Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Schizoid Man

We will remember
All those episodes that fell
So this one might live.

The Family Of Blood

Attention blog readers! Is YOUR entire existence based on a lie? Are YOUR dreams ultimately petty and meaningless? Then stop writing to Jim'll Fix It. Dear Jim. Please can you fix it for me to be an important figure on the world stage. Signed, Archduke Ferdinand...

This is been a public service announcement on behalf of the Neurotic Gallifreyan Party.

How in the name of God is anybody going to top this any time soon? The whole world and David Blunkett's dog is aware by now that the source book is held up as a pinnacle of the New Adventures series, but it cannot be overstated; this is the first episode ever in the history of Doctor Who that views like a novel instead of a script. Even Genesis Of The Daleks has a whiff of Bluebottle reading his own stage directions. It's also utterly superior to a good ninety-odd percent of all book adaptations you will ever see on the screen in this day and age, because its heart and soul isn't being swamped by in-your-face special effects and pretty pictures that discourage the viewer from using his imagination; the whole point of reading a book in the first place. I said it last week, I'll say it again; if your series need to scrimp on its CGI budget, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT.

And if you found the Doctor's torment painful to watch as John Smith's psyche falls apart while everything he holds as sacred is stripped away, be fucking glad the book wasn't Paul Cornell's Timewyrm: Revelation instead. You'd have pulled a Katarina before forty-five minutes were out.

I'm a bit late to the party and I'll be here for another week if I don't keep to the salient points, so here goes...

- A cliffhanger which the Doctor isn't immediately instrumental in resolving. FINALLY. Why did it take two and a half years? Life doesn't pause every time you nip down the shops, so why should most Doctor Who two-parters feel like two seperate chunks instead of one complete story with a decent bridge?

- Aliens who kill just for the fun of it, who at the end of the day, are rubbish. And not Slitheen-rubbish either. Daleks kill because they're conditioned to, Cybermen kill for the sake of efficiency. But neither derive any satisfaction from doing so; in fact very few Doctor Who enemies actually do, save the Master and Davros, which marks the Family out in the two-parter's great bait and switch. What's so special about the Family? Absolutely nothing. The Doctor runs and hides not because they're the threat we'd been led to believe, but because he simply can't be bothered to smite them with his own overwhelming dominance. Take the Family away from their stolen technology and they're helpless, a gang of cosmic bullies and nothing more. Audacious, yet utter brilliance.

- The Roahl Dahl punishments. As the great man would tell us through dozens of his own novels, kids absolutely love watching a bully get theirs with delicious irony. In Human Nature the book this is very Seventh Doctor, but as in The Runaway Bride it's also a key cold-hearted characteristic of the Tenth Doctor that he occasionally gets so fed up with it all that he drops right back into 'don't fuck with me' mode. Ultimately, this is the most human facet of all.

"Be fucking glad the book wasn't Paul Cornell's Timewyrm: Revelation instead. You'd have pulled a Katarina before forty-five minutes were out"

- The utterly pragmatic and ruthlessly logical worldview of death. The object isn't to die for your country, it's to make the other soldier die for his. The most shocking thing about the cottage isn't the inference that all the occupants are dead, it's how casually Nurse Redfern deduces and accepts the fact, since there's nothing she can do about it. There'll be time from emotion later if we survive this, and then there'll be some hefty responsibility to pay. And yet on one paradoxical level, the Doctor isn't responsible for the carnage this time at all. Just what was the TARDIS thinking, forcing him to aclimatise to a time period that flew in the face of the positive virtues of humanity that previous Doctors would extoll, but not so much that when faced with the choice he wouldn't wake up, go "Shit, what have I been doing for three months?", and then bugger off toot-suite?

- "He was a braver man than you." Yes, yes he was - because nobody was there who could administer the slap and tell him look, you've already died nine times before now.

- "You'll like this bit." This week, Latimer adopted the mantle of the audience's projected conciousness, his litany of praise to the Doctor echoeing that of every small boy across the land, and more than kept up the exemplary standards of the entire cast. It's the bit every child likes when the TARDIS dematerialises, because they know he'll back in another fantastic adventure; maybe next week, maybe next season, maybe, in little Tim Latimer's case, fifty years. But he'll always be back. Which leads to...

- The Remembrance Day punchline. And then, after bitchslapping us for thirty solid minutes that death is inevitable so you'd better get to it, suckers, Paul Cornell turns around and hits us with that. Yes, there is a point to it all after all. In a lesser writer's hands, the moment could so easily have been mawkish or manipulative instead of genuinely moving; but there's nothing hollow, cynical or condescending about it in the slightest. The perfect end to a beautiful episode.

2007 is really turning into a vintage year for Doctor Who, isn't it? None of your crap 1979 table wines or the cheap Krug at one of Jeffrey Archer's parties for this season. As fans, we're wont to suggest that Doctor Who is never better than when it draws upon it's past (without going 1980s overboard, that is), so how can you not adore a season that, as well as pushing all the right old-Who and new-Who buttons in equal measure, pays its own tribute to the wilderness years as well as the style of the old Doctor Who Monthly comic strips? Yeah, there have been a couple of right clunkers that are as much to do with personal taste as they are rank silliness, but the series is reaching highs this year we'd never have dared dreamed were possible back in March 2005.

