The TARDIS materialises in Cardiff on Christmas Eve 1869. An undertaker named Gabriel Sneed has been tormented by corpses walking out of his funeral parlour. When one of the dead interrupts a reading by esteemed author Charles Dickens, Rose intervenes, only to be kidnapped by Sneed and his maid, Gwyneth. The Doctor and a sceptical Dickens track Rose to the mortuary, where the Doctor learns of the existence of a mysterious Rift. Meanwhile, Rose befriends Gwyneth, who is gifted with the “second sight” -- and who may be the key to unlocking the terrible secret of the Rift.

In his Doctor Who pitch document of December 8th, 2003, executive producer Russell T Davies established that the first two episodes of the revived series would consist of adventures set in the modern day (Rose) and the future (The End Of The World). It was natural, then, that the third episode should take the Doctor and Rose back into the Earth's past. From 1966 onwards, Doctor Who had largely avoided depicting real people from history, but Davies felt that so-called “celebrity historicals” would be a great hook for viewers. As such, he suggested that episode three should be set in 1860 Cardiff and involve Charles Dickens, the famous author of novels such as A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist. The setting would also satisfy his determination to represent Wales on-screen in Doctor Who, now that it was the programme's new production home.

Davies' pitch document informally dubbed the story “My Name's Dickens... Charles Dickens”. It saw Dickens investigating Miss Pendragon -- a name recycled from his 1991 science-fiction serial Dark Season -- who purported to have invented an Ectoplasm Machine which could summon ghosts. The device turned out to be a weapon, while the ghosts were unmasked as aliens. This was one of six episodes which Davies had earmarked for somebody else to write, and he had approached Mark Gatiss during the autumn. A longtime fan who had written Doctor Who novels and audio plays, Gatiss had established his professional credentials through his work as a member of the League of Gentlemen comedy troupe. In fact, he had recently been involved with an unsuccessful proposal to revive Doctor Who, prior to Davies taking the show's reins. Gatiss possessed a sense of the macabre and an avowed interest in the Victorian era, making him ideally suited for the type of adventure Davies had in mind.

The Gelth's need to possess human bodies drew upon Mark Gatiss' Third Doctor novel Last Of The Gaderene

Gatiss was commissioned to write his story, initially called The Unquiet Dead, in January 2004. With Davies' encouragement, he departed from the original outline presented in the pitch document. The setting was now a hotel run by Mrs Plumchute, inhabited exclusively by purported psychics and mediums. Only one of the tenants was legitimate: Noah Sneed, who believed that he could communicate with the spirits of the dead but had, in fact, made contact with the alien Gelth. The gaseous entities were partly inspired by an image which had haunted Gatiss in his youth, of a cadaver in a wedding dress; their need to possess human bodies drew upon elements of his 2000 novel Last Of The Gaderene, a Third Doctor adventure from BBC Books. He thought that the Gelth could be defeated by being condensed into a liquid form.

Gatiss envisaged Sneed as a younger man who could be played by his friend and fellow Doctor Who fan, David Tennant... who, a year later, would be cast as the Tenth Doctor. At this point, Gwyneth was Mrs Plumchute's maid, and was named for a character in the Desirous Of Change episode of the classic drama Upstairs, Downstairs. She believed that she was being haunted by the ghost of her little brother, Davy, who had recently died of diphtheria and was buried in the adjacent Crippingwell Cemetery. Gatiss considered titles such as “The Crippingwell Horror” and “The Angels Of Crippingwell” for his adventure.

Soon, however, Gatiss grew concerned that he had trapped himself into a traditional narrative structure with too many contrivances -- such as the proximity between the hotel and the graveyard -- while the production team felt that his grief-infused storyline was too bleak. During the spring, Gatiss overhauled his script for its second draft, discarding the hotel setting and replacing it with Sneed's funeral parlour. Surviving into the new version was one of the fraudulent mediums, initially called Gideon Mortlock and later Madame Mortlock. Sneed's wife was also retained, but she and her husband -- rechristened Gabriel Sneed -- became older characters. The gift of second sight was transferred to Gwyneth, now the Sneeds' maid, whom the production team wanted to play a larger role. The late Mrs Peace was named after Victorian-era burglar and murderer Charles Peace.

By mid-May, Gatiss' adventure was being referred to by the placeholder title “Charles Dickens”. Mrs Sneed had become superfluous and was dropped, while Madame Mortlock was mentioned only in dialogue. At Davies' suggestion, Gatiss had decided to leaven the grim nature of the story with his brand of black humour. The timeframe was moved forward by a decade to 1870, the year of Dickens' death; with Gatiss a keen admirer of A Christmas Carol, however, the action was ultimately set on Dickens' final Christmas Eve, in 1869.

