Again, I know this seems like a bit of a stretch for a complaint, but just bear with me here.
Human Nature is written by Paul Cornell and is based on his novel of the same name. It featured the Seventh Doctor, had a bit more connection to the Time Lords, and is...not something that I've read. Sorry to any fans of the books out there (that being said, as I've said before, I do like the books I have read). I do intend to read it eventually (it is actually on my to-do list), but at the very least not having read the book will allow me to judge this episode purely on its own merits rather than having to constantly compare them.
The episode begins with Martha and the Doctor rushing into the TARDIS with laser fire following them. They dodge and the Doctor questions Martha as to whether or not "they" saw her face. When she confirms that they didn't, he gets the TARDIS moving but knows that "they" have a vortex manipulator and they can follow them across time and space. The Doctor picks up a fob watch and begins to explain about it, telling her that "this watch is..."...before the Doctor suddenly wakes up in what looks to be a well-kept board room.
The Doctor rises from bed and Martha enters in a fetish fuel outf-I mean, a maid outfit. The Doctor tells Martha about his dreams, a dream where he's some devilish madman known as the Doctor and Martha is his companion. All of this, he says, is happening in the year 2007. Martha gives "Mr. Smith" a smile and tells him that she can prove him wrong, handing him a newspaper dated November 10, 1913 and that he is as human as they come.
And he agrees with a smile, leading into our opening title sequence.
Upon our return from the 2005-2010 rendition of the Time Vortex, we see that John Smith is a teacher at an all-boys school in the English countryside. While he teaches, Martha cleans along with a fellow serving girl named Jenny. They both shoot the breeze and Martha deals with some casual racism from two of the students.
Unlike the Chibnall era, this is actually appropriately done - that is not drawn out to the Nth degree and then given social justice steroids, but instead if fitting of the period without going into the era of cartoon parody. Although by the time this comes out, Series 12 will have already wrapped up, so perhaps Chibnall will have amended his ways and the finished season will be an utterly spectacular masterpiece to outshine even the Phillip Hinchcliffe era of the show.
While I'm wishing, I wish I could skip reviewing The End of Time.
While John is out and about, he makes the acquaintance of Matron Joan Redfern, the school's nurse, and there's a clear attempt at a romantic subplot here. She attempts to fish for an invite to the harvest dance, and the scene mercifully ends with John falling back down the stairs before it can go any further. Joan patches him up, Martha rushing in for some classism to go with the racism as Joan demeans her medical knowledge.
As Martha tidies up the room, John tells Joan about his dreams and shows her that he's written some of them down. As Joan flips through the journal, we see images of the TARDIS, Gas-Masked Zombies, a Dalek, the Moxx of Balhoon, and...Rose.
What's that? I hear it...clawing its way back from a parallel universe! I know it! You know it! It's terribleness so incredibly intense that it has actually managed to break the walls that bind reality! It's...It's...IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT'S...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10,111,272,574
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I KNEW IT!
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| FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-! |
You might be wondering "Hey, Madcap! Why is the Rose Tyler is Awful Counter back? Didn't that joke die at the end of Series 2?", and I agree that it died a glorious death. But the terrible nature of Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate is something that, rather like Cthulhu, transcends even death itself to plague my waking nightmares. I wake up screaming, and realize that I haven't fallen asleep yet with my only consolation being the knowledge that, once the Russell T. Davies era is over, the character is only once (as of February 2020) been seen or mentioned again.
And no, the Bad Wolf entity in Day of the Doctor doesn't count, but I'll get to that.
Neither does the quicky cameo in Let's Kill Hitler.
While this might seem so overdramatic as to devote not one but now three paragraphs to, I would like to remind you that I was more lenient in my The Runaway Bride review about the Rose references. They were all rather tastefully done and befitting of a character who had just been through some psychological and emotional trauma only a few hours before as the Doctor had gone through in Doomsday. I stand by what I said in my review for that episode - I understand why Rose loves the Doctor, I do not and will never understand why the Doctor loves Rose.