Next week (oh just pretend): anyone got a pin the size of St Paul's?

The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Family Of Blood: Christmas 1914, Germany 2, England 3. The winning goal in the trenches was scored by Latimer and the Germans have made us pay for it ever since.

The Family That Body Snatches Together, Stays Together

The Family of Blood

A galactic game of hide and seek. A kiss chase with dire deadly consequences. A Duncan Norvel routine played out across several parsecs... And all after a Time Lord, the last Time Lord. Doesn't that make him a protected species? Or one that's now even more highly prized, like that tasty final Dodo that ended up in a delicious white wine sauce. The Family are certainly licking their lips at the prospect of devouring him, quite possibly with a fine Chianti.

"The third Doctor's penchant for dogging in antiquated vehicles."

But the bouquet of a Time Lord is a particularly full bodied one, just look at the sixth Doctor... if that's not a full body then I don't know what is. So, to throw the Family off the scent the Doctor has deposited all that makes him a Time Lord into a device styled as a pocket watch. It has got to be bigger on the inside to enable it to store all that shouting, posturing, gurning, goofing, jaw jutting, arrogance, ego, meandering wanderlust... and that's before we get onto the previous incarnations character flaws and other assorted peccadilloes. The seventh Doctor's knowledge of spatial dynamism of nth reality spoons, the sixth Doctor's favourite pie emporiums across 17 star systems, the third Doctor's penchant for dogging in antiquated vehicles. There's a hell of a lot that needs to go into that watch, I'm amazed that they didn't have to settle for a grandfather clock. Although that might have slowed the action down somewhat and required Tim to have a tented trouser for the majority of the episode creating a rather unsightly bulge in a chap's breeches what?

"A decond class dicked to Doddingham, please."

Now, it may be a tad unsporting of me to start picking holes in what was a magnificent slice of Who... but why let that stop me. If the Family could be "thrown off the scent" merely by a little olfactory misdirection then why didn't the Doctor just ensure that they all received a fairly nasty head cold and then proceed to decimate all Lemsip/Tunes/Lockets/generic cold remedy production in the galaxy? Could have saved all that messy feelings stuff and stuck his feet up for a few weeks and, instead of pretending to come from Nottingham he could have actually gone to Nottingham, safe in the knowledge that the demented Family would never, ever, be able to reach him there as they would only ever end up in Doddingham? On a decond class dicked no less.

"Murray Gold's descent into Flake advert music hell."

See? Mr Cornell just wasn't thinking things through. As it was what we ended up with was fairly magnificent. Even Murray Gold's descent into Flake advert music hell at the end is forgiven. And I'll also overlook the fact that as John Smith aged he turned, visibly at any rate, into The Fast Show's Rowley Birkin QC. So... why not raise a glass to Mr Paul.

I would... but I'm afraid I am very, very drunk.

The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Family of Blood: the Zygons are joining forces with the Sontarans in a joint legal bid to get inferior alien races who use their registered trademarks (in this case, aliens taking human form) expunged from the relaunched Doctor Who.

Vote Result: The Family of Blood

After another record of 440 votes, the results are in for the sixth blog poll for The Family of Blood:

• 95%: Superb – Family Fortunes with Les Dennis
• 05%: Not Good – Ask the Family with Dick & Dom

Come back after Blink for the next poll.

2007: Fits the Eighth, Ninth - Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!

I almost didn't write this review.  I honestly felt, what little there was to complain about, and wonderful things to say about Human Nature, has already been said.  I'll just focus on a few things though.

So often in Time Travel shows, even in Doctor Who, the past doesn't necessarily feel like a different period in time as much as perhaps being only a few cities over. Everything came together perfectly though, this time, and this genuinely felt like like the 19-teens.  The cast was truly magnificent, and this is despite me constantly being distracted telling myself that Mother of Mine was NOT being played by the slutty barmaid from Two Pints. Cheers to Sangster especially, even though I honestly haven't seen him in anything since Love Actually.  I'm happy for a link to that movie, as I've been known to push for Liam Neeson as the 11th Doctor.

Rebekah Staton is NOT the slutty barmaid from Two Pints of Lager..

John Smith, not so much for most of the story, as he doesn't stand out THAT well, perhaps the mark of being an effective human.  Watching him break down, denying his true self, trying to bargain with himself, panicking at the thought of having to turn back into this alien thing.  Moving stuff.

That ending.  Wow.  Alright, I'm going to go ahead and put forth a thought I had on previous comment.  Sure, it might have been a little out of character, what he did to the Family.  Maybe a little harsh.  Maybe a little cold.  What choice did he have though?  Who else was going to do it? The Time Lords aren't around to clean up the messes that time makes, let alone the Celestial Intervention Agency.  There are no Monan Host, No Warpsmiths of Phaidon, no other major temporal powers left that possibly COULD clean up this mess, and stop the Family from hurting anyone ever again. The Doctor's had to grow up a little. It's his responsibility now, no one else works on his scale anymore.  Yeah, he looked pretty cold while doing it but... better to wear a poker face than break down right? And the music?? I haven't gotten that much of a chill from a piece of music since the end of Back to the Future..

