Plot:
A villainous family of aliens, who want to use a Time Lord's powers to help them live forever, are hunting the Doctor and Martha. Our heroes hide out in an English public school in 1913. Martha is posing as a maid, but the Doctor has been fully converted into a human by a piece of Time Lord tech never previously mentioned called a Chameleon Arch, and thinks he's a teacher called John Smith; his Time Lord self is meanwhile stored in something that looks like a pocket watch. Over the course of a few months, John Smith falls in love with the matron of the school, Joan. Not knowing how to stop this, Martha has to just watch it happen. On the night John is taking Joan to a local dance, a pupil at the school, Tim, with a low level telepathic ability, takes the watch - he can hear it whispering to him. The family arrive, and take over the bodies of a mixed bag of local types including another boy from the school, Baines. They also animate an army of scarecrows and corner John Smith at the dance.
With Tim and Martha's help, John and Joan escape, and everyone hides at the school. The pupil cadet squad defend against the family, and so they retreat to their spaceship and start using heavy artillery. Tim returns the watch to Smith, but John doesn't want to turn back into the Doctor. It appears that he has betrayed everyone, going to the spaceship and handing the family the watch. But it's a bluff: it's the Doctor pretending to still be John Smith, and he manages to make the family's spaceship blow up. Characteristically, he then hunts each member of the family down, one by one, dispensing cruel, unusual and everlasting punishments. Just like he does, you know? Typical Doctor. Trapping people in eternal torment - it's so him. Anyway, there follows an emotional goodbye with Joan, who's a bit miffed with the Doctor to say the least, and a visit to Tim in the future when he's a veteran, having survived WW1. Context:
This was the first story in what seems like ages chosen from a straight random selection from the whole remaining history of Who, and fate has settled on an absolute corker. When I put on the DVD (from the series 3 boxset), the Better Half planned to do some work, not really able to spare the time. She asked me which story it was, and cursed me when I told her: there was no way she could sit this one out. So, we sat down as a family on a Sunday afternoon and watched the first episode. To let her get back to her work without too much disruption, I saved the second part for another day. The build up towards the end of the episode, the cliffhanger, and the post credits trailer were all so exciting for the children (boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) that I had a lot of pleading and even mild threats when I took the disc out of the machine. But I stood firm, and we watched the next episode after a week's gap (as nature intended). All the children enjoyed the story, but the scenes where Smith and Joan discuss his imminent sacrifice, and wonder what their life together would have been like, were accompanied by groans and moans of "Just open the watch already" from our eldest. The emotion might have passed him by, just a tad.
First-time round:
First-time round:
I first experienced this plot some time in spring or Summer of 1995, when I read the Virgin New Adventures novel that the story is based upon. I remember struggling to find it anywhere at first, but it finally turning up in Volume One Bookshop in Worthing a few months after it was published. That was time enough, even in those days when news travelled at slower than dial-up speed, for the buzz about how good it was to have reached me. It was thought to be something very special, and after reading it I could only agree. Twelve years later, I watched the television adaptation live as it went out on BBC1, as I suspected it would be very special too. After watching, I thought it more than lived up to the book's quality. The TV version has turned out to be popular ever since, being in the top ten of both the two big Doctor Who Magazine polls held since its broadcast.Reaction
There's something wrong with Human Nature. Now, at the outset, I want to say: I very much like this story. There are quite a few shows that are generally rated highly that I can't get on board with at all (this one, would be a recent-ish example). I don't mind taking pot shots a sacred cows, so I wouldn't pretend if I didn't mean it: it's a great story, which I enjoy. But from one angle - a significant angle, too - it's bollocks. The underlying concept of the Doctor giving up his Time Lord essence and living as a human - Paul Cornell was inspired by an enduring story format used everywhere from the New Testament to Superman II - is a very strong one. It's just that the narrative doesn't give a plausible reason why the Doctor's decided at this precise moment to do it. In the novel, it's to better understand his companion's emotional state (the New Adventures companion, Bernice Summerfield, having suffered a terrible loss in the preceding book). There's no such motive here. It's explicitly stated that his actions were not dictated by any enhanced threat the Family may have posed; instead, he was being kind to them. This is borne out by the speed at which he dispatches them at the end. But it's also explicitly stated that by hiding out, he's caused innocent people to be killed. Why didn't he stand his ground and get it over with, instead of making the situation worse with his capricious desire to cosplay as an ordinary chap in pre-war England?
If you can get past that, then it's all wonderful. It's so wonderful, in fact, that as one watches, the programme compels one to ignore that fundamental flaw: let it pass, and enjoy the impact of the Doctor's experiment, don't fixate on why the hell he's doing it in the first place. Look the other way. If you do, you're rewarded with a cracking love story, an interesting anti-war subplot, and a lot of nice existential material about the nature of self. Plus spaceships, explosions and ray guns. To fit all this in, everything is economically written, and propelled by magnificent contributions from cast and crew across the board. Obviously, many plaudits have to go to Jessica Hynes, who achieves a wonderful chemistry with her leading man / Time Lord. Freema Agyeman takes up another side of the bizarre love triangle doing some emotional heavy lifting without it looking like too much effort. She was, perhaps unavoidably, much better served during her first full year as a companion than during her guest spots in the subsequent series. Once the engine of her unrequited love arc is gone, there isn't much for her to do, and the performances seem a lot more wobbly. Here though, she's great.
