★★★★⯪ – A would-be masterpiece with an unfortunate aftertaste.
This review contains spoilers for the ending of the book.

Read Human Nature. Do it! It’s a resounding success of a novel that, contrary to the associations of the phrase “tie-in media”, is in the same weight class as some of the best stand-alone sci-fi novels you’ve read. It’s riveting, it’s brave, its characters are written with incredible feeling, and it contains a stupefying example of how to write a satisfying romance in appallingly few scenes. The book is, in this case, a hundred times better than the movie. That said, what I’m interested in exploring in this review is something I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere: how the ending of Human Nature falls on its face.

A recurring theme in Doctor Who, and especially the New Adventures, and especially especially Paul Cornell’s work, is the tension between the epic and the everyday; between grand, unfathomable science fiction and the little things in life. When an effort is made to emphasize this contrast, the author du jour typically comes down on the side of the latter – sometimes unsuccessfully (the Fifth Doctor’s “well-prepared meal” speech in Earthshock [1982], an episode in which the evil robots with big guns arguably win, comes to mind), and sometimes, as is generally the case in Paul Cornell’s oeuvre, powerfully. Take his earlier novel for this line, Love and War, in which the winning hands include calling somebody by their chosen name and telling a story about a road trip passionately enough. Cornell seems to me an eminently media-literate man – he writes, I get the impression, with a watchful eye fixed on his message: Choosing to send your students to war as child soldiers conspicuously yields no positive results whatsoever, and despite the military making an appearance rather early, they’re never allowed to step in to provide any solutions. It is jarring, then, when the novel not only shoots itself in the foot, but does so shortly after explicitly proclaiming that “I shall not shoot myself in the foot”.

Hanging over the plot – in which the Doctor has turned into John Smith, a human, losing his memories and superhuman powers – is the possibility for the true Doctor to make a return in order to, as the deus he is, save the day ex machina. This would, of course, beyond being deeply unsatisfying (plenty of Doctor Who plots follow the structure “the Doctor is tied up somewhere, so everyone else’s agency is limited to waiting for him to show up and fix things”), run counter to the larger message of the book: If true triumph is to be found in the everyday, why should the solution be “we need the inscrutable Time Lord from faraway Gallifrey to work his sci-fi magic”? Indeed, the novel recognizes this, and – as if to reassure the reader – contains this line:

He sat down beside her. ‘John Smith is the real me. And it’s because of all this, not despite it. You don’t know what you really want in life until it’s taken from you.’
‘You mean Joan?’
‘Yes. […] I have to save her. And I have to do it as me.’

Unfortunately, in a move I can only describe as inexplicable, the novel then promptly turns around and has becoming the Doctor be the solution. Hey, is that the machina? Well, the deus has just come ex it, and he saves the day by way of technobabble. How Cornell managed to lay out a plan for the reader so concretely and yet summarily fail to execute on it, I do not know – but there is a possible explanation, though I described it as “inexplicable”. Quote the endnotes of the 2002 e-book version:

[N]obody had ever really done mythologist Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ for the Doctor, the plot that’s most commonly recognised in popular culture as that of Superman II, where the hero gives everything up to discover what normal humanity is like. Fertile ground, I thought.

The particular stage of the Hero’s Journey Cornell refers to here is the apotheosis, in which the hero gains enlightenment. And, sure, the apotheosis can be applied to the novel as a whole; that enlightenment being found in humanity (that is to say, human nature). Apply the whole Hero’s Journey to the story, however, and the apotheotic moment within the book is… when John Smith sacrifices himself and becomes the Doctor. Here, “enlightenment” is becoming an inscrutable Time Lord from faraway Gallifrey. If Cornell did indeed choose this development as part of the Hero’s Journey, it’s a shame, and if not, it is inexplicable – either way, a tone-deaf moment in an otherwise pitch-perfect book. (As an aside – and this is hardly a critique, as it isn’t fair to ask that an author should’ve come up with the exact same idea – I can’t help but feel Cornell missed the opportunity to let John Smith live out the fifty or so remaining years of his life with Joan, something that would have been possible thanks to the unique setup of the Doctor as a character.)