No more Monan Host, Warpsmiths of Phaidon, Celestian Intervention Agency, etc..

I can't get past that half-smirk that Baines had when the Doctor covered him up.  Yeesh. Creepy. Speaking of, if no one else, we need Baines back as the new Cassandra.  Let him come back for a one-off next year, PLEASE. 

By the way, I was going to give a dialogue failures/triumphs, but.. I can't.  Paul Cornell never ceases to amaze me (I read the last issue of his Marvel series Wisdom last night - you must read this as well if you haven't already). Nearly every line everyone says, apart from a few ridiculously over the top lines from the Family and Martha's "not me" moment, this episode was, to borrow a phrase, a slice of fried gold.

A slice of fried gold...

Next week: Doctor Who meets a Japanese Horror Movie! Can the Doctor fix Sadako's vertical hold and chiropractic issues Sonic Screwdriver setting 666d?

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Family of Blood: Paul Cornell deserves to be knighted.  No joke there, that's just the way it is.

Blood and Thunder

I’m going to talk about the book a bit in this review, and rather specifically. So if you haven’t read it yet but think you might well do so – especially given that it’s available for free once more on the BBC website – or if you are already in the middle of reading it for the first time, then I suggest you give my thoughts here a miss. If you don’t already do that anyway.

I suggest you give my thoughts here a miss. If you don’t already do that anyway.

Also, perhaps less palatably to some of you and even rather regretfully on my own part, I’m going to start off with a complaint. It’s one of only two I have with the episode, and the other is a relatively minor quibble, but this one point really irritated me as soon as it happened. The Doctor’s stumbling about in the family’s spaceship and ‘accidentally’ bumping against the various conveniently-placed control panels, like some sort of galactic Frank Spencer. I was very disappointed with this scene; I know it was supposed to be obvious the Doctor was back – to the viewers, anyway, if not the suddenly-rather-dim family – but did he have to defect the Family in such a ridiculous fashion? After everything we have had before, all the superb and wonderful elements and scenes and characters and dialogue across the two episodes, I felt that this denouement diminished the two-parter a little.

It was not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination, and there was still more than enough in this episode to lift it and the story to amongst the top rank of stories since the series’ return two years ago. But in changing the ending from the book, it also lost John Smith’s chance at heroism. He had a little of that, in a sense, choosing to open the watch and destroy himself, becoming the Doctor again and turning his back on the life he could have had with Joan, the life that had been presented to him as an almost Biblical temptation.

In the book he’s more directly a hero, and a more directly independent person as well.

But in the book he’s more directly a hero, and a more directly independent person as well, with a separate soul or spirit or existence or whatever you want to call it, which the restored Doctor is able to channel into the body of a captured member of the Family. He and Smith are then able to play a trick on the remaining Family members, and by the time they have realised Smith is able to turn against them, with poor old Joan thinking all the time that one of the Family had had a last minute change of heart and saved them all, never knowing the heroic fate her beloved John finally succumbed to.

Doesn’t that sound a little more tragic and poignant than not even seeing Smith’s death, only knowing it when the Doctor goes blundering into the ship? There was still power here, admittedly, and Tennant’s performance as the distraught Smith begging to know whether John Smith is still a good man was some of the best acting we have yet seen from him during his time on the series. Perhaps it’s all swings and roundabouts – we lose the ending from the book, which I personally preferred, but gain these affecting scenes of Smith’s fear and doubt, which the book didn’t really have, at least not in anything like the same way.

Tim spends most of this episode almost seeming like a very young version of the Doctor.

There’s also rather more of Tim here, who comes across as a more sympathetic and likeable character on screen, being more distant and withdrawn in the book, where I also felt he was a little older. Tim spends most of this episode almost seeming like a very young version of the Doctor, absorbing the thoughts and feelings of the watch and perhaps giving us a glimpse of what the young Time Lord might have been like back on Gallifrey all of those many many years ago, although that’s an outrageous piece of baseless speculation on my part. Nonethtless, Tim was an excellent character excellently played, especially his Ninth Doctor-evoking “Oh yes sir, every time!” when accused of cowardice by Hutchinson.

Tim, though, brings me to the other point of contention I have with this episode, although as I said it’s a much smaller issue than the Doctor’s pratfalls against the switches in the ship. It’s the change in Tim’s characterisation from the book, or perhaps more accurately his fate. In the novel, he does take part in the First World War, but only as a stretcher bearer. Well, I say ‘only’, but it’s made very clear that he is in a great deal of danger as he rescues wounded men from the field of battle. However, here in the television version when Martha suggests to him that he doesn’t have to fight, he replies with great conviction that ‘I think we do’, as if there were no other choice. It is right and noble and just to fight for a cause in which you believe to be moral and true, but if history has told us anything it’s that the First World War was one of the most monumentally pointless conflicts that has ever been fought. There were no Nazis to destroy, no oppressed peoples to liberate, simply the self-destruction of a lot of utterly ludicrous and obsolete European monarchies.

There were no Nazis to destroy, no oppressed peoples to liberate, simply the self-destruction of a lot of utterly ludicrous and obsolete European monarchies.

