(732) Human Nature

Human Nature and Family of Blood is held in high regard by most Doctor Who fans and it’s not hard to see why. This is the first Doctor Who story to be adapted from a novel. Dalek had elements from Robert Shearman’s Big Finish play Jubilee but this was the first novel to be used. In that book it’s the seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield and Paul Cornell has had to obviously make some changes. I will be honest that I haven’t read the book but I am going to start today and see what the differences are so I wont be doing much comparing but this is a story that could have only been done from this series onwards because I don’t think that viewers would have gone with this story in 2005.

There’s a great dramatic opening with the Doctor and Martha before it suddenly changes gear and the Doctor has gone posh and Martha has turned into a maid. The Doctor and Martha are being chased by the Family of Blood who are after the Doctor’s life force to stop them from dying.

The Doctor’s life force in in a watch and the big thing is making sure that it isn’t opened yet because the family will find him. This is put at risk when Latimer finds it and opens it briefly.

There’s an interesting bit of racism in this episode which isn’t something that has been addressed in Doctor Who before and its quite a brave thing to do and a sign of how things have perhaps changed.

Jessica Hynes plays the love interest in this two parter and its clear that its doomed to fail in one way or another. She plays Siobhan Sharpe in the very funny W1A and she is very funny but has the ability to do some serious acting.

This story sees the appearance of Thomas Brodie-Sangster who has gone on to have a big career appearing in stuff like Game of Thrones and most recently Wolf Hall. He plays Tim Latimer who has ESP and he sort of hovers around the story for most of the episode and only really becomes relevant to the story towards the end of the episode.

Harry Lloyd plays Jeremy Baines and is one of those that becomes the human form of the family and he is totally horrible and is what most people would imagine private school snobs are like in 2007 not just 1913. When is he taken over by the family he seems to become superb and his performance makes him seem rather dangerous and that adds to the whole two parter.

Journal of Impossible Things is a book that John Smith has created and it has scribbles and loads of drawings in it. One of the most interesting moments comes when there is a page with several previous incarnations

I’m not one for pointing out continuity errors (partly because I never notice them) but at the 25:18 mark whilst the schoolboys are shooting at mock up targets. There is clearly a lorry passing by in the distance. It’s very small because its far away but it’s not something that would have been there in 1913.

I commented how David Tennant gave one of his strongest performances for sometime in 42 but I have to say that its rather bland compared to what he does in this episode. Tennnat gets an opportunity to play the Doctor in a different way and do something different in the lead role and he does wonderfully with it. Ok so he isn’t really playing the Doctor but watching him in todays episode I see the Doctor not John Smith and that is how good Tennant was. Even Freema Agyemen manages to keep up with Tennant. Martha has to ensure that things are going as smoothly as possible until the Family have died but it was inevitable that things were going to go wrong quickly because the story would have been boring otherwise.

There is a nice nod to the show’s creation where John Smith says his father is Sydney (after Sydney Newman) and his mother is called Verity (after Verity Lambert). I thought that this was a lovely nod and one that was designed to please the long time fans and as one of those I have to say that it was lovely.

The episode does move in a slightly slow pace but I didn’t mind it. I thought that there was enough goodwill on screen that I just let it pass by and when it did start to pick then it leads to a rather good cliffhanger. The Family of Blood know that the Doctor is John Smith and are going to kill Martha and Joan if he doesn’t change back but John Smith doesn’t know how to and he has to choose between which of them is killed. This was a great opening episode and the worry now is that the concluding part wont live up to the hype.

Interestingly Phil Collinson is promoted to Executive Producer and Susie Liggat has become producer making her only the second woman to be a producer in Doctor Who. Not quite sure what the reason was for this because he goes back to being producer in Blink but it’s interesting that it was 42 years between female producers.