The guest cast are excellent. Thomas Sangster and Harry Lloyd give scene-stealing turns as members of the school (though both young in 2007, they were still pretty experienced having worked as child actors from an early age). Rebekah Staton and Gerald Horan have less to get their teeth into, but nonetheless give solid support. Pip Torrens is as good as he always is. There's a magnificent confrontation between his Headmaster and Lloyd's Family of Blood member in the second episode. It was so mesmerising that I only realised after it was done that it was a lengthy scene from a long way into a story that didn't contain any regular characters; such a set-up is a rarity in Who, but carried off well here. Any amount of grandstanding from anyone else, though, as nice as it might be, is going to be overshadowed: this episode belongs to David Tennant. He plays his two roles, sometimes switching between them in the space of one scene, with brio and finesse. The story was structured, at least in part, to be a showcase for the leading man to show off a bit of his range, and it works spectacularly. The agony of his situation - just as he's enjoying his life, he finds out it's all a lie, and he has to sacrifice himself - could wring outpourings of emotion from the stoniest of hearts.
There are too many wonderful moments to mention, but one I can't finish without highlighting is the sequence where the futility of war is framed in a perfect visual metaphor: an army of schoolboys shooting at hollow straw men. The script does not rush to judgement either, and is stronger for remembering that any narrative about armed conflict, even one that has all the hindsight of the terrible impact of the Great War, does better when it presents both the pro- and the anti- in a balanced way, before it finally does pick a side. No character or motive in this story is a stereotype just to be mocked or blamed: there are no straw men arguments here.
Connectivity:
Another story where the TARDIS team take a trip into twentieth-century history; like Rosa, this is a historical period on the cusp of a major shift (the beginnings of the civil rights movement, the first World War). In both stories, the Doctor's black companion experiences the everyday racism of the time. 
If you can get past that, then it's all wonderful. It's so wonderful, in fact, that as one watches, the programme compels one to ignore that fundamental flaw: let it pass, and enjoy the impact of the Doctor's experiment, don't fixate on why the hell he's doing it in the first place. Look the other way. If you do, you're rewarded with a cracking love story, an interesting anti-war subplot, and a lot of nice existential material about the nature of self. Plus spaceships, explosions and ray guns. To fit all this in, everything is economically written, and propelled by magnificent contributions from cast and crew across the board. Obviously, many plaudits have to go to Jessica Hynes, who achieves a wonderful chemistry with her leading man / Time Lord. Freema Agyeman takes up another side of the bizarre love triangle doing some emotional heavy lifting without it looking like too much effort. She was, perhaps unavoidably, much better served during her first full year as a companion than during her guest spots in the subsequent series. Once the engine of her unrequited love arc is gone, there isn't much for her to do, and the performances seem a lot more wobbly. Here though, she's great.
The guest cast are excellent. Thomas Sangster and Harry Lloyd give scene-stealing turns as members of the school (though both young in 2007, they were still pretty experienced having worked as child actors from an early age). Rebekah Staton and Gerald Horan have less to get their teeth into, but nonetheless give solid support. Pip Torrens is as good as he always is. There's a magnificent confrontation between his Headmaster and Lloyd's Family of Blood member in the second episode. It was so mesmerising that I only realised after it was done that it was a lengthy scene from a long way into a story that didn't contain any regular characters; such a set-up is a rarity in Who, but carried off well here. Any amount of grandstanding from anyone else, though, as nice as it might be, is going to be overshadowed: this episode belongs to David Tennant. He plays his two roles, sometimes switching between them in the space of one scene, with brio and finesse. The story was structured, at least in part, to be a showcase for the leading man to show off a bit of his range, and it works spectacularly. The agony of his situation - just as he's enjoying his life, he finds out it's all a lie, and he has to sacrifice himself - could wring outpourings of emotion from the stoniest of hearts.There are too many wonderful moments to mention, but one I can't finish without highlighting is the sequence where the futility of war is framed in a perfect visual metaphor: an army of schoolboys shooting at hollow straw men. The script does not rush to judgement either, and is stronger for remembering that any narrative about armed conflict, even one that has all the hindsight of the terrible impact of the Great War, does better when it presents both the pro- and the anti- in a balanced way, before it finally does pick a side. No character or motive in this story is a stereotype just to be mocked or blamed: there are no straw men arguments here.
