No matter what the threat, as long as the Doctor’s around we usually feel safe in the knowledge that he’ll figure out how to save the day. So when the Doctor isn’t around, the story feels a lot less safe. The show has on numerous occasions removed the Doctor from the story (at least temporarily) in order to raise the stakes. But, it’s never had the Doctor replace himself with a human being before. John Smith is not the Doctor, and he is very human, complete with fear and doubts. The Doctor will usually guide us all to safety, but John Smith is not only unable to help much, but is frequently a hindrance here.

This means that Martha has to try and step up and save the day. She’s the only person with any clue as to what is actually happening. Unfortunately, not only did the Doctor choose to become human to try and stop the Family of Blood from finding him; he also chose to become human in England, 1913. So Martha becomes a maid at the school where John Smith is teaching. Meaning she is a black woman of low stature in a racist society with a rigid class hierarchy. Martha is not only fighting to save everyone from the family of blood, but she is fighting against the racist social structures of the era.

In this Series’ previous adventures in the past, the show didn’t really address Martha’s race. There might be a line of dialogue mentioning it here or there, but mostly the show ignores such sensitive social issues and focused on telling a fun story. I understand why the show has done this, and think it’s a valid choice. But this story finally addresses it, and it does so with real intelligence.

The episode smartly avoids using slurs, and there aren’t many instances where people even actively comment on Martha’s skin colour. But it’s there in almost every exchange Martha has, and with almost every character. Everyone, including the nice characters like nurse Redfern and yes, even John Smith (The Doctor) himself, look down on and dismiss Martha pretty much constantly. Martha finds herself choosing to ignore or to just take the systemic racism a lot of the time. Then, when she needs to make her point, it usually requires her having to argue in order to be heard, and often she still isn’t.

The racism displayed here is a very grown up way of approaching it. It’s not just that many people were bad 100 years ago and that’s why they were racist. Many of these characters are good, but societal attitudes were more racist in 1913. So it’s in the social structure of the time and the thoughts/behaviour of the people in this time as well.

Apart from having Martha find time to pine after the Doctor in this episode (“He had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn’t me”), this is a great episode for Martha, as she tries and often fails to hold everything together in the Doctor’s absence. She gets to be heroic at the climax, jumping in front of danger, and grabbing a gun so that everyone else can escape.

This story might be Freema Agyeman’s best performance in the role. She’s fantastic here, although so is everyone else. But I’ll talk more about David Tennant and Jessica Hynes in my review for ‘The Family of Blood’. I do want to quickly mention how good I think this episode is at distinguishing John Smith from the Doctor. It eases you in a little, by making him at first seem somewhat fun and adventurous. But, as the episode goes on John Smith feels so very human and by contrast the Doctor feels so very alien. The episode peppers in moments where we feel a twinkle of the Doctor within John Smith. But when the threat arrives at the episodes end, John Smith is terrified and confused by the goings on. He has no idea what he should be doing and as such we have no idea how our heroes are going to make it through either.