Originally, Rose watched in horror as the TARDIS scanner depicted the world filling with Gelth-animated zombies

One sequence which Davies had been eager for Gatiss' script to include was a scene which addressed the potential lack of drama which accompanied stories set in the Earth's past. Here, Rose asserted that the Gelth couldn't possibly dominate the world in 1869 because she came from 2005. Inspired by a similar scene in 1975's Pyramids Of Mars, the Doctor demonstrated Rose's error by taking her back to the TARDIS. Drawing upon the eerie depiction of time travel in George Pal's 1960 film adaptation of The Time Machine, Rose watched in horror as the TARDIS scanner depicted the world filling with Gelth-animated zombies. However, it was ultimately felt that the return to the TARDIS interrupted the flow of the story too much. The scene was removed, with the threat to the future instead established through dialogue.

Of the first five episodes of Season Twenty-Seven, only The Unquiet Dead and its immediate predecessor, The End Of The World, were not set on modern-day Earth. As such, they were put together in the production schedule as Block Two under director Euros Lyn. To portray Charles Dickens, an approach was made to acclaimed actor Simon Callow, whose credits included the movies A Room With A View, Four Weddings And A Funeral and Shakespeare In Love. Callow had already played the famed author on several occasions, dating back to 1996's An Audience With Charles Dickens on BBC2. Davies was worried that Callow would be reluctant to retread such familiar ground, only to discover that he was delighted to take part. Callow's casting helped establish the high calibre of actor which the revived Doctor Who series would be aiming to attract.

Work on “Charles Dickens” began on September 19th at the New Theatre in Cardiff, which was suitable as the interior of the Taliesin Lodge. Dickens' description of the Gelth as “phantasmagoria” was an intentional reference to Gatiss' 1999 audio drama of the same title, a Fifth Doctor adventure released by Big Finish Productions. For the most part, however, the Welsh capital's modern redevelopment meant that it would be difficult to find venues which would accurately reflect a Victorian setting. Instead, material outside the Lodge was taped on September 20th at Cambrian Place in Swansea. The exterior of Sneed's funeral parlour was actually Beaufort Arms Court in Monmouth, where material was recorded on the 21st. Cast and crew remained in Monmouth the next day for various street scenes, on Church Street and St Mary's Street. September 23rd was spent at Unit Q2, Doctor Who's studio home in Newport, for sequences in the TARDIS and in Dickens' coach.

Production then moved to Penarth, where the adventure's major location was the Headlands School. It served as the interior of Sneed's mortuary from September 27th to October 2nd; the backstage scene at the Taliesin Lodge was also recorded there on September 30th. Billie Piper was unwell during the work in Penarth, and was also dealing with the deterioration of her marriage to disc jockey Chris Evans, which had gained considerable attention in the tabloid press. Fortunately, her Doctor Who work gave Piper something on which to focus her energies.

Lyn then spent several days working on The End Of The World, during which it became clear that “Charles Dickens” was under-running. On October 12th, Davies scripted several additional sequences; one of his goals was to give Eve Myles some extra exposure as Gwyneth, since he had been very impressed with her performance to date. Amongst the new material was Sneed telling Gwyneth that they would pursue Mrs Peace, and Dickens discussing his legacy with the Doctor and Rose. Perhaps the most prominent new scene was Rose's conversation with Gwyneth in the kitchen, which not only boasted the first mention of Rose's late father -- setting the stage for the season's eighth episode, Father's Day -- but also included Gwyneth alluding to the Big Bad Wolf. Davies had written “bad wolf” graffiti into episode four, Aliens Of London, and he was now giving some thought to a corresponding story arc which would run throughout the year.

The added material was recorded at Headlands School on October 19th and 20th, alongside some sequences which Lyn had been unable to complete during the original shoot. The first day also saw the scene in Dickens' dressing room taped at the school, while his extended farewell was filmed outside, on St Augustine's Road. The last day of production was October 22nd, when Lyn completed various pick-up and insert shots at Unit Q2, while Zoe Thorne gave her performance as the Gelth against a set of black drapes. Around December, it was decided that each episode of Season Twenty-Seven would indeed display an on-screen title. As a result, Gatiss' script reverted to its original name: The Unquiet Dead.

• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #11, 31st August 2005, “Fact File: The Unquiet Dead” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #48, 2016, “Story 159: The Unquiet Dead”, edited by John Ainsworth, Hachette Partworks Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Inside Story by Gary Russell (2006), BBC Books.