Monday, May 9, 2016

Probably Not the One You Were Expecting #7: Human Nature/The Family of Blood by: Paul Cornell directed by: Charles Palmer

Human Nature and The Family of Blood stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones with Jessica Haynes as Joan Redfern, Thomas Sangster as Tim Latimer, Harry Lloyd as Son of Mine, Rebekah Staton as Mother of Mine, Gerard Horan as Father of Mine, and Lauren Wilson as Sister of Mine.  It was written and adapted by Paul Cornell, directed by Charles Palmer with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Susie Liggat as Producer and Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson as Executive Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 26 May to 2 June 2007 on BBC One.

 

This is one of few Tenth Doctor stories that I absolutely adore as with the others I adore share the thread of allowing David Tennant to actually be the Doctor he was meant to be.  In fact this story is tied for the top spot of my favorite David Tennant stories sharing the honor with Midnight and Blink and from the first viewing I knew that this was based on a previously published novel featuring the Seventh Doctor.  That would make you think that having two stories that are very similar obviously terminate any real status of the original novel being considered canonical.  This is not the case however as the two stories actually share very little as the adaptation process has taken its toll.  The plot set up remains largely the same with the Doctor becoming human, falling in love with a human while an alien family terrorizes an English town pre-World War I and it is up to the companion to convince John Smith to become the Doctor again.  There are only two characters that remain from the novel the first being Timothy Latimer (Dean in the novel) who although he is never hanged and doesn’t get to make a deal with Death in this version, still has the same sort of storyline with dealing with bullying.  The next character to remain intact was Joan Redford whose only real change is that instead of being a teacher she is upgraded to the position of nurse which helps a lot with the idea that it is the Tenth Doctor experiencing these events.

 

The rest of the story went down a very different sort of plot with a different sort of message.  While the original novel was a tale about what it means to be human as seen through the alien Seventh Doctor becoming John Smith and how not to discriminate, the television story is more about what it means to love with the Tenth Doctor who was already basically a human with two hearts and a time machine falling in love.  This story would have worked much better with a different Doctor even with David Tennant working his hardest with a script that he honestly loves.  Tennant isn’t a bad Doctor, but he is my least favorite yet here by the end where he punishes the titular family of blood, he comes across as the Doctor.  He is not the man who never would, but the Doctor who is someone who knows when there is a need to kill.  His actions are fitting of the Doctor, especially the Seventh Doctor who ironically in the novel only has his enemies exploded as tributes to Death.

 

The companion in this story is not Benny, but Martha Jones who has her best appearance in this story as played by Freema Agyeman.  Martha being African American and in an era that is both racist and sexist, actually gets to have a better appearance than Benny with one exception that I will get into in a moment.  She has to deal with minor slurs on screen but in the moments behind the scenes I’m guessing the character had been called a lot worse.  Martha becomes an advocate for suffrage and knows that the racism of the period is going to end in time, and wants to get people pushed in the right direction.  There is one glaring problem in the story concerning Martha as Russell T Davies just had to force in some Rose angst in Cornell’s already fine script that actually acknowledges that the classic series exists and that Paul McGann is the Eighth Doctor.  We have an emergence of the jealous Martha that I hate and the Doctor acting like Rose is the only companion who could ever solve problems even if Martha has always been more capable as she is a Doctor.  The other flaw with the story is it has a lot of intrusive music from Murray Gold which just ruins some scenes.

 

To summarize, Human Nature and The Family of Blood has the makings of a classic and time will tell if it is one as the flaws are very few and far between.  The Tenth Doctor gets a chance to really shine here and Martha actually works better in this type of story that Benny did, but some interference from a certain showrunner stops this story from being a perfect one and there is one character who Davies really should have let Cornell keep in considering who Davies is.  If you have read the novel you would know who mean.  I still love this story nevertheless, but it could have been a perfect story and would have improved Series Three which is already a little bit below average with only two stories reaching above an eighty.  95/100

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