Her entire personality is the very antithesis of what a companion should be. She's arrogant, rude, borderline homicidal when it comes to anyone showing any interest in the Doctor. She treats her entire family like garbage and either flimsily justifies it or doesn't even bother. She strung Mickey along until he went to a parallel universe to get away from her (and will later come back to this universe to likewise get away from her), and the problem from this in Series 3 stems from the Doctor pinning over her to the point of vast, incalculable irritation. To the point where, whenever I try to ponder what Russell T. Davies was thinking while scripting Series 3, I get a new ulcer.
I named it "Tulip".
The Doctor is an alien of 900+ years. He is a being from another world who is like humanity only in his appearance and little else. While he has shown shades of emotion and, perhaps even romantic interest in companions at times, a trait about the Doctor that is common throughout almost the entire show is that he's an alien that moves on.
And before anyone gets in contact to tell me that Eleven spending a depressive slump in the Victorian Era over Amy and Rory being lost to him, it isn't the same thing. Amy and Rory were actually good characters who were worthy of it.
But even those that weren't given the full depressive slump, just to give examples...
When Jo Grant left the Third Doctor to marry someone who she basically said was a younger version of him, he silently toasted the couple, took a swig of champagne, and left the party.
Way later, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith had one of the best subtle relationships ever put to fiction. When Sarah Jane had to leave him at the end of The Hand of Fear, you could tell that the Doctor was absolutely heartbroken and that he had come to love Sarah Jane. And that the feelings were indeed shared.
I'll even go one further. In Trial of the Time Lord, possibly one of the most maligned parts of all of Doctor Who canon, the Sixth Doctor's companion Peri dies. Actually dies, and we see every bit of the sorrow on Colin Baker's face when the revelation hits. Did he weep and moan and fuss and make his later companion Mel feel like absolute garbage? No. He built himself back up and committed himself to avenging her and assuring that no one else fell to the High Council's trickery.
And while there's no evidence that the Sixth Doctor and Peri were actually in love at any point (at least so far as I've read into it) besides clips jokingly tied to them because of The Airzone Solution, the actual death of the only traveling companion he had had (at least on the show) very deeply cut into his being. The normally aloof, haughty Sixth Doctor was utterly destroyed by the news of her death.
All of these are boosted by the acting talent of Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Elizabeth Sladen, and Colin Baker, by the way. Absolute stars, all of them. And all of them are something that this writing cannot hope to hold a candle to, even with David Tennant's acting talent. He acts it well, the only problem is that it's complete garbage and it's so out of character for the Doctor that I'm beginning to think my "Rose is an alien parasite" theory is less of a joke and more of the genuine article.
To TL;DR that entire rant I just did - Rose Tyler sucks and there have been far, far better companions. The fact that the Doctor is obsessing over her to the point of writing about her from his subconscious dreams is absolutely ridiculous. It's absolute madness and it's a case of Russell T. Davies projecting things onto the Doctor rather than trying to write him. It's hackneyed garbage and it should have been nicked out the moment it came up. But we very well couldn't have had that, could we Russell? GOT TO HAVE YOUR SHIP BE BETTER THAN ALL THE OTHER ONES, DON'T YOU?! YOU SANCTIMONIOUS, SELF-RIGHTEOUS, EGOTISTICAL SON OF A-
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| Hang on, MadCap needs his meds! |
Okay...okay...
I'm better now.
...but yes, after that bit of incredibly rational and perfect justifiable rage on my part, Martha gets her eye roll and we do actually get a nice page of several of the previous Doctors - including Paul McGann, confirming that the TV Movie from 1996 is actually canon. Joan takes the book with John's blessing and Martha attempts to dissuade her from doing so. Joan instead asks her about John, but then curtly reminds her to remember her position.
Meanwhile, a young man by the name of Timothy Latimer is being bullied by two classmates into doing their schoolwork. When one of them mentions their father getting a promotion, Timothy mentions Africa...which the other boy had only just read in his letter from home. It seems that Timmy boy has some psychic abilities of a sort.
It is here, by the way, that we are introduced to the most gloriously hammy character of the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who, and that is not a statement I can make lightly. Jeremy Baines, played by actor Harry Lloyd, slips out to get some beer for his bunkmates with us not yet being aware of the full and utter glory that is to follow.
