Doctor Who - The Family of Blood

[raven]

Oh, god. Doctor Who. We've had our differences recently, but just so you know: I love you. Always will. After this week's, I will not write off this season as worse than the others. This was probably my favourite of all, over even The Doctor Dances and School Reunion and all the others about which I've squeed. LOVE.

Coincidentally, this is the only week so far I've managed to get up to Magdalen with large quantities of ou3fs. I slept all morning, spent the afternoon in a red dress reading philosophy under a tree ("You look very picturesque," jacinthsong said), and then we went up Longwall and were greeted by many a wonderful person on the way up. We all settled into Magdalen's palatial TV room and for once, did not heckle. Oh, my.

Where to start with my love for this episode? Okay, actually, let's start with the one thing I didn't love: the pacing. I'm very tired and may not have a decent perception of time, but that wasn't quite right - first the bits in the school, then the prolonged bits in the Cartwrights' house, then the switch to the Family's POV... etc. Struck me as odd. But that's it.

Stuff I did like. Well. The first bits, the bits with the running round in the school, John Smith getting slowly more aware that small-children-with-guns is bad, the headmaster being vapourised - they were okay. I think I started getting with the squee the moment Martha started reciting all the bones in her hand. Honestly, Martha FOR TEH WIN. She is just better than EVERYTHING.

And then, the bits with the Doctor in the woods - okay, I typed "Doctor", but really, John Smith. Starting to crack a bit round the edges, because he doesn't want this. I guess, from his perspective, he's had a perfectly normal life, and then bit by bit, the dreams, the fading memories of a life not lived, and then he's the Doctor, this frightening, not-even-human being who is everything and ends everything, and he doesn't want it.

Which is so human and understandable, obviously, but oh, so well done. It's so much fun, watching with fannish people, because of the tiny squeaks emerging from armchairs and drifting up towards the ceiling. And there was much squeaking. I really, really want to see this again, because there are details, I'm sure, that I've forgotten. But also, Nurse Redfern for the win, too. She's casually racist and sexist, such a product of her time, and she's not sure what's going on, but she's quick and she's clear-headed - the detail of the Cartwrights' stone-cold teapot got to me - and she takes them somewhere safe.

And, oh, she doesn't want to lose him either, but she's sure he's got to open the watch. Timothy Latimer is another reason I love this episode, too. There's still a mystery about him - he was mildly clairvoyant before he stole the watch, and it might be the watch echoing back through time but I'm choosing not to think so - and he went out in the dark past the guns and scarecrows and flashes of flame in the distance to give back the watch. (Oh, and the little hug Martha gives him outside while they're waiting is just adorable.)

I never thought that he wouldn't open the watch. John Smith is this lovely dreamy character who's not perfect, he's human, and he's terrified and angsty and crying but ultimately, he's going to do it. And ohhh, this whole sequence of scenes, I have so much love for it. The only thing that jarred for me was the old!Smith bit - meh - but the rest, oh, so sad. And oh, the angst. John Smith asking what Martha is for kind of makes me want to slap him round the head, but again, that's the point. "I love him to bits" - oh, Martha. Love. I found that scene wonderful when I would have cringed if it were Rose. And it's sad and funny at the same time: the bbit about what kind of person doesn't put "falling in love" on the list of dangers, "that's how he talks?" - heeee. Funny, but so perfect.

The eponymous Family themselves - well, the Doctor destroys them almost without effort. Which is how it should be, because, honestly, they aren't the point of this story at all. You can see that, really, what with the whole of Human Nature being character set-up - the Family aren't particularly the focus - and with that continued lack of focus on them even in an episode with them in the title, well. They're not the point. The Doctor, and how he's human, and not human, is the point. (Actually, I would have reversed the two episode titles.)

I knew it was the Doctor the moment he stepped in, and it was a nice moment - buttons pressing! glasses! - but I sort of wished we'd actually seen him open the watch. Can't have everything, I suppose. The Family recounting what happened to them afterwards was wonderfully done. Deliciously creepy, but such a lovely dark, ruthless contrast with John Smith the teacher who couldn't hurt anything that looked like a little girl.

And, oh, Nurse Redfern asking if the people had died at the Doctor's whim - win. She doesn't fall for the wanna come with me? schtick, even though he still looks the same. And just when you're ready to decide the Doctor really is a cold, calculating ruthless bastard, we get a Martha Hug of Joy and Wonder. Ah, Martha. I love her.

