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26TH MAY 2007
(45-MINUTE EPISODE, PART 1 OF
2)
I’m sure that I’m
misquoting somebody when I say that stories are never finished,
they’re abandoned. Except for Paul Cornell’s Human Nature, that
is. Times and Doctors and formats may change, but stories as powerful as
this one can evolve right along with them.
In the world of
Doctor Who novels, Human Nature is the literary equivalent
of a serial like The Caves of Androzani or The Talons
of Weng-Chiang. Even those (like myself) who do not consider it to be
the absolute best, generally accept that it is there or thereabouts. But
now, twelve years on from the novel’s publication, Human Nature
hits Britain’s television screens as a lavish two-part spectacular, and in
doing so it sets itself up amongst the very, very best of the Doctor’s
televised adventures to date.
Above: Joan, Wolsey and Smith in the BBCi e-book version of the novel
To be absolutely
honest, I didn’t know what to expect of this episode. It has been a hell
of a long time since I read the novel, and whilst I may have been sorely
tempted over the last few weeks, I have somehow managed to resist the urge
to dust off my copy of Human Nature and get myself back up to
speed. I wanted this episode to be a whole new experience and, from what I’d seen in the trailers – scarecrows and “chameleon arches” etc –, I had
a feeling that it was going to be.
With his
adaptation of the novel, Cornell has gone back to basics. What we see on
screen
is the original
story completely deconstructed, and then rebuilt with the new series and
the new audience in mind. The basic tenets are the same, but there are
profound differences in the execution. As good as it was, the novel was
catering for a very different audience and, more fundamentally, it was
told in a completely different medium. The reflective book dwelt heavily
on Smith’s humble existence and the simple pleasures that he took from his
life. On television, Cornell uses just the odd scene or two to get the
same ideas across much more economically. What we see come to life before
our eyes here is a fast-paced, exciting and spellbinding adventure. It’s
glossy. It’s quick. But, just like the novel, it is still quite brilliant.
“All the times I’ve wondered…”
From the
explosive pre-title sequence, it was immediately evident that we were
dealing with a very different animal. Amidst a tumult of weapons fire, the
Doctor races into the TARDIS asking Martha if ‘they’; had seen their
faces. When he realised that ‘they’ had not, he knew that he had only one
way out of his predicament. He would have to do it. To avoid the Time
Lord-hunting Family of Blood, the Doctor transforms himself both
physically and mentally in-to a human being. He has one heart; a heart
capable of loving intimately, as opposed to on
a grand scale.
One woman, as opposed to the whole world.
And this time
around, Cornell wastes no time in introducing us to Joan, the kindly
Matron
who has her eye
on ‘John Smith’ from the off. I was surprised at how different the dynamic
was between the two characters on screen; of course the seventh Doctor was
much older in appearance than the tenth, and so in print I had always
imagined Joan to be a more mature lady. On television though, Jessica
Stevenson is a relatively young woman, so rather than wile away their
evenings together playing chess and stroking cats, on television Smith and
Joan snog and go dancing. They fall down stairs and mend scarecrows. They
save babies from pianos. Their romance is much more explicit than I
remember the book ever being, but it works just as wonderfully.
Smith and Joan
are both very likeable characters, yet neither is perfect. With Smith,
there is an underlying Doctorishness that occasionally pervades into his
human life, but on the whole he is a completely different and separate
entity – a fact from which the whole tragedy of this story stems.
Smith does do the odd remarkable thing – the piano stunt, for example – but
he isn’t perfect and he makes mistakes – at times you’re thinking “c’mon
Doctor, you sell-out, do something!” or cringing as he allows young
Tim Latimer to be taken for a beating. And when Martha slaps him for being
both patronising and even a little bit racist in his attitude towards her (“Cultural
differences! It must be so confusing for you. Martha, this is what we call
a story…), you can’t help but take her side.
And poor Martha
certainly has a hard time of it in this episode. The culture of
1913 is as alien to her as 1914 was to Benny in the novel. Martha is
openly and cruelly mocked about the colour of her skin; she has her
aptitude insulted by people who are undoubtedly far less intelligent than
she is; she has her new best friend taken over by a malevolent alien
entity; and - the most painful indignity of all - she has to watch as the
man that she loves falls for another woman.
“You had to go and fall in love with a human. And it wasn’t me.”
