Hot as the Dickens

For our Darkley followers who still have a case of Christmas in July fever, albeit it's currently August, here's a special seasonal episode of Doctor Who, "The Unquiet Dead," featuring none other than Charles Dickens himself. How appropriate to pay homage to the author of the Yuletide, ghost story classic, 'A Christmas Carol'. You can bet your stockings that this episode is going into the Niche's Seasonal Horror Calendar.

On a side note, we felt that we would include our opinion on these risen corpses by stating that our definition of "zombie" isn't inclusive of these particular undead. Or at least we're hesitant in labeling these walking dead as such, and here's why.

Films the like of this, Sam Raimi's 'Evil Dead' trilogy being another prime example, though sometimes considered zombie cinema use possession as the means of reanimation (or transformation, since many of the possessed in Raimi's trilogy are still alive). Sure, the possessed corpse oftentimes attacks the living, but that doesn't distinguish it automatically as a zombie in our book.

The one particular detail that we look for is whether or not the corpse feeds on the flesh of the living, or at the very least the recently deceased. As far as we're concerned, a reanimated corpse that doesn't eat flesh is simply a reanimated corpse. There may be the occasional exception, but that's our general rule of thumb.

"...then you sent me in a room full of zombies!"

So apologies to Rose, but we must respectfully disagree with you on this one.