The hoo-ha has begun to simmer down, and the dust is beginning to settle, thank God. I've been admitted into hospital recently, with something nasty that made me go a horrible shade of yellow. I was naturally panicked and distraught. How bad was this thing, this thing in my body that made me go this funny colour? Then the doctors in their natty little trousers suits told me I was to stay for a while longer. The discharge date began to run away with itself, as though it hated the thought of my freedom as my bodily functions continued to do their own impression of the colours of the rainbow. To be honest, I was petrified. The discharge date was edging ever closer to March 26th. Someone up there hated me - it was obvious. Nine years waiting, hoping, for new Who, and here I was banged up in hospital with the dreaded lergy ... and yet again would miss that blasted TARDIS.

Just as I was thinking of bribing Gloria the nurse, they let me go. A whole 24 hours before the start of Rose. Not only that, they gave me a sick note. I'm sure it said something about my illness in there somewhere, but all I saw was ROSE, THE END OF THE WORLD, THE UNQUIET DEAD and ALIENS OF LONDON. I would not have to go to work on Saturday night for a whole month. Think about it. Nine years waiting for a month off work to watch the new series. Someone up there is laughing their head off at this sad little man.

This week, I returned the promise to come see my parents in the wilds of Yorkshire at the same time as my brother and his fiancee. We all ate dinner (lasagne), then as usual, sat in front of the television to watch Doctor Who. My Brother and Jo sat on the sofa together with a half-wry smile and chuckled at a couple of the Doctor's jokes, Mum went upstairs as she's never been one for being scared, and I was comedy-glaring everyone who made the slightest of noise. Bloody Hell. This was not Christmas 1869. This was Christmas 2005, surely? I thought afterwards, the ten year old inside me still alive with the ghostly Gelth. My family, altogether, with Doctor Who on the telly. That bloody illness was worth it, just for this 45 minutes of sheer happiness, enthralled in a good old Victorian ghost story Who-style. And what a story. I've heard criticism that these episodes are too slight, but like Charles Dickens may have said, a good story is a good story, regardless. Had this been made in the 70s instead of Talons of Weng-Chiang, it would have been elongated to maybe six episodes with more chases, a secret lair and a few more murders thrown in. But this is the present day, and television story-telling may have changed, but it still serves the production teams who know the tools of their trade, and all involved with The Unquiet Dead so obviously did. Old British traditions like the telling of short ghost stories are alive and well, and still entertaining families, over a hundred years after they came to popular appeal.

Here we have the risen dead, a cadaver animated by ghostly apparitions who strangles her mourning relative, bursts out of her coffin and takes to the streets. Hot on her heels are the undertaker and his servant with the second sight, and not long after, a mysterious stranger and a girl from far, far away. As she wreaks havoc at Charles Dickens' reading and the crowd flee in terror, Rose is kidnapped as all around them, horses pull carraiges through the shadows as the snow falls on gas-lit streets. The whole desperate situation culminates in a seance, then our heroes being trapped in the morgue by the unquiet dead as their time runs out. This, my friends, is pure Doctor Who. We're all fans here, lets skip past the interesting culture now, much of the plot (as it will already be seared onto your brains like a pattern in a circuit board), and the acting of third zombie but one. Never before has this reviewer been constantly on edge with Who moment after Who moment. Basque with me for a while. The corpse rising from the coffin and strangling Redpath. Same manky old woman lumbering towards the screen, only shutting her mouth so we can catch the full evil-ness of her eyes. The Doctor standing away from the main conversations, interjecting only when he could turn everything on its head. The Doctor suddenly appearing in a doorway - was he always there? The conversation with Dickens in the cab. Rose being kidnapped. Allusions to the real nature of the Doctor during a seance to raise aliens. The time travelers trapped in a morgue full of zombies. Saying farewell to Dickens, and saying something that perhaps shouldn't be said. Charles Dickens laughing out loud at the very end.

Yes my dears, Christmas came early this year. One sad little man is very, very happy indeed. And still has Aliens of London to come.

After two fairly frenetic episodes with little or no time afforded to characterization and depth of plot Mark Gatiss has provided a pacy yet in-depth victorian ghost story certainly on a par with the creepiness of Ghost Light, or the Talons of Weng Chiang.

Fresh from their ordeal in the far flung future (after a brief stop for chips) The Doctor offers Rose a journey into history. Plucking a date from the air The Doctor proceeds to program the TARDIS back to Naples 1860 for the simple reason that he wants to see what happened then. Throwing Rose straight into the action of piloting the TARDIS (you wonder how he coped before meeting her) they materialise on snowy streets. 

As usual the TARDIS is a little wide of the mark...i guess Rose needs some extra TARDIS tuition. Snow not being prevalent in Italy The Doctor examines a newspaper to discover that in fact they have arrived not in 1860 but 1869. To top it all they aren't in Naples but Cardiff, a fact the Doctor seems to resent. 

