Skip to content
TARDIS Guide

Review of Only Human by doctorwhoisadhd

11 June 2025

This review contains spoilers!

  • Roberts doesn’t know how to write someone who isn’t from the 21st century, to be honest — all the characters broadly have the priorities of 21st century normies, and the author doesn’t seem to realize this. Even when there are differing cultural norms from modern ones, they are generally not well thought out and rely HEAVILY on standards of today’s society. For example, WHY would neanderthal era humans want, like, or even care about having filed nails??? Also, why did they hold a wedding that was basically a modern one in structure? Unsurprisingly given the author, there are a couple transmisogynistic jokes along with this (there is no reason why Neanderthals should think it would be funny to call a man a woman — that is very much a modern hangup).
  • I also thought the worldbuilding of the cultures of the Neanderthal-era people was very weak and kind of, I don’t know what the word would be, but prejudiced? The Neanderthals are clearly supposed to be ugly from the text (fat, hairy, big noses — I personally would very much disagree with the idea that these traits are ugly) and the (Neanderthal-era) humans more attractive (white teeth, which doesn’t make sense given they don't have dental care yet). Also, the ancient humans are described as having what sounds like a London accent and then their last name is Welsh, which doesn’t make a lot of sense — why shouldn’t they have the accent that co-evolved with Welsh as a language? Rose is also shown to be disrespectful of the (long, Welsh) last name, which I thought was unfair. Then the resolution with that is VERY contrived given the plot previously.
  • The point the writer is trying to make about the future humans never feeling "bad" emotions and getting eugenics style beauty surgery is very much undercut by the fact that the one Refuser of these ideas is portrayed as fat, ugly, undesirable, and unable to keep to his own personal space. It really confuses the message he’s trying to make — are you endorsing the Refuser’s ideas or aren’t you?
  • Roberts just sort of shelves Jack for the vast majority of the adventure, and there isn’t a very good reason for why it would be him and not Rose. Sure, the Doctor says it’s because he likes Rose more, but then he and Rose immediately split up to investigate different things. The other thing I didn’t like about this is how it throws Rose straight into a misogynistic storyline — she basically gets kidnapped by Neanderthal-era humans and is put into a forced marriage. It would have been nice if this was Jack instead, and Rose had stayed behind to deal with Das — this would remove a lot of the cultural baggage.
  • The characterization of the villain was thin and cookie cutter, same with a side character in the beginning who instinctively trusts the Doctor with no reason given for it.
  • This does have the bones of a good story, but it’s very poorly executed re: the aforementioned errors.
  • Some things I did like, though: the Doctor randomly showing up with a horse (who he persuaded to let him ride via the Psychic paper), canonization of the TARDIS swear filter, some of the things the Doctor said (leaving Jack behind instead of Rose because he likes her more, he travels with humans because they can be good or bad but never boring), the Doctor being literally taken apart and having his organs and stuff messed with, the bit at the end where the Doctor talks Rose into getting her body out of the cabinet while her head is detached, the bit at the beginning where the kid messes about with the pet, the Hybractors

doctorwhoisadhd

View profile

Review last edited on 11-06-25

  Flag