G is for... Gwyneth

Gwyneth was a maid in the service of Mr Sneed, who ran a funeral parlour in Victorian Cardiff. She had grown up in the local area and had the gift of second sight - allowing her to read other people's minds. Sneed forced her to use these abilities when some of the corpses in his establishment got up and went walkabout. She was able to sense where they had gone. Gwyneth was an orphan and believed that her parents continued to look after her from beyond the grave. In capturing one of the walking dead - a Mrs Peace, who had gone to see a reading by Charles Dickens - Sneed had abducted Rose Tyler when she tried to intervene. The Doctor and Dickens traced her to the funeral parlour. Here the Doctor spotted Gwyneth's gifts when she knew how many sugars he took in his tea, as well as seeming to recognise London in the 21st Century from images in Rose's mind. The Doctor realised that this came from her growing up next to a localised rift in space / time which ran through the city.
Ghost-like creatures were emerging from the gas fittings, and it was these which were reanimating the corpses. The Doctor knew that these were alien in origin and decided to hold a seance so that Gwyneth could establish contact with them. The maid thought they were angels, sent by her parents, but they identified as the Gelth, who had lost their physical forms during the Time War. They sought refuge on Earth using the bodies of the dead as hosts.
The Doctor talked Gwyneth into opening a portal for them in the morgue area of the house, which is where their presence was most strongly felt. It transpired that they were hostile and intent on invading. After the building had been flooded with gas, Gwyneth agreed to sacrifice herself to blow up the Gelth and seal the rift. The Doctor discovered that she had actually died minutes before.
Years later, the Doctor and Rose saw Torchwood Three team member Gwen Cooper, and spotted that she looked exactly like Gwyneth. The Doctor surmised that this was some form of spatial genetic multiplicity resulting from the Cardiff rift.

Played by: Eve Myles. Appearances: The Unquiet Dead (2005).

• Of course the real reason that Gwyneth and Gwen Cooper look identical is because the same actor was cast as both. In Journey's End, Russell T Davies decided to add some dialogue to account for the similarity as the Doctor and Rose would surely have noticed the likeness.