Chronological Doctor Who Watchthrough #26:
Human Nature (1913)
What a fantastic episode! ‘Human Nature’ mixes so many elements and they somehow all come together to make a very cohesive story and I don’t feel that any part is sidelined, John Smith’s love story, the war commentary, the racism Martha experiences, the terror of the Family of Blood, the setting up of the premise, the character of Tim and his weird psychic powers.
It’s very clever to open with an incomplete scene to start the story and then an immediate cut to John Smith in his room explaining his dream. It’s very intriguing and gives a lot of questions but you also do get a good idea of the basic premise of the episode.
The Family of Blood are absolutely terrifying. Hats off to all of their actors but especially Harry Lloyd who played Son of Mine. There are many scary villains in Doctor but few as terrifying as any one member of that family.
I’ll discuss more of the war themes in my post for part 2, as they’re explored much more heavily there.
I love John Smith as a character. The emotional crux of the story for me revolves around humanising him as much as possible before his inevitable demise, making an absolutely fascinating show of the Doctor’s almost cruelty, as it clearly never even occurred to him that John Smith was a real and distinct person in his own right. And his romance with Joan Redfurn is so beautiful, and so tragic because you know it has to come to an end.
Also, this is one of the best episodes for showing Martha’s character, her capability, her intelligence, her resourcefulness, and sometimes her impulsiveness. My favourite scene for her in this episode has to be her clocking that her friend is not human any more and asking bizarre questions like if she wants meat in her tea.
I now want to address the racism Martha experiences here, and I do think it’s kinda handled both well and poorly? It’s handled well in the sense that given the time period it does a good job of demonstrating period-accurate racism and showing us Martha’s point of view as a victim of it. On the other hand the episode is fundamentally flawed in that the Doctor chose a time period in which to hide with absolutely no consideration of what would be comfortable for Martha. If there had been some real demonstration that they weren’t safe in the TARDIS to add proper time-urgency I’d give the episode some more leeway, but as it is it unfortunately stands as another example of the Doctor in series 3 really not being a good ally to Martha as a black person.
The final thing I wanted to mention is that cliffhanger. Absolutely gorgeous as John and Joan have that gradual realisation that the Doctor is real, right before the family come in and scare the absolute pants off us. Part 1 perfectly builds all the elements of this story up to a head. What do I think of part 2? Well, you’ll have to wait until I next post.



