I’m not sure why
this episode is set slightly earlier than the book was,
though admittedly
there is a unique sense of romance intrinsic to the
winter before the
Great War. On Doctor Who Confidential they call it
“a time
of innocence”, but I think that’s far too kind. If the characters of
Human
Nature are anything to go by, it was a time of ignorance. A time
of apathy. A
time when those like young Latimer, who had the courage
to speak out
against racism or imperialism, found themselves the victim
of
institutionalised bullying. Hutchinson, for example, encapsulates all of
these despicable
traits, and Tom Palmer has to be given a great deal of
credit for
making the character even more vile than he ever came across
in print.
And as for
Jeremy Baines, Harry Lloyd (Robin Hood)
is absolutely incredible in
the role, both before and aft-
er the Aubertide possesses him. There’s
a cold rage
behind
those eyes of his; a truly frightening edge. Bai-nes is unhinged, as
indeed are all the Family of Blood. Mr Clark and ‘Mother of
Mine’ Jenny are also both impressive, as is the ‘Daughter of Mine’
character. Little girls are invariably ch-illing when used well in science
fiction – take Fear Her, for example – but this kid is really off
the page. The Remembrance of the Daleks style music that
accompanies her appearances only adds to the sense of unease.
“Activate the soldiers!”
Oddly enough
though, the one element of the novel that I singled out for criticism was
the villainous Aubertides, which have given way to this Family of Blood
here. Because Human Nature was such a contemplative piece,
particularly in the first half of the book I found that I couldn’t really
care less about the rather bland baddies and that I just wanted to read
about Smith. Now on television, this balance has been redressed. The whole
emphasis of the plot has changed; this Family of Blood are the reason
for the Doctor’s becoming human. And what’s more, they’re a bona fide and
legitimate threat, backed up with an army of shit-your-pants scary
scarecrows. I mean, how good was that? Batman Begins-style
Scarecrows? Brilliant! I only hope that the balance remains the same
through The Family of Blood and that we are treated to the same
kind of action that the novel eventually delivered towards its end. That’s
if they can get away with having schoolboys fighting aliens with machine
guns at 7.10pm on a Saturday night…
“The Doctor is the man you’d like to be, doing impossible things with
cricket balls.”
However, as this
Family of Blood has become more integral to the story, sadly
something has been lost. Ever since his first Doctor Who story –
the 1991 Virgin novel Timewyrm: Re-velation – Cornell has skilfully
explored the Doctor’s thoughts and feelings in a way that no-one before
him ever had. In Revelation he literally had Ace take a stroll
inside the Doctor’s psyche, and then in the original Human Nature
novel, he once again looked at the Doctor’s anguish, but from a different
angle. In the book, when the Doctor made himself human
it was not to shroud himself from a gang of alien creatures who wanted to
become Time Lords; it was because he had been through so much grief and
pain and he was sick to death of it all. He wanted to leave it all behind.
He wanted to become human.
And after what
the tenth Doctor has recently been through (losing Rose,
fifteen years as a Postman et al) I thought that Cornell would use the
same device again here, possibly even more effectively than the first time
around. From what I remember, much of the tension in what will be next
week’s episode stems from the conflict within Smith – if you’re a happy
man living a quiet life with your new lover, would you be prepared to
sacrifice yourself so
that a cold and calculating alien adventurer might
live? And I guess that’s where it all falls down; what may have prompted
this shift in emphasis. The tenth Doctor may be brutal to
his enemies, but
he is not the ruthless manipulator that his seventh incarnation was. And
if we’re honest, no-one really knows what goes on inside the Doctor’s
head. Maybe he could have escaped the Family of Blood by some other means.
Maybe he did want to become human, just as his seventh self
did.
Or maybe not.
“Have you enjoyed it, Doctor? Being human?
Has it taught you wonderful things? Are you better? Richer? Wiser?
Then let's see you answer this – which one of them do you want us to
kill?
Your friend or your lover?”
On the whole
though, Human Nature is an absolute phenom of an episode and,
unlike most two-part stories, I firmly expect the second instalment to be
even better than the first. Without exception the performances are
awesome, especially from Freema Agyeman, who has this week suffered a
cruel introduction to the media circus that now surrounds the
show. What’s more, the visuals are first-rate, and the story is every bit
as good as it has always been, if not better. There are even a few loving
nods to Doctor Who’s long history – “Sydney and Verity”, and a handful of
past Doctors.
On a final note,
as a huge fan of many of the Doctor Who novels, I would just like
to say that I hope that this two-parter isn’t the last adaptation that we
will ever see. Doctor Who’s sixteen-year hiatus gave rise to
unbridled creativity in the spin-off media, and as a result some of the
series’ very best stories exist only in print. But if the current
production team can recognise the quality of stories like Human Nature
and bring them to life this vividly, then the sky really is the limit.
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