So although The Family of Blood had a lot of excellent moments where it rallied against the futile nature of death and destruction of war, it seemed to me that this change of Tim’s own personal story was a shame, as it lessened some of the impact and took away some of the message that no – you don’t actually have to right, but you can still do the right thing.

This is doubly a shame because Cornell had provided such good moments earlier on, with director Charles Palmer, linking the boy soldiers at the school with that we know history had in store for their generation. The scene where they battle the scarecrows will rightly be acclaimed I think as one of the most striking images to be provided by this new incarnation of Doctor Who, and this was an example of something that lost nothing, even though it was watered down from the novel version – quite rightly – for a Saturday night audience. You could not, after all, have a group of teenagers with machine guns blowing a little girl with a balloon to pieces on prime time BBC One.

You could not, after all, have a group of teenagers with machine guns blowing a little girl with a balloon to pieces on prime time BBC One.

There was an admirable sense of tension and menace during the scarecrows’ siege of the school, that stood up very well to the calmer and more emotionally charged elements later on in the Cartwrights’ house. I talked in my review of the previous episode about the good performances on show, and there is little further to add here – I have mentioned Tennant already, and Harry Lloyd continued to impress as Baines, one of the finest villains to have been created for Doctor Who in many a long year. I was rather glad that he wasn’t completely destroyed at the end, as it leaves the way open – however unlikely, I admit – for him to return. Perhaps in twenty or thirty years time, whoever is the equivalent of the 1990s version of Paul Cornell will bring him back for whichever line of Doctor Who novels happens to be around at the time.

Speaking of which, one element I was glad that was retained from the book was Joan’s institutionally racist attitudes, as it showed that she was not the perfect character and could be just as fallible as any other human being, and was not some perfect and glorious specimen for the Doctor’s hearts – quite right, I suppose, because it was not the Doctor as such who fell in love with her. In the novel of Human Nature Bernice out-and-out refers to Joan – albeit somewhat spitefully – as a racist, and here her remarks to Martha were well dealt with. Martha got the chance to show more of her intellect and all-round dignity in the face of danger or oppression, and we got more of a sense of a realistic historical setting. I know that some people feared racial issues would come to dominate stories set in the past by either their over-doing or glaring absence with a black companion, but thus far this season I think they’ve dealt with the issue pretty much perfectly. Or as well as a family action/adventure series can or needs to, anyway.

They say that screen adaptations of books are never as good as the original. It would be very hard to say such a thing of Human Nature and The Family of Blood, because the two are so very different in so many ways, but I think we can call it a draw overall. They were written for very different audiences and in very different worlds, Doctor Who-wise, and comparisons only show how much our dear old show has changed over the past twelve years; or perhaps simply how our attitudes to it have changed. I’m not sure too many adaptations of stories from other media would work, but this was a fine effort producing a fine two-parter, that stands up well to anything else from the new series and, indeed, from all of the show’s long and glorious history.

Goodbye Mr Smith

The Family of Blood 

Well that was another fine episode of Doctor Who. I must admit, though that I didn’t think it was as good as the previous installment, but it was still very good and most definitely the best thing of television that week.

The Human Nature cliffhanger was second only to The Empty Child cliffhanger for the prize of best cliffhanger in the new series, as it really did seem that the Doctor and Martha were in danger because the Doctor, not being himself, was completely oblivious to what was happening around him. Indeed it was only the intervention of young Timothy Latimer that allowed Martha to save the day.

Martha was really showing her worth in this adventure and I really believe this will make the Doctor and Martha a tighter nit team than they have been all season.

Freema Agyeman was on top form throughout this story and if you weren’t sure about her before, there is no doubt in my mind, that by the end of this adventure, you will learn to love her.

I also thought David Tennant was particularly good in the episode. Well up until the part when he went from 0 to smug in 2 seconds and the Doctor emerged in the family’s ship at the end of the episode. I have quite enjoyed his performances in the last couple of episodes but I think that is because he wasn’t playing the Doctor. I really liked John Smith and I was hoping that he would stay like that, but sadly it wasn’t to be.

Harry Lloyd was very creepy throughout the episode and is definitely one of the best  (if not the best) villains of the entire new series. I am not sure about the way the episode ended with the Doctor just casually pressing a load of buttons and then blowing up the alien’s spaceships. That did strike me as being a bit of a convenient ending.

I certainly wasn’t prepared for the Doctor dispatching the Family of blood in the way that he did though. I mean the Doctor isn’t meant to be cruel, just like Steven Moffat said in his script for The Curse of Fatal Death but in the episode he was just a heartless bastard in the way he dispensed justice on the family.

It could be argue that they got what they wanted in a way. They wanted to live forever, so the Doctor let then live for all eternity, just not in the way that they would have wanted. It did seem a little bit out of character for the Doctor but when you consider that this is a man who has committed genocide before and also blew the Daleks home planet out of the sky, perhaps it is not as out of character as you might at first think.

I was also a bit disappointed when the scenes of the Doctor getting married and having children were also just a flash forward to the life he could have had as John Smith. I was hoping that it would have happened and it would have been fun to read the internet forums after, as they would have hated that, so that was rather a shame. It was also very touching as you really felt for him when he realised that that wasn’t the life he was meant to live, and even more sorry for Joan as she was going to lose the man she loved, because you knew that when he had changed back into the Doctor fully then he wouldn’t be interested in her that way, but, having said that he did get off with Madam du Pompadour last series so I guess anything is possible!

