Days 753 to 754 - Human Nature / Family Of Blood

Now we're back into some great Doctor Who with this two part story which sees the Doctor transforming himself into a human in order to hide from a race of aliens known as The Family who wish to consume the last remaining Time Lord which will then allow them to live forever.

Therefore for most of this story we do not see the Doctor at all but his human counterpart, John Smith who is working as a teacher in a boarding school in the year 1913. He has no memories of his previous life and it's left to Martha to look after him. Martha is working as a maid at the school and is the only one who knows that they are in hiding. After 3 months, if the family do not find the Doctor then they will die so all Martha has to do is wait and then when the 3 months is up she can open the fob watch where the Doctor's consciousness is stored and he will return to normal. Sounds simple enough.

Unfortunately it's not long before John Smith is falling in love with the nurse at the school and this is where things get complicated. First of all Martha is pretty pissed off that the Doctor has fallen in love with a human and it's not her. Secondly it makes restoring the back to normal and therefore effectively killing John Smith all the more heartbreaking.

These are the kind of episodes I love. Science fiction gives us a chance to explore the every day human emotions but applied to far out ideas. Here we have an ordinary man, John Smith. He has dreams of being an adventurer called the Doctor but has no idea that these dreams are in fact true. When faced with the prospect that his whole life has been a lie he completely breaks down as I imagine we all would. As Joan begins to suspect the truth about her new love we get some fantastic scenes where she subtly tries to quiz him about his childhood and starts to realise that the facts spouting out of his mouth sound simply like entires in an encyclopedia. 

In one tear wrenching scene as John Smith realises he must sacrifice himself in order to save the world, he and Joan hold hands over the fob watch and see what their entire future together could have been, with their marriage and subsequent children. As Joan puts it "The Time Lord has such adventures. But he could never have a life like that"

With the Doctor back, he quite insensitively asks Joan to join him on his travels. She's tells him she can't as the man she knew is dead and the Doctor merely looks like him. He continues to try to persuade her until he gets the coldest response ever of "Tell me one thing, if the Doctor had never come here. If he'd never chosen this place..on a whim, would anyone here have died?"

For the most part the people who meet the Doctor seem to get something positive out of it, for example a completely differbt outlook to life. With regards to Joan, she sees the Doctor as the man who killed her future husband. Not a pleasent man at all!