits. And so on top of his form, and the jokes are fucking class.

Except that this episode was written by Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen, which explains the slightly more darker humour i think.

[celievamp.livejournal.com]

I thought it had that old 'watch from behind the sofa' quality that I used to love so much. If I'd been 8 again instead of 41 that's probably what I would have done. Alas, I'm a big girl now and a cushion had to suffice.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

I'm still surprised that the bit with the ghosts and Gelf turning nasty was actually scary.

[soulstar.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I thought the Gelf (sp?) brought up the Time War because they had picked up, via Gwyneth's psychic talent, that it was his 'soft spot'. That did seem to be what decided him to me, and they didn't mention it until they really connected with Gwyneth in the seance. I reckon it was sneaky manipulation.

And yes - everything else you said! :-)

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

icon! heee!