In the end young Timothy Latimer was just a latent telepath so that explained away the fact that he appeared to see Martha in her modern day get up. It was quite obvious really from the fact that he saw into the future in Human Nature and just happened to know things he wouldn’t normally be able to know, but until this was explained he could have been absolutely anything.

The direction in the episode was superb especially the battle scenes in the school courtyard between small boys barely able to hold a rifle, let alone fire it, and the scarecrows. They were quite intense and cut with scenes of the small boys wiping away the tears whilst they were firing hammered the message home that war is hell, but also that that would have been the life of public school boys in that era. They would have been trained to fight in a proper and just war as the headmaster said in the previous episode.

Apart from a sly nod to another excellent Virgin New Adventure, that would have been the way certain people would have thought in that era, particularly those who had fought in the Boer war several years previously. The headmaster also said that he would never see a child in that kind of environment but was perfectly happy for any of the boys in his school to become soldier and to fight for king and country. That does almost seem like double standards but was again the kind of thoughts that would have be very common in those days.

The final scene featuring the aged Timothy Latimer remembering his fallen comrades was a very touching scene but was I the only one, who would have liked to see Geoffrey Palmer playing the elderly Latimer? Well his son was the director after all so I thought that would have been quite nice.

I am not quite sure that I buy the whole idea that the Doctor hid away from the Family of Blood because he didn’t want to do what he eventually had to do at the end of adventure. I am not quite sure if that washes with me at the moment and I may need to think about that a bit more until I can decided whether or not I buy that concept.

So, I would have to say that I loved Human Nature/The Family of Blood. It was so different to the previous adventure, and it seems to be completely different from the one that follows it too.

Only Doctor Who can get away with doing such different stories in the course of a single series and that is why we enjoy the programme so much.

In fact, watching this has made me want to read the original novel again, twelve years after I first read it!

The Fury of the Time Lord

"I'm not... I'm John Smith! That's all I want to be, John Smith! With his life, and his job, and his love. Why can't I be John Smith? Isnt he a good man? Why can't I stay?"

This is the bit where I was in tears. David Tennant's performance, Paul Cornell's writing, and Charles Palmer's direction make this my moment of the year, nay the decade, nay the century. I have always been ugly, overweight, and incredibly annoying, and bullied to a point no-one should ever have to put up with, and so to want to be someone else is a well known feeling for me. Admittedly, it's a completely different circumstance, but this was what clinched it, because I too have been in tears about wanting to be a different person.

But enough about me. This is a topic which was touched on in Father's Day, with that lovely "I've never had a life like that" speech, and now he gets that life, the normal, family life that he craves. Family for me is the key theme of the story, and the sadness that the enemies can have a family, but a hero can't. Maybe, when the show is finally sent out to pasture, the Doctor will be granted his short, futile, happy life.

"Falling in love? That didn't even occur to him?"

This, and everything John Smith says to Martha, such as "What exactly do you do for him?", "then they can leave Earth and I stay as I am", are just so well written and performed that my heart breaks each time, because John Smith is terrified for his life, his fake life, his love.

This episode just has so many wonderful moments, the scarecrow massacre, the flash forward to the life that could have been, and the final, unique vengeance scene. The villains are superb, with that wonderful sense of humour, insulting humans wonderfully, imitating things, "Super super fun.", and everything they do.

It's so hard to describe what makes this episode so great. It caps The Empty Child because the acting, the writing, and the directing are all just so superb, that this is the finest piece of television I have ever witnessed. Everything is just perfect. It plays to the strengths of the series: David Tennant's acting, Period settings, fear of war, genuine fear of being without the Doctor, and splendid villains. What more can I say? If Paul Cornell were to write a series finale, it would be so moving.

Sorry, Mr Moffat, but The Empty Chid has been beaten. This has got all of what made The Empty Child so good, and to top it off, no Billie Piper. Mr Moffat, please add another slice of perfection next week.

Infinity/10.

Running In The Family

In my review I forgot to mention the hymn at any great length, 'To Be A Pilgrim' which I remember singing when I was at school -- right through primary into secondary.  I wonder how many other people were suddenly shocked back into their school days by the sound of those voices.  Anyway, the ratings direct from the outpost of Gallifrey ...

6.6 million (39.1% share)

Which is fairly predictable -- nice evening 'outside' (whatever that is) etc.  Both ratings and share were enough for it to be the highest rated show of the day.

Ancient and Forever

When a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…

The Family of Blood

Dried your eyes yet? Sniffed all those sniffles away? Convinced family and friends that you just had ‘something in your eye’ at about ten-to-eight last night? Well don’t worry, you’re amongst friends here. And if like me you sat watching ‘The Family of Blood’ never far from tears then it was with bloody good reason; because this was heartbreaking stuff. More emotional even than Reinette’s final letter, more tragic than Rose’s seaside farewell; this was Doctor Who being about as grown up and honest about the wonderful and terrible things in life as you’re likely to get. And two years on from ‘Father’s Day’ Paul Cornell has done it again: reduced a nation of mid-thirty-year-old blokes to blubbering wrecks. The man’s a menace, I tell you…

I can’t find barely a bad thing to say about ‘The Family of Blood’ besides perhaps that most troublesome aspect of the second part of a two-part story: the cliff-hanger resolution. And even then it seems churlish beyond reason to sigh about the inevitable Mexican stand-off and resultant running around for ten minutes that seems to be the only way writers can find to get the action going again. But enough about my pointless whinging; there’s enough during these quite stunning forty-five minutes to drive away any thoughts of contrived get-out clauses involving the fobwatch-ex-machina. I’m just surprised that Smith didn’t suddenly remember how the Sonic worked and blasted the scarecrows ‘til all their straw fell out.