Connectivity:
Deeper Thoughts:
One for the Dads / Mums / Shippers. Human Nature / The Family of Blood is all about what it means to be human, and what could be more human than fancying people off the telly? I've spoken before, with a smidgen of embarrassment, of my crush on Jodie Whittaker. It's difficult to write about without seeming either sexist or a bit of a prat or both, but I think it may prove instructive, so I must continue. I've always thought Jodie was very good looking, and her personality comes over as attractive in interviews too. I wondered whether I would be put in the position for the first time that the Better Half was in throughout the David Tennant era, that of fancying the Doctor. But the way that Jodie plays the Doctor is completely asexual, or so it seems to me. There's lots of childlike wonder and big sister-ish energy, but no sexuality in there at all. This is in contrast to Tennant's take on the role, which - presumably with some encouragement from his showrunner - is very similar to his performance as the younger version of the title role of Russell T Davies' Casanova, to the point that that adaptation, screened in 2005, looks a lot like an extended audition. It seems unlikely that Doctor Number Ten was not intended to have a least some of the Venetian sybarite's sexual magnetism, if not his insouciance.
This would be standard practice of Doctor Who for long periods of its run. It was often stated, to put it crudely, that certain regular cast were put there, and skimpily costumed, for the benefit of the Dads watching. Later, in a ham-fisted attempt at equality, there was a bit of stuff for the Mums too (Mark Strickson as 1980s companion Turlough, for example, stripped down to his speedos in his last story). It's all nonsense of course. It was all played so innocently - as it had to be, family show and all that - that no adult could be even slightly titillated by anything in Doctor Who. Even in the sex-starved 1970s.
It's more likely that the Doctor Who companions, male and female, gave fan service instead to the more hormonal segment of the audience. When I first started watching Doctor Who, in 1981, I fell madly in love with Tegan Jovanka from pretty much the first episode I saw her in. My friend Jamie at school only had eyes for Nyssa, and thought I was crazy, but Tegan was the one for me. Watching Kinda was a seminal moment: Janet Fielding, her character's mind having been taken over by the Mara - a giant snake - plays as close to the erotic subtext as she can get away with in the pre-watershed timeslot. I needed a lie down after that episode, though I was too young to know exactly why. (Sorry - smidgen of embarrassment - probably I'm sounding sexist or a bit of a prat or both, but these things are nonetheless true.)
Looking back, though I regret my clumsy pre-pubescent thought processes, I don't regret my choices. Tegan is strong and self-possessed and refuses to be defined by the Doctor, or anyone else. Ultimately, it comes down to the personality of the character (or perhaps the personality one is projecting on to them; Doctor Who scripts didn't have much time or space to allow characters to become that well rounded, so there was room for one's imagination to play). A curious illustration of this was that the Better Half, during this re-watching of the Human Nature two-parter, found David Tennant much more attractive as John Smith. When he started remembering his true self and spouted confident Mockney patter, it put her right off. This is understandable: Smith's vulnerability and bravery are precision-tooled to make viewers of a certain disposition go doe-eyed and melt. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that sort of thing gives rise to creativity, which is always a good thing. There is a whole strata of fan fiction focusing on 'shipping', i.e. making up stories about characters in your favourite shows getting it on. There have even been official tie-in stories about obvious pairings such as Ian and Barbara, Ben and Polly, Adric and K9. Okay, I may have made that last one up, but probably there isn't any likely combo out there that someone hasn't conceived and documented (though I'm not searching online to check). The unfolding text of Doctor Who knows no boundaries...
In Summary:
An excellent edifice built on a slightly wobbly premise.
It's more likely that the Doctor Who companions, male and female, gave fan service instead to the more hormonal segment of the audience. When I first started watching Doctor Who, in 1981, I fell madly in love with Tegan Jovanka from pretty much the first episode I saw her in. My friend Jamie at school only had eyes for Nyssa, and thought I was crazy, but Tegan was the one for me. Watching Kinda was a seminal moment: Janet Fielding, her character's mind having been taken over by the Mara - a giant snake - plays as close to the erotic subtext as she can get away with in the pre-watershed timeslot. I needed a lie down after that episode, though I was too young to know exactly why. (Sorry - smidgen of embarrassment - probably I'm sounding sexist or a bit of a prat or both, but these things are nonetheless true.)
Looking back, though I regret my clumsy pre-pubescent thought processes, I don't regret my choices. Tegan is strong and self-possessed and refuses to be defined by the Doctor, or anyone else. Ultimately, it comes down to the personality of the character (or perhaps the personality one is projecting on to them; Doctor Who scripts didn't have much time or space to allow characters to become that well rounded, so there was room for one's imagination to play). A curious illustration of this was that the Better Half, during this re-watching of the Human Nature two-parter, found David Tennant much more attractive as John Smith. When he started remembering his true self and spouted confident Mockney patter, it put her right off. This is understandable: Smith's vulnerability and bravery are precision-tooled to make viewers of a certain disposition go doe-eyed and melt. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that sort of thing gives rise to creativity, which is always a good thing. There is a whole strata of fan fiction focusing on 'shipping', i.e. making up stories about characters in your favourite shows getting it on. There have even been official tie-in stories about obvious pairings such as Ian and Barbara, Ben and Polly, Adric and K9. Okay, I may have made that last one up, but probably there isn't any likely combo out there that someone hasn't conceived and documented (though I'm not searching online to check). The unfolding text of Doctor Who knows no boundaries...An excellent edifice built on a slightly wobbly premise.
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