3. The Unquiet Dead

The Doctor takes Rose back through time to 1869.  But in Victorian Cardiff, the  dead are walking, and creatures made of gas are on the loose.  The  time-travelers team up with Charles Dickens to investigate Mr. Sneed, the local  undertaker.  Can they halt the plans of the ethereal Gelth?

 - DR. WHO COLLECTORS' EDITION EPISODE GUIDE

This episode opens in a Victorian period Funeral Home where the dearly departed  attacks a grieving family member, making Mr. Sneed run in and call out; "oh no…  Gwyneth!  Get down here now! We've got another one!"

This frightening but funny scene sets the tone for what this episode is about,  the supernatural and the avante guard, art imitating life and life imitating  art.  And who would be more appropriate to help the Doctor and Rose investigate  ghosts, than Charles Dickens himself, famous for writing several ghost stories  including the most popular, A Christmas Carol.  Indeed, Mr. Dickens is at the  Cardiff Theatre giving a reading of this very story when one of the animated  dead are sitting in the audience.  When the ghostly presence leaves the corpse  as the Doctor and Rose run into the room, and the audience flees in a screaming  panic, it's Mr. Dickens who remains behind almost cursing, "bah humbug!" in  disbelief at what he had witnessed.

With a skeptical Charles Dickens in tow, the Doctor informs the writer "I'm a  fan!" and the two race after Mr. Sneed who has temporarily kidnapped Rose, and  follow him back to the Funeral Home where the words 'rest in peace' don't seem  to apply.  After freeing Rose from being locked in a room with the walking  dead, they demand answers from Mr. Sneed and meet his maid, Gwyneth.  The  Doctor establishes that the Funeral Home is on top of a Rift, a weak point in  time and space.  The ghosts tell the Doctor that they are dying and that  they're caught in the rift.  The Doctor also realizes that Gwyneth is the key  in all this, as she has been in telepathic contact with the ghostly beings all  her life. 

When the Doctor recommends a séance which Mr. Dickens is quite against, Gwyneth  makes contact with the ethereal beings called the Gelth.  They tell the Doctor  that they are facing extinction because the Time War damaged their bodies,  which makes the Doctor sympathetic to their cause.  The Gelth request to use  Gwyneth to cross over to their world and inhabit the bodies of the dead (the  ghosts need the gassy decomposing bodies) and the Doctor offers to then find  them a new world they can inhabit. 

The Doctor is all for Gwyneth using her ability to help the Gelth cross over  through the Rift, but Rose is against the idea of using Gwyneth in such a  manner and tries to stick up for her, challenging the Doctor.  Gwyneth,  grateful at Rose's independence and sympathy, wants to help the Gelth as she  had always pictured them as lost angels from her long period of contact with  them.  Then Gwyneth begins the selfless act of using her body to allow the  Gelth through.

Then as the Gelth fill the room, animating all of the corpses in the Funeral  Home, their true intentions become known… that they want to take over the world  (as you do) and kill all the humans on the planet to then fill their corpses  with their own people.  Mr. Sneed dies, and as Rose and the Doctor try to take  cover behind a gate, Mr. Dickens is able to escape from the room.  But being a  brilliant writer, Mr. Dickens is the one who saves the day.  He realizes that  the Gelth as gas beings would not be able to stay in the bodies if the room is  full of gas, and he runs through out the house, turning up all of the gas  lamps.  The Gelth slip out of the bodies, the Doctor and Rose escape, but as  they try to take Gwyneth with them, they realize they can't.  Gwyneth tells  them to run, and readies a box of matches… Gwyneth sacrifices her life to stop  the Gelth's plans. 

Rose is saddened by Gwyneth's loss as Dickens walks away from the adventure a  changed man.  Just as Scrooge underwent a transformation from his visitation by  the three spirits in A Christmas Carol, Dickens now walks through the streets  the next morning, booming out; "Bless you!  Merry Christmas!"  Mr. Dickens  tells the Doctor and Rose that Gwyneth's sacrifice will be told in the next  book he writes, and then he says his farewell to the time-traveling duo.  But  after they part company with their famous friend the Doctor wistfully points  out to Rose that with the date currently being Christmas Day of 1869, and  Charles Dickens dies in 1870, he will not be able to.