Paul Cornell has done it again: reduced a nation of mid-thirty-year-old blokes to blubbering wrecks

So instead let’s concentrate on the oh-so many moments that remain embedded on the brain some several hours and a couple of viewings later. And can I just start by saying what a travesty it will be if Harry Lloyd doesn’t win every poll going as ‘Best Villain’ this year (and yes, I am including John Simm in that one). Because he makes Baines that most favourite of enemies: one you can laugh with as well as feel terrified of. Whether it’s mocking the Headmaster’s staccato orders or blasting people into tomorrow with his silly gun, Baines follows a long tradition of Who villains that are as memorable for their speeches as they are for their actions. Sharaz Jek? Sutekh? The Chief Clown? These were all iconic monsters for whom the threatened menace of what they could do was as potent as any action they actually did. Harry Lloyd, take a bow: you’ve just added your creation to the pantheon of some all-time greats.

But he’s hardly alone in acting off his thespian chops in an episode blessed with an eclectic cast who are all raising their game for a script and director that are really worth the effort. I didn’t say much about Thomas Sangster last week, so I’ll correct that omission now. Here’s a child actor who belies that slightly unwarranted stigma of Children’s Film Foundation performer. Though Latimer’s was a relatively minor role in Paul Cornell’s original novel, the TV version of ‘Human Nature’ makes his importance front and centre. And as RTD mentions in the accompanying Confidential, how fitting that the person entrusted with the Doctor’s life essence is a little bit like the Doctor himself: awkward, gentle and able to see the bigger picture. Even when transported in time a couple of years to the carnage of WWI, you still believe in Sangster’s performance; and it’s just a shame that he obviously couldn’t play himself for that touching Remembrance Day coda.

what a travesty it will be if Harry Lloyd doesn’t win every poll going as ‘Best Villain’ this year

But like I say he’s hardly alone in giving performance-best turns. Freema Agyeman finally comes into her own, even challenging Tennant for the crown of exposition-with-clarity champion as she rebuts Joan’s dismissal of her suitability to become a Doctor (and, like last week, gently undermining the casual racism so redolent of the time). In fact everyone from the Headmaster down to the cowardly Hutchison never fail to impress with the sincerity and power of their performance. But at the end of the day ‘The Family of Blood’ lives or dies on the gravitas of just two actors; and was there ever any doubt that David Tennant and Jessica Hynes wouldn’t rise to the occasion? Hynes must be a revelation for those of you only familiar with her from Spaced and The Royle Family, instilling Joan Redfern with a quiet and tragic dignity that provides the beating heart at the centre of this very human tragedy. And Tennant? Well, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But I can’t think of a more nuanced performance by any actor in the lead role, ever. Whether it be as the tortured Smith slowly realising the part he must play - and the sacrifice he must make - to maintain history, or in the quite wonderful way that he reveals himself as the Doctor by underlying his characteristic buffoonery with some real menace. Tell me, has there ever been a moment when the Doctor’s entrance has made you want to punch the air more than this?

Oh, and as with last week the direction’s not bad either. Season one we had Joe Ahearne, season two Euros Lyn. And as with those two who took the episodes they directed and made them absolutely theirs you can now add Charles Palmer. The crowning moment has to be the nod to Sam Peckinpah as the schoolboys gun down the advancing scarecrows, backed by the soundtrack of school choirs. And if there’s a more iconic moment this year than John Smith standing amidst the carnage and - just like the Doctor - finding himself unable to raise a gun, then I want to see it. Now.

Tell me, has there ever been a moment when the Doctor’s entrance has made you want to punch the air more than this?

In fact the whole of this two-parter’s ‘anti-war’ message never feels so ladled on that you risk choking on it. War is Hell, we knew that; but what ‘The Family of Blood’ does so well is show the mundane reality of this carnage. Young boys wiping away tears as the bullet rounds whistle about their ears; the enemy casually slaughtering people in front of your very eyes; the helpless feeling as the bombs rain down; and the fact that amidst all this bloodshed two boys divided by resentment can find comradeship in the mud of the trenches. Like I say, this is about as adult as this show has ever got.

