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.

Sure, the production values were very high, and this called to mind the glories of season 14. But in terms of story and characterisation, I think 'The Unquiet Dead' was more 'The Ultimate Foe' than either 'Talons' or 'Ghost Light'.

I say this because, other than running around with a grin on his face, what did the Doctor actually DO? In terms of solving problems and dispatching enemies, he was pretty useless. It was his mistake to let the gas creatures through into our world - a flaw following from his obvious sympathy for another near-extinct species, but a misjudgement all the same, and an embarrassing one considering his earlier moralising to Rose (a 'different morality' - dangerous territory). If this is what it means to make the Doctor more sensitive and human, then it is not necessarily a good thing. Then he told Rose that he would not leave the servant girl while she was still in danger, but in fact he let her kill herself to get him out of a problem he created! (Incidentally, this reminded me of the end of Revelation of the Daleks, when the lamentable sixth Doctor is unable to resolve the situation and similarly relies on another sympathetic character to take the rap.) Also, did he lie to Rose about her being already dead?? And then it was Dickens and not the Doctor who had the idea of turning up the gas lamps to save the Doctor and Rose from dying.

I have felt with all three episodes so far that there are traces in the Doctor's character of something very dark and powerful - no doubt forged in him by his experiences of 'the war'. (I was not happy with the vindictive way in which he killed Cassandra - would any previous Doctor have done that?) This has the advantage of making him more mysterious - even to us old hands - but it comes at a high moral cost, which risks compromising the integrity of the character.

Good things: Simon Callow's performance, afore-mentioned production values, Billie Piper still good. The theme of 'its not ghosts, its (pseudo) science' was a welcome echo of earlier episodes (The Daemons etc.).

Iffy things: this script was less tight than previous ones (why the seance? why did the creatures reveal their true intentions before making sure the servant girl was not in a position to stop them?) and less playfully ironic in its self-references. Some moments just a but too 'Buffy'.

The resolution was too quick - reminiscent of the Davison two-parters. And there was a problem of scale. The gas creatures were going to take over the world, but they only seemed to threaten a handful of people in one house. I suppose the same criticism could be levelled at 'Image of the Fendahl', but then IotF had twice the time (i.e. four 25 minute episodes) in which to build up a credible threat.

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!

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!

I have chosen Mark Gatiss' script as the first story of the new season I shall review for "Outpost Gallifrey". Not that I have anything nasty to say about the first two episodes particularly (Rose was, well… I'll come back to Rose in a moment, whilst The End of the World is an excellent 45 minutes of entertainment), but because this episode was the one I was looking forward to the most (the Dalek episodes, rather unpredictably, being the second). I love "Doctor Who"'s visits to the past, as it is something the BBC do well. Ghost Light, The Visitation, Masque of Mandragora even The King's Demons all look good and contain solid performances from the actors involved (even if, sometimes, the story itself is weak). The early press shoots covering the filming at Swansea led me to believe that, once again, the BBC was not to disappoint in the recreation of the past. Simon Callow, hundreds of extras, fake snow, horse drawn carriages, night filming, etc. Not only was the BBC doing what they do best, they were doing it with some serious money – on "Doctor Who"! Unbelievable! I thought I'd never see the day. Yes, I couldn't wait for this episode.

March 26th 2005 finally arrived. Not only was it my (and of course, my twin brother, Terry's) 31st birthday, "Doctor Who" also made its long awaited return with Rose (I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present – a whole new series of "Who").

Oh yes, it looked good, and Billie Pier was great, Eccleston not so great (but thankfully, his performance has got better over the next two episodes, so I'm putting his ‘dopey' personality down to post-regeneration stress or something similar), but quite frankly I was gutted. I couldn't fault the production itself, top marks to the special and visual effects team for the Autons, the TARDIS, etc. It was the story I had a problem with – or the lack of it. No wonder some newspapers slated it in the review pages. By all means you had to introduce the basic concepts of the show to a new audience, but leaving only ten short minutes for the Auton invasion and the thwarting thereof was unforgivable. As for the resolution to said invasion, having the Doctor produce a bottle of jollop he whipped-up earlier (in true "Blue Peter" fashion) is just sloppy. As in introduction episode, the BBC should have allowed it to be a bit longer (maybe an hour instead of 45 minutes) to let the story grow naturally alongside the ‘now-this-is-the-TARDIS' scenes, I feel Rose would have been a better tale for it. Then again, what do I know? A mate at worked loved Rose, he found it hilarious (especially the ‘cork-in-Auton-head' scene) and loved every second of it and is quite willing to watch the rest of the series. He praised Billie on her acting, but thought Christopher was (his words not mine) "a complete twat" though.

I was more impressed with The End of the World. Not only had Eccleston's performance mellowed (although my mate at work is still stating, "Can't stand him, when's Tennant taking over?"), the story had the luxury of the full 45 minutes to play with. The scene between Rose and Raffalo (Beccy Armory), in my opinion, is worthy of a mention. Nicely played by the actresses concerned and proof that, even at 45 minutes, "Doctor Who" can still find time for lovely character driven scenes such as this between the action set-pieces. Incidentally, my work mate thought Rose was far better than The End of the World, which just goes to show that every audience members taste is different (he also isn't a fan, so I'd say his views on the show probably are of more importance than mine). However, with a much happier heart (I'd be very worried if every episode was as bland as Rose), I eagerly awaited ‘the-one-with-Charles-Dickens'.

First the pre-credit sequence. Brilliant. If I don't hear of any complaints about the show being too scary for the little ‘uns, I'd be very disappointed. Despite the wide variety of aliens on display in the previous episode, none of them really provided much scope for terror, but then again that was the whole point of that episode. Hey, they may look different from you and me, but that doesn't mean they mean you any harm.

Now walking cadavers – that's exactly what "Doctor Who" is about; turning the everyday into something terrifying, and you can't get more commonplace than a corpse.

I've now accepted Christopher as the Doctor; he is on fine form in this story. His scenes between Simon Callow and himself are superb. Billie just keeps better and better though, the realisation that Rose really does think Gwyneth (Eve Myles) is stupid is played beautifully. Despite the time-travelling, the modern girl from London may think she knows it all, but in reality she knows nothing. This spoke volumes about both characters.

Simon Callow is spot-on as Charles Dickens, but as he's played the role many times, I expected nothing less than perfection.

Yet what impressed me most about this episode is that no-one hams it up. From the leading roles right down to the extras (sorry…. supporting artistes), not one is thinking,"It's only "Doctor Who" let's mess about a bit". What could've easily been made-up actors badly grunting in an over-the-top way (as witnessed in many poor zombie films), the final moments of the episode genuinely held some tension.

Ah yes, the final moments! If anything the 45 minute format has proven is that the story endings are rushed. In Rose a handy virus was used, in The End of the World the Doctor pulled a lever to save the day, in The Unquiet Dead…

… let's just say that once you learned very early on that the Gelth are made of gas, it didn't take a genius long to work out how they were to be defeated. It was no surprise when the obvious did occur. Just as obvious as mentioning silver bullets early in Battlefield or Hexachromite gas in Warriors of the Deep for instance. I was hoping for the obvious not to happen, but alas I had my only disappointment with this episode in this respect. However, to get to the obvious solution was an eventful and excellent adventure that I can forget this small detail. It will be interesting to see if the episode denouements become a lot more detailed and cleverer in the two-parters though, as they will have more time to tell their stories.

More well produced tales like this please. A triumph for the BBC!