(733) The Family of Blood

Nice little bit of trivia to start off with that this episode was transmitted in my 24^th birthday. I now feel old but at least this episode makes up for it. I have started to read the novel and at the moment it’s very different even though I am only a dozen or so pages into it. Bernice Summerfield is in 1913 and no sign yet of the Doctor but back to today’s episode. Rather interestingly they use the pre-title scene to replay what happened in the previous episode. Normally there is something that happens before the title

I like how Martha is the one calling the shots at the beginning of the episode. Quite literally calling the shots. She continues being the one that is watching over the Doctor.

The family are quite a good group of villains considering that they using human forms that aren’t related to each other. The little girl is quite creepy and very similar to the girl in Remembrance of the Daleks. When she goads the Doctor/John Smith into one of the schoolboys into shooting her I was surprised at how good the actress was. It’s revealed that The Doctor ran away cause he was being kind cause he knew that he would have to finish them off for good. They wanted to live forever and the Doctor made sure that they did in rather ingenious ways. I like the encounter between Jeremy/Brother of mine and the Headteacher. The headteacher is rather gung-ho and Baines tries to show him how he’s a fool. The shootout between the schoolboys and the scarecrow with a hymn being played is a very strong moment and his death at the hands of the little girl is perhaps inevitable.

The sight of several dozen scarecrows behind Baines is another cracking shot and Charles Palmer deserves a lot of praise. The weeping angels are coming up in the next episode but its fair to say that the scarecrows are another great creation and it would be cool to see them in something else.

The discussion about Martha’s ability to be a Doctor between Martha and Joan is interesting cause its another example of the attitudes towards women more specifically ethnic women in 1913 England.

I actually feel sorry for the Doctor cause as John Smith he doesn’t want to change. He wants his current life. There is a lovely final scene between John Smith and Joan. There’s a lovely flash forward to life as a married couple, kids and his death. He looks old for the first time this series. When they meet with the Doctor as himself it’s very different and both Tennant and Hynes deserve credit for the scenes they have together. In fact everyone worked really well over these two episodes and there wasn’t a weak link the entire cast.

The scene where the Doctor encounters the family and starts off by pretending that he’s human is a great scene and a great moment from the Doctor. It’s a moment where as a viewer I was relieved that the Doctor was back and doing what he does best.

Tim fights in the First World War and its a moment that is superb and not something that would have been done in classic Who and shows how the show as developed since 2005. That moment is followed by a Remembrance Sunday service which I thought was another classic moment and it shows that even though this is a piece of drama that war isn’t all fake guns, explosions and tomato ketchup.

I was worried that todays episode would disappoint me, that it would live up to how good the opening episode was but this was one of the best episode of the series and in fact ratings wise it’s the ebst episode since its 2005 reboot. Human Nature is third with The Parting of the Ways at number two. As a two parter it’s the best two parter beating the Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways season finale. It’s the first time since The TV Movie that a story has rated in the 8’s and the first time since Remembrance of the Daleks that a series story has rated in the 8’s. I haven’t until now appreciated just how good this story actually is. It is definitely the best Tennant story and tomorrows episode is another of the Doctor-lite episodes but one that is way better than Love and Monsters.

(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.

(704) Fathers Day

The Doctor takes Rose to November 7, 1987 where Rose’s dad was killed and this is an episode which builds up the Tyler backstory in a way which yesterday I thought was going to be a problem. There have been episodes that I have feared in some shape or form and this is one of them.  Using a hit and run in primetime is quite a brave thing to do and to do it repeatedly is even braver.

The Doctor is the one that goes over his own timeline when Rose batters her eyelashes and jumps out in front of the other Rose and Doctor to stop her dad from being killed. Everything that happens in this episode is down to what he does. You would have thought that after all this time he would have known better but I guess everyone can be wrong. Pete Tyler is basically a Del Boy type person. To be honest a first I didn’t think the Doctor Who world really needs Rose’s dad but as the episode progresses he becomes more interesting and despite Rose’s best efforts, I quite like the character and I even found myself liking Jackie.

There is a running gag where Pete is trying to hit on his daughter and only Rose (and the viewers) know why this is a terrible idea. They do a good job of trying to skirt around the issue but it’s not long before Pete knows the truth and so does Jackie which makes for a rather amusing face-off between the three. Pete ends up knowing that he needs to die in order to save the day. It’s not so much an alien threat episode but it’s more of a family bonding episode with the Doctor as the guest character.

After about 10 minutes of doing very little it seemed like this episode was going to be worse than I had feared but thankfully things do start to pick up. The episode only gets going when the reapers start to appear. On a visual note, the reapers are really good and the VFX team work wonders making them look as natural as they can. They appear when there are damages in the timeline and they ‘sterilise the wound’. It’s a great idea from Paul Cornell and helps save the episode.

There is a bit where the Doctor is taken by the reaper and this means that he is out of sight and this gives the Tyler’s the centre stage and I have to admit it that I found the final few minutes to be engaging TV. I might be a bit of a heartless sod but I just couldn’t get emotional about what was happening but even I am not that heartless to think that it was a good piece of drama.

This is an episode which has a lot that I could do without but the performances from Shaun Dingwall and Camille Coduri along with Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper help make this at worst an average episode. From my original memory of this series, this was the weakest story so in effect this should be the end of the weak episode and the quality should start going up until the finale. Tomorrow’s episode sees the first story from the Grand Moff and also what I think (and hope) will be the best of the two parters in this series. The NEXT TIME trailer made me wish I could just watch the next episode now even with the knowledge that Captain Jack is about to enter the show.