But finally it’s to that script and that writer that we simply have to return. Two years ago Paul Cornell told a story about a simple, ordinary man doing the bravest possible thing: giving his life to save the world. Two years on and he’s playing the same tune but raising the stakes. Back then Pete Tyler - ordinary bloke but one of the most important things in creation - did the decent thing so that the world would live but he would never see his daughter growing up. Now an ordinary school-teacher called John Smith is faced with the choice of living with the love of his life or condemning humanity to an existence of slavery and extinction (just as the spectre of WWI would promise). I don’t think I need to say what choice he made, so I’ll just echo what Joan later says to the Doctor: ‘He was braver than you’. And while the Doctor may have subconsciously yearned to be this simple, ordinary man; and to have lived the life of love and marriage and babies that that oh-so cruel flash-forward promised (TNG’s ‘Inner Light’, anybody..?) when it comes down to it he’s about as alien as any alien we’ve ever seen on this show. And just to ram the point home, how chilling were those scenes of the Doctor extolling justice on the Family of Blood? How heartless was his belief that he could just take up with Joan again seeing as the man he was to her was dead and gone? And how brave of a show that pulls in such family-friendly viewing figures week-after-week to depict its lead character as a bit of a bastard for once?

how brave of a show to depict its lead character as a bit of a bastard for once?

Next time: Blink and you’re dead. Can this possibly top even ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ as the best slice of Moffat genius?

(The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Family of Blood: though the Doctor may burn at the centre of time and see the turn of the universe, he’s a bit crap at making-up)

We are family

That Doctor is one cruel, hard-nosed bastard. The Family of Blood sees the Doctor's vengeful and righteous persona magnified to an astonishing degree.  It's simultaneously exhilarating and repulsive to watch the Doctor utterly destroy the family, with punishments more drastic than the one inflicted upon the other. He taps into the almost unimaginable resources available to a Time-Lord to imprison or punish the Family- resources that they had eagerly sought. The Doctor is firmly established as an almost unconquerable entity in this episode (which admittedly raises some problems for future stories) and it will be interesting to see how the stakes are raised, now that the Last of the Time-Lords doesn't hold himself back anymore.

"It's an interesting skewing of expectations from Cornell and it's simply brilliant."

He's a man and a god and whereas the more human-like qualities were exhibited previously this season, this episode his humanity is barely identifiable. John Smith's is the most emotionally resonant plot of the episodes, with David Tennant turning in a startling performance with mentally and emotionally wrecked performance that tops Doomsday. I experienced a twinge of disappointment when he resumes usual transmission as the Tenth Doctor, simply because his performance as John Smith is so detailed and convincing. It's thanks to Tennant's breadth of performance that the contrast between Smith and the Doctor is so noticeable. The inhuman qualities that I had identified in Smith (his cruelty, ruthlessness, etc) become amplified in the Doctor, and the positive qualities of the Doctor become apparent in Smith. It's an interesting skewing of expectations from Cornell and it's simply brilliant.

"Paul Cornell and director Charles Palmer have established an absolutely seamless narrative, whose themes are simultaneously easily to grasp and reward further, more detailed exploration"

Another interesting riff on a previous scene from Who-history, is when Joan asks if the Doctor can change back to being Smith. It's phrased in exactly the same way as Rose Tyler posed the question after Eccleston's regeneration and the Doctor's cold resignation and admission that he can't is absolutely heart-breaking. I could blather on and on about the performances and themes of the episode for ages yet, but that would just bore everybody to sleep. The fact is, I don't need to. Paul Cornell and director Charles Palmer have established an absolutely seamless narrative, whose themes are simultaneously easily to grasp and reward further, more detailed exploration. It seems a bit selfish to highlight those themes in a blog post, as it's far more fun to find them for yourself.

"A wonderfully nuanced performance from Agyeman"

The ending does feel a bit in your face however, although after an initial viewing I'm inclined to give the episode the benefit of the doubt. I think the ending was earned, but I can't help but feel it was a little too blatant after everything that went before. I did like the Doctor and Martha wearing the poppies. Speaking of Martha, wasn't she great? Despite being relegated to the sidelines during the resolution of the episode (but I suppose it had to be the Doctor that resolved everything, thematically speaking), her performances is miles above everything else this season. When she hugs the Doctor, he's hugging her simply as a friend- the look on his face, is simple and platonic. When we see her face, it seems almost perfectly happy and almost mournfully pained. She has the man she loves back, but he still doesn't love her. A wonderfully nuanced performance from Agyeman.

Finally, no review of the episode would be complete without praise to Murray Gold. As the scarecrows march towards the school, the piece of music used is absolutely pitch perfect. It's his best score of the season, for the best episode of the season. It'll be interesting to see if any of the season's remaining episodes will outrank this in terms of fan adoration. Why, only a script from Stephen Moffat could even possibly pose a risk to Paul Cornell's position as best writer of season 3. Lucky nothing like that is coming up, eh? Oh..nevermind.

"Whoso beset him round, with dismal stories..."

Glancing through the back of the new dvd release of Robot, as well as noticing that they've forgotten to mention that Barry Letts is on the commentary track (poor Barry) I misread the top line of the synopsis so that instead of 'mortally' it said 'morally' and so became 'Morally weakened by the Spider Queen on Metabelis 3, the Doctor is forced to regenerate'.  Apart from offering the wonderful image of  Pertwee finally letting his hair down and the timelord stopping off at Metabelis 4 to pick up some skank and a bit of skirt before making a few bets on a gladitorial contest in Ancient Rome, it demonstrates how lately I've really been hoping that my favourite television series (tm) would surprise me.  And tonight, for a change, it did, right from the opening through to the climax.