Yes, I love this entire episode so much I'm sort of reeling. The pace picks up, it must be said. We seem to go headlong from scene to scene, which I reckon is intentional. And I like the closing shot of the Doctor and Martha, back at the end of all things.

Oh, yay, Doctor Who, for you are love. The credits rolled to an immediate plea for John Smith fic - and ensuing disucssion about whether Ten and John Smith together would be Doctorcest - and a general consensus of yay. Also, I professed my love for John Smith only to be told that he's sexist and racist and suchlike.

"He's a product of his society," foulds and I said together. "And so is the Doctor. That's why he kills everyone."

In conclusion - so much love. I now really want to see it again.

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Even though we only got little glimpses of the Headmaster, I felt so very sorry for him when the Family asked if the boys would be glad he'd told them war was glorious, and he recounted his story. He had to believe in King and Country if remembering making ramparts out of his friends' bodies wasn't going to drive him insane.

Damn. What an episode.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, urrgh. That's horrible and it didn't quite hit me while I was watching.

Yep, this episode ends everyone. :)

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Oh, *shudders* I didn't catch that, but ow, how deft and perfect.

[chiasmata]

Oh oh oh - your old people programme made it on to HIGNFY!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, yaaaaay! I really, really need a television.

[such_heights]

*flails all over everything* It was so good. Every character was just fantastic, and oh my goodness I have so, so much love. Martha completely owned everything here, I love her even more now!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Me too, me too. LOVE.

Here via a friend's flist

[tree_and_leaf]

Wasn't the point of the old! John Smith deathbed scene him becomeing reconciled to mortality - since, in effect, he was going to die when he opened the watch. When he asked if the children were safe, I think that was really about the children up at the school. He didn't want them to die, but he had to nerve himself to take the decision that would give a chance to save them, and he would have loved a deus ex machina to save him the sacrifice. Only, of course, the Doctor himself is the god out of the machine (which bears a curious resemblance to a police box)

Re: Here via a friend's flist

[tree_and_leaf]

Mind you, I agree that it was a dreadful make-up job,

Re: Here via a friend's flist

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* Definitely. I like the idea, but I think that part of it was badly executed.

Re: Here via a friend's flist

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

One of the episodes of The Myth Makers - the one where the Doctor is mistaken for Zeus outside Troy - was nearly called 'Deus ex Machina'.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Hate to say it, but sounds like I'm going to dislike it as per the last one. We will see.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Er... okay.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Joan was right to tell the Doctor to go away -- first because he just doesn't get what he did, and second, because from her perspective, the Doctor is wearing John's *corpse*. He's like a B:tVS vampire -- not her friend, but the thing that killed him.

I'm hoping for John Smith fic as well, because really I am thinking hard about how it would be to find out you were created last Thursday, and everything you remember about your life before then isn't *real*. Even if the Family hadn't shown up, the fact that the Doctor's memories were leaking through might have driven John *insane* trying to reconcile them with what he thought he knew about himself.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Joan was right to tell the Doctor to go away -- first because he just doesn't get what he did, and second, because from her perspective, the Doctor is wearing John's *corpse*. He's like a B:tVS vampire -- not her friend, but the thing that killed him.


She was right to turn him down because he didn't understand she wasn't turning him down for not being the things John was, but for being the things the Doctor was. Knowing he could feel and think and be all the things John was meant nothing, because over that would be all the things the Doctor is and she dislikes the Doctor. And he doesn't get this, because in his head he is a wonderful person who people fall over themselves to run away with...

[amchau.livejournal.com]

And what does he think he knows about himself? I had the distinct impression, as Matron pressed John Smith for details of his childhood (my ears had pricked at the word 'Nottingham'), that John didn't actually have clear memories, he just had a belief that he had grown up in Nottingham, and a list of places-- if you'll forgive an analogy between his mind and a computer program, he had a macro designed to give people (including himself) the impression that he had memories of Nottingham. Which is a reasonable result of the Doctor's reprogramming of his own brain.

In conclusion, I am also hoping for John Smith fic. So much so that I'm trying to work out what exactly I'd like to read, in terms of a framing device with which to explore this issue, so that I can write it myself.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a macro is the right analogy. John Smith *knows* he's from Nottingham, knows who is parents were, and various other tidbits, but he doesn't *recall* them. It's flat knowledge, with no detail. Which is very sad, because I keep wondering what would have happened if he lived -- how do you build a life, when everything you remember you know to be false?