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| Son of Mine: So beautifully hammy that he doesn't chew scenery, he swallows entire planets whole |
Outside, Martha and Jenny gather around a fire and gossip. Martha hints at the adventures she'll have, but remains vague. A green light is visible in the sky, streaking across the night. Out of the darkness comes Matron Redfern, who is spooked by the green light as well. They eventually all meet up along with John, who dismisses the green light upon seeing it as a meteorite. After John and Joan leave, Martha rushes off to investigate in spite of Jenny's protests.
Baines gets the beer, and is confronted by the green light. He ends up finding himself at the hull of a cloaked ship. It opens and he foolishly enters, unaware of the greatness that is about to befall him. Just as he vanishes, Martha and Jenny find what they believe is an open field, though Martha doesn't seem convinced.
Inside the ship, Baines is confronted by voices calling themselves "the Family", speaking of how they need him. He wants to see what they look like and they promise that, very soon, they'll be very familiar...and whatever Baines sees causes him to scream.
"Baines" returns to the school without the beer, and acting very peculiar, which gets Timothy's attention.
The next day, Martha rides a bike out to a shed where the TARDIS is kept. She reviews a video log left behind by the Doctor and has a more complete version of the scene shown in John's dream. It seems the Doctor and Martha were on the run from the Family, and the Doctor used a device called a Chameleon Arch to rewrite his biology and human, his consciousness being saved within the fob watch.
So, the Doctor went through the process of rewriting his biology to become a human rather than a Time Lord...which, for some reason, erases his memory and replaces it with the backstory of one John Smith as provided by the TARDIS.
This brings up a question that the episode doesn't bother to - why does the Doctor have to erase his memories? A human brain isn't able to hold all the knowledge that a Time Lord brain (or brains, as we later find out in the Capaldi era) does, sure, but he could easily leave himself with the basics and hide out as a human. Unfortunately, I realized now why this had to happen with this particular set up. We're in the Russell T. Davies era, and drama must be forced even if it makes absolutely not one lick of sense.
Regardless, Martha finds nothing to do in case of alien invasion...which you think the Doctor would have as at least one of the instructions considering how often alien invasions happen in the universe and to Earth in particularly, but never mind...and John Smith brings Timothy into his study. Having asked him to get a book, while John searches for it and gives platitudes, Timothy hears the whispers of the fob watch. He opens it temporarily before putting it back into his pocket in a panic. Here, we get some clips of the Doctor in action as Timothy stares at John in shock before leaving.
Yeah, it's continuity porn, but then so was the Journal written by John, so I'll allow it.
This gets the attention of "Baines" who, while he doesn't know who has the watch or where it is, knows that something's up. His sniff is incredibly creepy, but completely fitting for the character being a schoolboy possessed by an alien and doesn't know or care that that might be off putting - he has a job to do, after all. "Baines" uses a green light over his face to inform the rest of the Family and tells them to prepare the soldiers.
A farmer mentioned earlier gets captured by one of the more memorable parts of this two-parter, namely the animated Scarecrows. They are Scarecrows in literally form and function, possessing no intelligence beyond obedience to the Family. They capture the farmer and a little girl with a red balloon who's name we learn in Family of Blood from a throwaway line, taking them away.
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| "So do I show up after this two-parter?" "Only in a cameo that makes no sense at all." |
Back at the school, John Smith is running the boys through a training exercise involving some potato sack, bucket-headed dummies and live rounds of ammunition. Timothy shows some progressive attitude before spacing out at a critical moment and having a vision to fighting in World War I alongside one of his classmates. This just after the Headmaster mentions he hopes the boys will one day have a just and proper war to prove themselves in.
Also, apparently private schools in 1913 allowed beatings given by classmates, no less. Weird.
John and Joan have a short conversation in which Joan clumsily dumps the exposition that her husband was shot. This to be followed in the next scene with some character building and a bit of John Smith saving a baby in a carriage from a falling piano just in case you thought we were out of cliches to throw around. It is after this, by the way, that John finally gives in to Joan's nagging from earlier and invites her to the Harvest Dance.