I loved the unpredictability of Gridlock and but I think this two parter, concluding tonight with The Family of Blood, might claim to be one of the best (if not the best) stories ever.  I'm so pleased that my hyperbole of last week hasn't been misplaced and that once again, in the middle of some familiar tropes it managed to become something totally new.  This was dark, ugly, strange, meloncholic yet still witty and yes, totally surprising, and in fact everything that BBC Four's Children's TV on Trial season suggested has disappeared from children's and even family television entertainment. 

"the wonderful image of  Pertwee finally letting his hair down and the timelord stopping off at Metabelis 4 to pick up some skank and a bit of skirt"

Primarily it was about death, one of the subjects that lately we've apparently been trying to hide from kids.  From the comfirmation that when the family possessed the human vessels the original person is gone, to the boys taking up arms again the scarecrows in a rehearsal for the theatre of war a year later, to Joan taking John and Martha to the house of the little girl understanding that the owners will have been vapourised, to the family not wanting to die by stealing the timelord longevity, to John Smith dealing with his own mortality so that the Doctor can live and finally that all of this wouldn't have occured, as I suggested last week, if the timelord had chosen a different place and time to 'hide'.  Yes, kids it's a shitty world and you're all going to die.

Yet in the midst of that it provided an admirable sense of hope.  The boys didn't kill anyone because the scarecrows are filled with straw, the family don't die in a variety of grim somewhat cruel ways, John Smith is still there under the surface of the Doctor this time not the other way around and by returning the Doctor saves them all.  Again.  Tim and his friend live because he's able to see the future and dodge the bomb, and he lives to a ripe old age, old enough to commemorate his fallen comrades in what is possibly one of the new series best conclusions.  Yes, we're meant to feel but on this occasion it was earned and those of us who slept through History at school learnt something in the process.

But it was a mark of the story that it still managed to rattle along but unlike elsewhere it stayed tonally concrete.  One of the few moments of humour, when Martha showed that, yes, it is possible for someone of her social class to be a Doctor came from another reminder of the casual racism that went on at the time (and at the same time daring to make Joan a slightly unsympathetic character with modern eyes).  That battle sequence provided the requisite action but tempered with the image of boys shooting guns, the very people who shouldn't be anywhere near a battlefield yet still are in some parts of the world.  Some time in the future, perhaps someone will write an essay about those scarecrows and how they could be seen as a symbol of the objectification of the enemy that goes on in war, the apparently necessary disregarding of your opponent as being human.

"That battle sequence provided the requisite action but tempered with the image of boys shooting guns"

The magical connection between the boy and the watch was wonderfully redolant of the adaptations of the past of C S Lewis and John Masefield, of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and particularly The Box of Delights, finding through an onject fantastical doorway into another world and adventures.  Of course, today's kids might see Harry Potter parallels and that's fine but part of me wondered if there was the potential for another spin-off, of the watch's powers not being completely depleted as Tim drifts through history writing wrongs as he goes, a kind of Quantum Leap going the slow way.  The story also harked back to the kinds of fantasy stories the BBC has always done so well but has lately abandoned for being too out of step with contemporary society.  The fates of the family where laced with the kind of fairytale imagination you'd expect from The Brothers Grimm and Lemony Snicket, the little girl trapped in all mirrors everywhere perhaps appearing out of the corner of a child's eye whenever they wash their face in the morning. 

The way these fates were revealed, the villian's voice over a montage sequence was again another example of how this story plays about with time and innovative approach to editing.  That's not entirely new -- see Elton narrating his story in Love & Monsters, but it managed to turn these murderous fiends into sympathetic characters in order to highten the darkness in the Doctor's character.  The flashes forward were a treat too and it's nice that it wasn't clear whether John and Joan had actually been given the opportunity to experience that life for themselves within those moments rather like the fallen messiah in The Last Temptation of Christ or for a genre reference Picard in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Inner Light.  It would be lovely to think that the watch (and the spector of the Doctor hidden within) had given Smith the opportunity to live a version of the life he was about to give up to ease his choice.

"part of me wondered if there was the potential for another spin-off"

The impeccable (there's that word again) production design continued this week with the apparent reliance on location filming paying dividends in terms of creating a sense of place.  If some of the CG didn't quite integrate properly (I'm thinking this time of the mass of scarecrows which looked like different groups matched together) the episode still benefited from a cohesive approach to period design meaning that when elements of the future did intrude (the sonic screwdriver, the Tardis, the space ship) they looked even more alien.  For a comparision see the Daleks in Manhattan episodes in which looked like a recreation of a movie version of the past rather then the authentic article.  It's a fine line but if your setting is believeable it goes some way to helping the audience suspend their disbelief and enjoy the story all the more.

Livesjournal

The dream journal makes an encore appearance in the Flash intro for the next episode on the BBC website as it flicks through the various pages - including the double-page spread displaying all ten recognisable incarnations of the Doctor; letting you, if you're quick enough at grabbing and saving screenshots, see a lot more than you could on screen in Human Nature. In fact, zoom into the page and you can even make out some of the text. "I have been different; it is not like remembering one's youth..."

I'll be very surprised indeed if the whole journal isn't made into a PDF extra for the Season Three DVD boxset release...