The Top 10 Modern Doctor Who Episodes

[h2]9. Human Nature and The Family of Blood[/h2]

Written by Paul Cornell

“I’m John Smith, that’s all I want to be, John Smith. With his life… and his job… and his love. Why can’t I be John Smith? Isn’t he a good man? Why can’t I stay?”

The notion of the Doctor having a dark streak, a destructive quality that is the inherent flipside of his many wonderful qualities, is something modern Who has explored in great detail – especially during Matt Smith’s tenure in the three most recent Moffat-run series – but none have done so quite as elegantly or powerfully as Paul Cornell did in this two-part adaptation of his own 1995 Doctor Who novel. The entire two-parter – in which the Doctor, to avoid capture at the hands of the villainous ‘Family of Blood,’ transforms himself into a human man, John Smith, in 1913 Britain – is excellent, featuring series-best work from companion Freema Angyeman (burdened with carrying and selling long stretches of the story on her own), some of David Tennant’s all-time best material, terrific direction and production design, and a smart, insightful subtext about honor, comradeship, and the British noble spirit on the eve of war.

But what really puts the episode on this list is the last 25 minutes or so, in which John Smith – who has, at this point, been well established as an individual character separate from the Doctor – has to choose whether or not to let the Doctor reclaim his body in order to save the day. Doing so will literally ‘kill’ Smith and the life he has built – including a tender, well-realized romance between him and a local nurse – and as we come to realize what intense, unendurable inner-pain the Doctor has put this man (or himself, depending on your philosophical point-of-view) through, it becomes increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to know exactly what to feel.

Combined with the extreme stress companion Martha is forced to endure throughout, and the horror that the Family of Blood inflicts upon the local village due to the Doctor’s presence, we are ultimately forced to question how ‘good’ the Doctor really is. Is he truly doing what needs to be done, or are his actions here selfish, needlessly destructive and fundamentally self-serving? There is a whole life that John Smith never gets to live, a life Ms. Redfern is prevented from experiencing, children who are never created, all because of the Doctor’s need for self-perpetuation. In the end, the Doctor is not the one who displays bravery throughout the story – Martha, Redfern, and especially John Smith (who the Doctor insists is part of him, even though he scarcely seems to believe his own assertions) all have much tougher choices to make, and pay a good deal more for their heroism than the Doctor is ever asked to (at least in this particular story).

That last half of the second episode really is as perfect a stretch of television as Doctor Who has ever created, flawlessly paying off on everything that came before in a wild emotional roller-coaster of a finale. It is a real shame that Steven Moffat has chosen to do away with two-part stories in recent years, because while the format produced occasional clunkers – series 3 also played host to the unbearable “Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks,” for instance – I suspect that stories like this one could not have been told in any less time. Smart, moody, and hauntingly beautiful, “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood” easily serve as one of the modern series’ greatest accomplishments.

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