In fact, at no point after returning to Doctorhood does the Doctor ever make a decision differently in light of his experiences as a human – he gets a chance, in the form of deciding whether to be empathetic enough to say goodbye to his paramour (as opposed to pulling an Irish goodbye for the ages)… but comes down on the side of “no”, and has to be convinced by his companion. (In the first draft of the book, he actually does disappear without a trace, a choice Cornell rightly recognized as a mistake.) Ultimately, there’s never any sign of the Doctor having learned anything from his ordeal, save for a scene at the very end, in which the Doctor cries – a lovely moment, given that it isn’t something the Doctor is given to doing, but underwhelming as the sole result of becoming human for a time.

Human Nature does succeed in its messaging in other areas – for one, it makes a stand for pacifism and conscientious objectors (something Cornell walks back in the TV adaptation, apparently having lost his pacifist streak along the way). As a work of character writing, it’s flawless – I didn’t even mention Bernice Summerfield’s role in the book, but it’s one of her most essential novels; her thoughtscape laid out beautifully before the reader. Take this review as one long – and, admittedly, significant – asterisk next to my central sentiment: “It’s amazing.*”

I think the best way to describe this story is that it has the bare bones of the televised story but with the added extreme insanity that was Doctor Who in the 90s. The Virgin books had the mentality of acknowledging that the fans of the show had mostly grown up by the time it was cancelled so they wanted Doctor Who to grow up with them, which was sort of the direction the show was already going in when it was cancelled. The Virgin books were basically Doctor Who with a hard R rating, you name it, they've written it; sex, drugs, swearing, torture, violence, and the even the Doctor would occasionally get in on the action. Human Nature is no different, at it's core there's a lot you'll recognise from the televised version from Series 3, the Doctor turns himself human and spends the next few weeks working as a history teacher at an all boys school in early 20th century England. But he's been followed by a family of killers who want the abilities of a Time Lord. During his stay as John Smith he falls in love with a fellow teacher Joan Redfern but soon has to make a choice whether or not to sacrifice himself for the woman he loves to become the man who doesn't know how to love.

Human Nature is so unlike yet not unlike it's televised counterpart, despite being human, the John Smith persona is still very eccentric and behaves like a child who doesn't understand how the world properly works, the family is similar but very different and we get more detail into how their biology works and why they want the abilities of a Time Lord, as well as what it would mean for the universe itself. And the whole premise of the Doctor becoming a human is much stronger with the Seventh Doctor than the Tenth as Seven was one of the coldest, darkest and least human out of all the Doctors, whereas Ten was one of the more human Doctors. Which makes for a powerful ending where he has to say goodbye to Joan.

Beyond that as far as differences from the TV version go, good god! Is this story insane! Hutchinson and his cronies are even bigger bastards than their show counterparts such as attempting to lynch Timothy, calling Tim's only friend "D***** Unpronounceable", we get one of the boys who mans the vickers gun having his head blow up and splatter all over the Doctor's face, we get the school blown up with many of the schoolboys killed, Death (and I do mean with a capital D), the Son of Mine equivalent wanting to rape the companion and Joan, the little girl's balloon being used as a killer, what happens to the little girl which is such an unintentionally funny contrast to the scene from the TV episode, and so so much more. I love the TV version, it's one of the show's best episodes and one of the things it does better than the book is the addition of Martha and how she really solidifies herself as one of the Doctor's most independent companions. But the book is just on a whole other level, it is very messed up but that's part of the fun with the Virgin books.

Would become a Series 3 two parter with David Tennant as the Doctor and Miss Freeman as Martha with the Doctor becoming John Smith to escape The Family of Blood and landing in England at the prelude to WWI.