We also get a scene where John tells his backstory and mentions that his parents were Sydney and Verity - a reference to the first producers of Doctor Who back in 1963, Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert. It's a cute reference. Also, the first instance in the New Series where someone mistakes Gallifrey for being somewhere in Ireland.
Keep that in mind for the Whitaker era. It's going to actually cause you pain.
Also, we have a romantic moment between John and Joan that gets interrupted by none other than Martha storming in and awkwardly leaving to cry and go back to the TARDIS. At the very least, however, she's being cockblocked by someone who is actually there, so I can give the episode credit for that.
Needless to say, this wasn't in the Doctor's list of instructions, either. It wasn't something the Doctor thought of, almost as though he's an alien from another planet or something. Weird.
Timothy continues to hear voices from the watch and is wary of "Baines", watching as "Baines" joins the Farmer and the little girl from earlier. Alas, there are four members of the Family and the scarecrows kidnap Jenny on her way, her ending up in the ship Baines found himself in earlier. Baines is known as "Son of Mine", the farmer is "Father of Mine", the girl is "Sister of Mine", and Jenny is to be the vessel for "Mother of Mine". With her, they have a link into the school itself beyond just Son of Mine.
Also, Son of Mine is a glorious ham as he demands that the crying, panicking Jenny, demanding that she "CEASEANDDESISTSTOPTALKINGTHAT'SAGOODGIRL!" in a very "I am definitely a human, what do you mean fellow human? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" kind of voice. This goes on through most of his dialogue and damn if it isn't just a joy to watch him inhale entire universes' worth of scenery in almost every single scene he's in.
John and Joan prepare for the dance while Martha and "Jenny" meet. Mother of Mine is very obviously not behaving like herself, but Martha doesn't notice until its convenient for the plot. She flees, but Mother of Mine is already on her with a laser pistol and Martha narrowly avoids getting killed. She barges in on John and Joan, attempts to talk reason to him and find the watch, and gets thrown out after getting a bit more racism and backhanding John to try and jog the Doctor's memories.
While it does disturb them, and John has written off Martha's words as just his story, Joan does note that he did have that strange fob watch on the mantle, and now it's gone...
Martha bumps into Timothy on the way out, him getting a vision of her in the future...maybe? She's at least in modern clothes, we know that much. Martha heads into the TARDIS, digging into the Doctor's coat for something.
The Family digs around Smith's rooms while John and Joan are already at the dance. Martha arrives with the Family not far behind her. Martha tries to break things easily to Joan before John returns...and Martha pulls out the sonic screwdriver, asking him to name it. He's clearly perturbed by it, taking it from Martha's hand. She tells him the truth, but the Family arrive and start laying down the law. Holding the people hostage, the revelations come out in force. They know that John Smith is the Doctor, and threaten the lives of both Martha and Joan if he does not change back right now...
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| "Name it." "Uh...a marital aid?" "JOHN!" |
Beyond my multiple paragraph rant about what is by far the most ridiculous Rose reference in Series 3 so far and some minor issues with the logistics of the Chameleon Arch, this episode is great.
The plot is pretty alright and the period is one that we don't often see in Doctor Who - the revived series in particular being so obsessed with either modern UK or World War II era UK - and the villains are a respectable amount of menacing. Except, of course, for Son of Mine...who is ham incarnate and I adore him from the tip of his head to the soles of his boots.
The Scarecrows might seem a little unnecessary, but I enjoy them. They have the appropriate amount of menace and dip into the Uncanny Valley in the same way that the Autons do, appearing just human enough but not quite so close. Enough that it's still very alien and terrifying. Finding out that the Family made them themselves (as we do in the next episode), made perfect sense to me. The scarecrows were already around, and the Family are running through time and space after the Doctor. They wouldn't be heavy on resources, so it would make sense that they would use whatever is available.
Next time, we get the conclusion to this arc. The Family of Blood makes its move on the school to capture the Doctor, secure his Time Lord DNA, and live forever. John Smith's life begins to crumble to dust around him as he's confronted with an impossible choice. Can he put aside the visions of a future with Joan in order to reclaim his place as the Doctor and save the world?
Find out...next time!
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