The Doctor has encountered many family groups or businesses over the centuries in Doctor Who, but none more horrifying than the Family of Blood and their servants, the scarecrows! The Family of Blood have a limited lifespan and so they need to consume a Time Lord, otherwise they will die within three months. The Tenth Doctor and his companion Martha Jones therefore went into hiding on Earth in 1913. The plan was to wait until the Family died and the Doctor disguised himself as a human called John Smith. However, the Doctor did not anticipate the problems of being human…
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
★★★★★
TX: 26/05/2007 – 02/06/2007
Written by Paul Cornell Directed by Charles Palmer
A schoolteacher called John Smith dreams of travelling through time and space in a police box. However, what Mr John Smith does not realise is that his dreams are true! John Smith is a human disguise for the Doctor, who has changed his DNA to become human using a Chameleon Arch in the TARDIS. John Smith is the alias that the Doctor has used since The Wheel in Space. Martha and the Doctor are hiding in England, 1913 from the terrifying Family of Blood. However, the Family have traced them using their invisible ship and have found human bodies for themselves. Son of Mine also uses molecular fringe animation to animate scarecrows in the nearby fields to be their soldiers. I am more like my real life brother than I realise! The Family confront John Smith, his lover Joan and Martha at the Village dance. But the trio escape back to the boys’ public boarding school where they work. I was privately educated, however I now believe that private education should be abolished because it makes people entitled, patronising, snobby, out of touch, deluded, selfish and arrogant. You should never be friends with anyone who was privately educated, you will regret it! I am fed up of the privileged having a stranglehold over Downing Street, I am tired of this country constantly electing Oxbridge public school boys who are either Tories or Red Tories! It’s time for a change! Why can’t we just have someone normal as Prime Minister? I am so frustrated by the class system and the stratum of privilege in the UK. I hated school and university. My interest in Doctor Who made me different and also I was “nicer than most people at school”, according to others. I was bullied and laughed at all the way through school and university. I really wish I could forget all of the bullying that I have experienced over the years (from both men and women). I am not a victim, I am a survivor. You should never work in education if you didn’t enjoy your own time in education. All UK private schools and grammar schools should be abolished and if my hero Jeremy Corbyn had got into government then this would have become a reality. A lot of people have told me over the years that I don’t act like someone who went to private school and they have told me that I seem too nice to have gone to one. 🤷♂️ The scarecrows and the Family of Blood attack the school and innocent people are killed. A boy named Tim Latimer has got the fob watch that contains the Doctor’s consciousness. He reunites it with John Smith who, after emotional persuasion from his lover Joan, opens the watch. After all, nice guys do well with women! Over the years, many people have called me a nice guy, which they didn’t really mean because if they did, then they would have learned from my example and tried to emulate me as best they could. The Doctor is restored and he confronts the Family of Blood, causing their invisible ship to self-destruct. The wrath of a Time Lord is a scary thing to witness, as the Doctor imprisons the Family of Blood forever. The Doctor returns to Joan but she rejects him because he is no longer John Smith. Martha and the Doctor return to the TARDIS. Before leaving, the Doctor gives Tim the empty fob watch for good luck, which comes in handy the following year on the battlefield in France on the outbreak of World War I. Almost a century later, the veteran Tim Latimer still has the fob watch and at a memorial, he spots the Doctor and Martha in the distance on Remembrance Sunday. A descendant of Nurse Joan Redfern called Verity Newman later published John Smith’s Journal of Impossible of Things and the Tenth Doctor met her at the book signing in The End of Time. In my full rewatch of the whole history of Doctor Who in 2023, I concluded that Human Nature/The Family of Blood is the best Doctor Who story ever made.
In this story, Martha is a victim of institutional racism at the boarding school she works at. Whilst I was at university, I spent two summers at Camp America (2015-2016). In the first summer, when I arrived in the USA I forgot an important immigration document. I was taken into a room by the security and I looked through my suitcase and still couldn’t find the document. The security said don’t worry, just get your parents to email it through when you arrive at the camp. However, a friend of mine at the camp called Jamal (who was from Torquay and had brown skin) also forgot the same document when he arrived at the American border. He was taken into a different room by the security, strip searched and had his suitcase tipped upside down. Only once the document was found, Jamal was allowed into the USA. Jamal was treated differently and he was treated like a terrorist and with suspicion just because of the colour of his skin. You should always confront racism (or indeed any form of prejudice) when you witness it, rather than be indifferent and passive about it.
Chris Olsen's TARDIS 