What happened?
The Doctor, believing he is a human named John Smith, manages to escape the initial trap of ‘the family’ and holds up at the school, commanding the boys to take arms and mount a defence. Timothy, a boy holding the watch that contains The Doctor’s consciousness, returns the timepiece to The Doctor and he wrestles with the decision of ‘killing’ John Smith and abandoning the potential life he could have with the nurse to become a Timelord again.
In the end he chooses to become The Doctor, and cruelly punishes ‘the family of blood’ by interring them in various prisons that leave them permanently trapped in time, living forever like how they planned but not in a way they would have wanted. The Doctor and Martha then return to the TARDIS and leave 1913, the nurse and the human world, behind.
Thoughts
A bit of a surprising episode, in some ways, and not all of them I am quite willing to say married very well together. There seemed to be quite a lot of ideas being thrown into the mix all at once and that had the effect of suddenly making the last five or ten minutes of the episode cluttered and weighty.
The actual business of the plot was relatively lightweight. ‘The Family of Blood’ were given very little further explanation beyond their motivation to become eternal and so grow and spread out across the universe. They were rather easily outwitted in the end, with The Doctor pretending to be human and stumbling around pushing buttons on their ship before making a run for it.
Whilst it was a thrilling moment once he revealed himself as The Doctor (that switch between ‘John Smith’ and The Doctor characters was really good work by David Tennant) the manner by which ‘the family’ were so easily bested makes you wonder why The Doctor considered them so deadly he had to hide his consciousness away in the first place.
As I expected, Martha didn’t fare very well here – entirely unjustified, too. She was an absolute heroine; stayed behind to allow everyone to make their escape, persuaded The Doctor to return, even declaring her love for him, and all for what? To be given a thank you and a hug at the end before off they went again.
The Doctor is actually starting to get on my nerves in this regard. When he had returned as The Doctor he still had the audacity to go to the nurse and basically invite her to come travelling with him as his companion. He said he would like that! I kept waiting for her to say she couldn’t, that he was already ‘with’ someone, but that didn’t get a mention. But she turned him down anyway, and so then he just strolled back to Martha with a hug and thank you and off they went!
Perhaps this is deliberate. They are making The Doctor behave so objectionably towards Martha as part of a series arc. If this is the case then I hope they justify it because, otherwise, I’m finding it really difficult to warm to The Doctor when he’s behaving so ignorantly disrespectful.
Better was the idea being explored here that The Doctor was a terrifying monster of a person, as well as being so wonderful. Timothy’s frightened reaction was also mixed with awe (and an eventual thankfulness by the finish) as he glimpsed images of The Doctor wreathed in fire and dispensing cold-hearted punishment. Indeed, the justice he meted out to ‘the family’, binding them in eternal, tormenting prisons seems way more monstrous than just killing them (or, in the least, letting them die as they were supposed to very shortly).
Is his treatment of Martha and the use of his powers as he sees fit being used here to paint a portrait of The Doctor as a kind of anti-hero? I see all this stuff and I am forced to wonder if it is intentional or just the product of what the particular writer of that episode was doing. It’s hard to imagine such scathing depictions were just allowed to slip through the net so I will have to assume it’s part of the direction the show is taking.
Of course, with the next episode, the reset button might just get pushed and The Doctor and Martha will get along like before as though none of this ever happened. That can sometimes be the danger with Doctor Who as a serialised drama that also caters heavily on standalone episodes.
The last thing to discuss probably encapsulates my general enjoyment mired in confusion this episode left me with overall. The moment where The Doctor, as John Smith, touched the nurse and allowed them both to see the life they could have had together was moving and yet incomprehensible. At least to me. The Doctor had a family with her, grew old and then lay on his death bed having apparently had a great life. It was a touching, interesting sequence – I just don’t understand what caused it, what it was supposed to be or what we were supposed to glean from it. It felt less like a glimpse into a possible future and more like a flight of fancy.
It seemed absurd. And yet I liked it. That’s pretty much my overwhelming feeling towards this episode.
What was the best part?
Whilst The Doctor’s glimpse of a happy human future was emotive stuff, and his ‘ta-da!’ reveal as really being The Doctor amidst ‘the family’ was sparkling stuff, the best part of the episode arrived at the end. Timothy, in World War I, managed to avoid his death. Somewhat mawkish, but in an episode that came laden with heavy referencing of the futility of war (way too overdone for my taste) the ending coda, with Timothy as an old man, a war veteran, paying respects on remembrance day was absolutely lovely.
The Doctor and Martha dropped by, just to catch him there, with Martha putting a poppy in The Doctor’s lapel. Timothy saw them, and smiled, and in that nice little wordless exchange a more powerful and touching chord was struck that the rest of the episode couldn’t get near.
What do I think will happen next?
No references to Saxon in this two-parter, so the only ongoing thread is the matter of Martha and The Doctor. She announced she was in love with him here, taking things up a notch. She was cool enough to play it down afterwards though I suspect there’s going to come the crunch when that coolness evaporates and she breaks down under the impossible strain of her feelings for him not just being returned but pretty much being bluntly disregarded. The girl is gonna fall hard.
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