Of course all is not well, it wouldn't be much of an adventure series if it was and the cold opening is an ample replacement for the show's previous famous cliffhangers. The re-animated dead are genuinely creepy despite not being overly gory. And the gas creatures which inhabit them have a wonderful victorian parlour game look to them. Ok the CG doesn't really gel with the live action but i think a healthy suspension of disbelief can be afforded in this case as straight from the appearance of the re-animated grandmother at Charles Dickins story telling the viewer becomes so entranced with the fate of all characters that any niggles are chiefly redundant.

As with some of the better Doctor Who stories there is a relatively small cast. It benefits from being a later episode as we are now familiar with the Doctor and Rose and the script can concentrate on supporting characters. 

The supporting cast are actually treated as main characters rather than window dressing which "The End Of The World" and "Rose" seemed to fail on. One certainly feels more empathy with Gwyneth when she sacrifices herself for the rest of the world than we do for Jabe. Perhaps this is because she is saving the human race rather than a selection of overly rich aliens, but it seems more likely that the viewer is more sympathetic to a character who influences the plot rather than fills out a crowd scene.

The Unquiet Dead is certainly the best Doctor Who story i have seen for a long time, although i still have a few reservations about the 45 minute running time. While american shows have succeeded in this format i believe that Doctor Who set itself aside from other Science Fiction programmes by taking time over situations. Setting up plots and characters and not relying on a solution to present itself a mere five minutes from the end. Maybe the show would benefit from an hour long running time similar to other BBC Drama serials.

A final comment the Time War arc is shaping up pretty well having been alluded to in two episodes and introduced in the previous but i hope that it will not be the defining feature of all the Doctor and Rose's adventures as it is a bit hard to swallow that every new (or old) race they meet has been affected in such a way.

Greedily gurning, the Dr rushes in where humans fear to tread,

Recklessly indulging his ‘fix' to confront aliens-this time the dead!

Ecstatically emphatic to enigmatically elucidate, and educate

All of HIS opinion, ignoring Rose's advice to seal a maid's fate.

Tut Tut TimeLord! Your character is written to complicate??

Etheral effects nicely impressed on the Victorian set, fittingly dressed.

Xtras a plenty ensured a busy Cardiff reality, ripe for gaseus stiffs compressed.

Peculiar ‘hammy' tongue lolling out of mouth zombies sometimes looked wrong

Effecting occasional ‘corny' cadavers which weakened make-up most strong.

Controlling editing of varying blue and white faces needed on the dead throng.

Tightly and effectively written

Analysing Dickens' life with Christmas Carol juxtaposition. 

That, like Ebenezer, he found meaning and deliverance from his melancholy.

Immediately to my mind the JOURNEYING THEME of life's folly

Ongoing, runs like myriad streams; Dickens', Roses, the Doctors too, 

Nicely meandering and full of refreshing promise the whole

Series through!

We've seen the Ninth Doctor in a contemporary setting, and we've seen him in a futuristic one. So how does he fare in the past?

Rather well, actually.

The BBC have always known how to pull off period settings with considerable style, and The Unquiet Dead is certainly no exception. It looks absolutely gorgeous. However, Doctor Who has never been about cosmetics – it's about tight scripts and scary monsters, and this episode has both. The story is simple enough to be told in a half hour episode, but this allows for a more sedate pace, and a chance to build atmosphere and character. There is a huge two hander scene between Gwyneth and Rose in the middle of the episode, which fleshes out both characters enormously, whilst still being relevant to the plot and the ongoing arc story. It's beautifully played by the two actresses involved, and in a delightful reversal from The End Of The World, Rose is the cause, not the victim, of culture shock with her awareness of the future.

The Doctor also has some wonderful scenes, where he not only accepts the alien Gelth at face value, but extends the hand of friendship to them. His solution to their plight is sickening for Rose, and makes us stop to think about his moral values. Clearly this Doctor sees the big picture far more clearly than we or Rose do, and it's a superbly written scene which emphasises his alien-ness so effectively, without ever feeling forced.

The Gelth themselves are a simple, yet effective creation. The CGI isn't awful (for the second episode in a row) and the walking dead would give nightmares to most adults, never mind children. The scene where the zombies trap our heroes in the cellar is easily the biggest behind-the-sofa moment of the series so far. Doctor Who has become genuinely creepy for the first time since Androzani.

The biggest delight for me, though, was Charles Dickens. Simon Callow effortlessly justifies his status as one of the top British actors of the day, and stands head and shoulders above the rest of the (excellent) guest cast. His rapport with The Doctor is a delight to behold, and his scenes in the carriage with his number one fan made me smile from ear to ear. Dickens gets all the best lines, too, my personal favourite being “What the Shakespeare…”. 

If the rest of the series can maintain the incredibly high standard of this episode, I fear I'm going to run out of superlatives by the end of April. I don't award 10/10 lightly, but this is the second time in as many episodes I find myself doing so.

Having been subjected to intense and prolonged mockery from my wife before March 26th about how useless Doctor Who is and how pathetic I am for being excited about it, the tables have now turned to an almost paranormal degree. There was hardly a squeak out of her for the entire 45 minutes of 'Rose', and we have both now been forced to agree that 'The Unquiet Dead' is the best thing we've seen on TV for a long, long time.

