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.

The first half of a stunning two-parter.  I love how writer Paul Cornell just throws you into things and you get to piece together what happened to the Doctor as the story unfolds.  Not only is this an incredibly important story for the Doctor's character, but it also establishes major Time Lord lore in the form of the fob-watches.  It's also quite possibly Martha at her peak.  She very much carries this episode and the one that will follow for the vast majority of the run-time.  Martha is so hopelessly put in this bad position - she is a woman of colour at a time where that makes her powerless and voiceless.  Even John Smith - the Doctor now unable to recognize or remember her - clearly views Martha as a subordinate.

So she's left to pick up the pieces with no plan, no easy solution, and no full awareness of who she can trust or what she can do.  It's a nightmare few other companions have endured.  Human Nature is solid as hell overall.  It does a great job of putting us in this time period and it is full of great character work even beyond Martha and the Doctor.  I really like the romance between Jenny and "John."  In a show full of one-story romances, this is easily one of the most stand-out and significant among them.  Even the boy Latimer was done pretty well, though his role as the super-special kid destined to help the Doctor remember (while navigating bullies) is a little tropey here.  I like the angle these are all future World War 1 veterans that's explored more in the next episode, so it all works out anyways.

Plus the Family of Blood make for a very sinister set of villains.  They too are memorable even though they have a lot of competition in this franchise as one-off monsters.  And it all really, really helps that the next episode, The Family of Blood, absolutely nails paying off everything set up here.

New Who Review #36

Human Nature

This story is so good. Its story is unique and intriguing to see the doctor forced into changing into a human to protect himself and Martha. He doesn't expect to fall in love but he does anyway. The cool thing is this story is based on a book by the same name as this episode. The family of Blood is a different kind of villain and I think Son of Mine is the best one out the 4. The scarecrows were really really creepy in the way they move (it gives peg doll vibes) really enjoyed part one of this. 10/10

I prefer the 2nd half of this 2-parter but this episode is still really good. The chameleon arched Doctor is really interesting to see and Martha has to take care of him while facing the racism (and sexism) of the time they happened to land in. It's also an interesting look into the mindset of pre-WWI Britain when it comes to glory and fighting.

The concept of this story is one of my favorites. The Doctor becoming human is rife for interesting story directions and it succeeds. John Smith becomes emblematic of what it means to be human, and his ‘journal of impossible things’ is neat way of circumnavigating the existence of both himself and The Doctor. The fledgling romance between Joan and John doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, though I think it could use more room to breathe. Martha is truly the MVP in this story, dealing with all the period-typical attitudes while ensuring extraterrestrial harm is avoided. However, her treatment in the plot regarding her race was largely unnecessary. While I understand the desire to portray it as an element of the time, it goes beyond what the plot necessitates. Its greatest flaw is not just that Martha is subjected to such racism but that characters we are meant to empathize with, namely The Doctor and Joan, are perpetrators of those aggressions. It would not at all have been out of character for The Doctor, or rather the hodgepodge of his personality that is John, to be more kind. An otherwise really strong story, it does have its valid criticisms.