This is
Paul Cornell’s other new Who story,
after series 1’s exquisite “Father’s Day.”
While I don’t think this two-partner is quite as great as that episode,
it’s still beautifully done. Fine
writing is brought to life by top-notch acting, and our heroes are tested in
incredible ways (premise spoilers.)
The Tenth
Doctor and Martha are being hunted by The Family of Blood, malevolent aliens
that survive by stealing the bodies of others – for them, a Time Lord’s body is
the key to everything, and they’re relentless in their pursuit. The only way the Doctor can see out of it is
to undergo a radical process that temporarily rewrites both his biology and his
memories. He and Martha go into hiding
in a small village in 1913, the Doctor as the slightly-absentminded dreamer
John Smith and Martha posing as his maid, getting a job in the school where he
works. To be safe, they have to stay for
three months, and as the only one who remembers why they’re there, it’s up to
Martha to keep the temporarily-human Doctor safe and watch out for the return
of the dangerous Family.
For
starters, can we just talk about the Family of Blood? I love it when Who can take aliens that appear human (in this case because they’re
stealing people’s bodies) and still make them seem absolutely, 100% alien.
The Family has that in spades, and it’s all down to the excellent
acting; everything about them feels supremely-otherworldly and just wrong, and you can immediately tell that
the human minds aren’t in those human bodies anymore. This story was my introduction to Harry Lloyd
(who I’ve since seen in roles as varied as Viserys Targaryon on Game of Thrones and Herbert Pocket in a Great Expectations miniseries,) and it
was a great one. As Son of Mine, he
leads the Family with creepy, unnerving precision, so cold and so deadly. I love it!
Oh yeah,
and bonus points for the scarecrows – creepy as all get out!
It’s
really neat to see David Tennant playing an entirely different character. Because even though Mr. Smith is a construct,
a fake human with implanted memories who has tiny bits of the Doctor bleeding
into his dreams, he is altogether
different. Obviously, it’s an acting
challenge for Tennant, with shades of Dollhouse,
and it’s interesting from a character standpoint too. The Doctor has given over to being this other
person in order to keep his body out of the Family’s hands, and to do so, he
loses all control over the situation. He
can’t stop Mr. Smith from doing things the Doctor would never do, and he also
has no part in Mr. Smith being able to try his hand at the sort of life that
the Doctor could never have (thanks to the school nurse, played by Jessica
Hynes in a very different role than
Daisy from Spaced!)
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