TEXT: INT. CHAPEL OF REST Mister Sneed crosses a room where a woman lies dead in her coffin and a man stands over her. The man's name is Redpath. Sneed lights a gas lamp. He walks to the mans side. SNEED: Sneed and Company offer their sincerest condolences, sir. In this most trying hour. REDPATH: Grandmamma had a good innings, Mr. Sneed. She was so full of life. I can't believe she's gone. SNEED: Not gone, Mr. Redpath, sir. Merely sleeping. A short silence. REDPATH: May I have a moment? SNEED: Yes, of course. I shall be in the next room, should you require anything. He leaves Redpath alone with his Grandmother. Redpath, with his head bowed in grief, does not notice the gas enter her dead body and her eyes snap open. She suddenly grabs Redpath by the neck and throttles him. Mister Sneed bursts back into the room upon hearing the commotion. SNEED: Oh, no. The old woman twists her grandson's neck around and he falls to the floor. Redpath tries to wrestle the lid back on the coffin. SNEED (CONT'D): Gwyneth! Get down here now! We've got another one! He is not strong enough to get the lid back on the coffin and the old woman kicks the side off. EXT. SNEED AND COMPANY, STREET Mrs Pearce walks from the house, wailing. OPENING CREDITS INT. TARDIS Inside the TARDIS, it is mayhem. The whole ship is shaking and alarm is going off. THE DOCTOR: Hold that one down! ROSE: I'm HOLDING this one down! THE DOCTOR: Well, hold them BOTH down! ROSE: It's not going to work! THE DOCTOR: Oi! I promised you a time machine and that's what you're getting. Now, you've seen the future, let's have a look at the past.
SUMMARY:
The Doctor and Rose travel back to Cardiff in 1869, where a funeral parlour , run by Gabriel Sneed with his clairvoyant servant girl Gwyneth, contains corpses which have been animated by a mysterious blue vapour. Sneed and Gwyneth kidnap Rose, and the Doctor teams up with Charles Dickens to track her down. In the funeral parlour, the group is reunited and the Doctor determines that the blue vapour is the result of a being trying to cross a rift in the spacetime the parlour is built on. They are revealed to be the Gelth , who animate bodies until they can build their own, and are using Gwyneth as a bridge. As the Gelth respond negatively to gas, Gwyneth volunteers to ignite the gas which will kill all the Gelth, and the Doctor, Rose, and Dickens escape before the parlour is engulfed in flames.