As other reviewers have pointed out: malfunctioning TARDIS, spooky Victorian setting, duplicitous aliens, famous historical figure, frights and atmosphere. In a sense it WAS Who-by-numbers -- but I think older fans needed a dose of that, and this was the right point in the series to do it.

I appreciate RTD's attempts to pep up the Doctor, but I think he's gone too far, and I think Eccleston went too far in the opening episodes. Mark Gatiss's script, on the other hand, was both new enough and Who enough for Chris finally to become the Doctor, 100%. For the first time, I'm actually sad that he's leaving rather than just a little miffed. Here he was occasionally manic, but also grave, with that sense of unbreakable moral fibre that marked the best of the Tom Baker era.

The Ninth Doctor's morality, though, hides something deeper: guilt. Others have already noted that earlier Doctors wouldn't have fallen for the Gelph's deception, but the present incumbent clearly feels he has reparations to make for something (he almost got clobbered by the Nestence Consciousness for the same reason). Here his mistake results in several deaths. This is serious stuff for Doctor Who and I look forward to further repercussions as the series progresses. I also like the idea of alien incursions possibly having been CAUSED to some extent by the Doctor's actions. There's a depth to that backstory that balances the brevity of the individual storylines. They shouldn't get too bogged down in 'continuity' -- that's been the death of many a decent show (the X-Files springs to mind).

I can hardly fault the production of 'The Unquiet Dead'. The CGI was perfect: slightly unreal, echoing all those old fake 'ectoplasm' photos. You knew the Gelph's betrayal was coming, and you knew pretty well how it would look (after Gwyneth had described them as 'angels'), but it still worked for me. Suspense is scarier than mere shock, as everyone from Hitchcock to Val Lewton knew. The BBC's ability to recreate Victorian Britain is a given, but here they excelled themselves with glowing, cinematic photography.

All the performances were superb. Piper is a constant surprise and delight. She is a natural 'reactor' -- first requirement for Doctor's companion -- but is increasing proactive as the series progresses. The girlt-chat with Gwyneth (Eve Myles) was magnificent, taking numerous unexpected turns. Top marks to Gatiss for taking so much time over it in a 45-minute story. Myles was captivating and moving, taking uncalled-for trouble over a 'genre' show -- which was not always the case in the old days, when top actors often saw Doctor Who as a chance to camp it up. Also resisting camp heroically was Simon Callow, revelling in a deeper, darker Dickens. There will be those who think his performance as hackneyed as Dickens's own tired stage act at the start of 'The Unquiet Dead'; they should watch it again.

But congratulations must go to Ecclestone finally, who after all has the hardest role of all. If we like to think of the Doctor as intelligent, brave, infuriating, unpredictable, occasionally getting it wrong and basically being the most human alien imaginable, then he IS the Doctor. For now.

So, another 45 minutes of rapt viewing. Not perfect, but I think you'll find the classic series wasn't either. So good it made me wish I had kids!

I'd been enjoying the new series so far but this episode broke the trend. 

Firstly, can I point out something for the benefit of all would-be sci-fi writers? 99.99999% of all history involves no famous people whatsoever. The Charles Dickens character added nothing to this episode and using a historical figure is a lazy plot device which allows the writer to forego establishing a character the audience can connect with. It also stretches credibility that Dickens just happens to be in the same place and time that the TARDIS accidentally materialises. The scene where the Doctor tells Dickens how great he is was excruciating and had no sense of reality. Frankly, hardly anybody in literary circles cares about Dickens now and it's hard to believe that anyone will in another thousand years, so the fact that the Doctor has even heard of him shows appalling cultural bias. Britain is not the centre of the universe. 

The special effects were lovely to look at, but it felt as if the plot had been designed specifically to let the BBC FX department show off. Special effects are not the point of a series, they are window dressing. And even at Ј1 million an episode, the BBC is not Lucas Film and any special effects done on a licence budget are always going to come off as cheap. 

This was the second episode in a row that had Rose banging on a door yelling "get me out of here." Billie Piper has done a great job in capturing Rose's sense of wonder, but three episodes in, the character really needs to become more three dimensional. 

Similarly, I'm concerned about the direction that the Doctor is being taken in. Eccleston's performance in "Rose" was spot on, but more recently there's something worryingly ordinary about both the performance and the character itself. I suspect there's been a conscious move to try and make the Doctor more "human" and it's becoming irritating. For example, it strikes me as entirely wrong and ridiculous for the Doctor to be constantly apologising for things (for the fact that Charles Dickens will die, for rescuing Rose from her life as a shop girl, for the death of various supporting characters....the Doctor's seen too much death to be taking it so seriously). 

I hate to say this, but this episode has the overall feel of very obviously being written by a fan. Whilst Russell T Davies is, of course, a fan of the previous series, he's a good quality writer who conceal this in his writing and approach the job from a neutral standpoint. Mark Gattiss doesn't manage this. The insertion of Charles Dickens wreaks of a desperate attempt to bring credibility to the whole venture - something you might expect from someone who's spent his life defending a Who obsession. But next episode is a Russell T Davies product, so hopefully it will see a return to previous standards.