I'd really like to see what you come up with. So far, I haven't seen anything that really reflects what I got of the show, but it's only the day after -- there's good fic coming, I'm sure.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

I'd really like to write, but my fanfic muscles are rusty-- I haven't written since last year (excepting essays). Can I invite you to MSN, Google Talk, or e-mail to throw ideas around and generally egg me on?

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Email is fine, and I think I can manage GoogleTalk. Just e-mail me through livejournal, and I'll respond to you from my Gmail account -- I don't want to broadcast it here.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

Same here. Incoming from my Google account.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I just tried to email you using your livejournal address ... got back a daemon undeliverable message. LJ and Gmail are apparently not talking to each other.

I do have Trillian, though I rarely turn it on. I can do so now, if you'd like.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

And you didn't get mine?

Tell you what, I'll reply again to your comment with my gmail address and then delete. loneraven has it anyway. (By the way, Raven, please exuse our nattering in your journal.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

No worries. :)

[amchau.livejournal.com]

Re-reading your remarks about old!John, I'm reminded that actually, I loved that scene; its inclusion in the list of things the Doctor might regret not having plays beautifully in a piece of my personal fanon about the Doctor's relationship with death-- that he either can't die, or believes he can't die (an outcome of surviving the rest of the his species). So while he knows that he's cruel in allowing people to die in uncomfortable ways, he doesn't actually see death itself as cruel, but as a release.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Not quite so bad as the Buffyverse vampires, perhaps - because John Smith wasn't a whole person to start with. (In fact, I wonder if the most "real" parts of him are the parts of him that are the clearest reflection of the Doctor.)

The Buffyverse parallel I'd draw is with Dawn. She, too, has that created-last-Thursday thing to contend with, and arguably she deals with it better than John Smith would, because she exists in a world where magic and vampires do exist, whereas John Smith is the quintessential ordinary man.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

From Joan's perspective, because she didn't know the Doctor before, it's just that bad. Not so from ours as viewers, or Martha's, because we know what the Doctor is, and how he is necessary and good, if not safe or comforting.

Dawn's a good comparison, but she definitely had more support for her horrible decision time. John had Joan, who could not throw herself into the fire for him although she wanted to; Tim, who innocently gave him back the key to the life he didn't want; and Martha, who was urging him to die with the best of reasons.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

>>>>>>>Coincidentally, this is the only week so far I've managed to get up to Magdalen with large uantities of ou3fs. I slept all morning, spent the afternoon in a red dress reading philosophy under a tree


I think that I might know that tree. Ther yoogest one - - outside New Buildings with a view of the deer? I've still got a twig from it. Ah! Youth!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heee! Alas, the tree is not in Magdalen. It is an unremarkable tree at the corner of Jowett Walk and Mansfield Road, but I'm very fond of it. (I'm actually a Balliolite.)

[unfeathered]

"I love him to bits" - oh, Martha. Love. I found that scene wonderful when I would have cringed if it were Rose.

I agree with the latter statement, but I cringed at this too. I don't need Martha to be in love with the Doctor. Love him, yes, but not in love.

Love the episode, though :-)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's one thing I wondered, though. Is Martha in love with the Doctor? She herself admits that she barely knows him, and "I love him to bits" doesn't scream romantic love to me. I'm convinced Martha loves the Doctor, but I'd need additional convincing that it's sexual/romantic.

[unfeathered]

Well, it comes across to me that she, at least, sees it as romantic love. She's been dewey-eyed over him right from the start. Which I don't like. Especially because it's so obviously one-sided.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

My current theory is that she, like many people, doesn't really know the difference. Having just gone through the process of figuring out for myself (by virture of my current 'romantic' relationship and the need to explain to people: yes, I love my boyfriend, but no, we don't say that, because we're not 'in love' as in 'following the social script for romantic love' (not least because it was invented in 14th century France, and neither of us are really believers in it)), I find it quite easy to believe that Martha has either a) a crush, b) a strong friendship affection, or c) both, and doesn't really know how she loves him, especially since he doesn't give her quite the responses she would expect.

[unfeathered]

Yep, that makes a lot of sense!

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

I didn't see Martha's love as sexual/romantic either. Though I do think she had a lot of jealous when she realized John Smith was *capable* of romantic love; I think Martha had figured that the Doctor wasn't capable of it, and it threw her when this human version *was*.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

That episode was truly excellent. I need to watch it again asap.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It was fabby! I really need to download it or something.