Doctor Who: Human Nature

[carmen_lj]

Is it good? Is it good? Oh, it's bloody awesome. Oh, wowness. Indeed.

• Right from the start, right from the very start, I couldn't say that about IP/SP, I needed those first thirty seconds cut off, but no, here we go straight into the story - always a big help when you're working with such limited time like the New Series is.
  
  
• Okay, fair enough, they have to escape the Family rather than it being An Experience thing. Makes more sense with the New Series, saves time, though not quite so much a punchy motivation.
  
  
• But, hell yeah, that was The Best Teaser Ever. (It so was.)
  
  
• He! Mortar board! He! Oh, I am a bit in love with the look of this thing, yes.
  
  
• Oh, yes! Yer actual racism! Brilliant! That's all I needed, just that acknowledgemnt that casual racism was accepted and ingrained in the society. And classism! And Smith being a bit racist too! Dude! That's what Daleks Take Manhattan needed.
  
  
• And Martha is a bit brilliant (actually, a fib, it's not Martha, it's Freema, cause it's the way she's playing it here, it's really fecking brilliant. There's so much in her performance, it's beautifully layered here - possibly her best performance of the season?)
  
  
• Oh *Joan* and *John* and romantic farce with those stairs. And she's a nurse, not a teacher! Dude! Shippity-ship shit the good Martha/Ten ship, yes.
  
  
• Empty child picture! Daleks! Moxx of Balhoon! Rose! Cybermen! Oh, for an old skool-
  
  
• OMG HE DREW HIMSELF OMG ALL HIS INCARNATIONS IS THIS THE BEST MOMENT EVER I THINK IT MIGHT BE OMG EIGHT IS PROPER CANON NOW YOU CANNOT EVER DENY AGAIN AND I LOVE EVERYTHING EVER OMG.
  
  
• Love the Joan & Martha stuff to - it's practically electric! Kudos to both actresses and Cornell, aye.
  
  
• Heh, is that the kid from Love Actually? Liz Shaw was his grandmother in that movie, y'know.
  
  
• Martha and Jenny are also greatness. Oh, it's so Martha's story this, much as I love every second of Smith onscreen.
  
  
• He, it be Martha's TARDIS now. (Oh, please for fic of Martha and TARDIS bonding in Doctor's absence, yo.)
  
  
• Ha! So that DNA thing HAS JUST BEEN HANGING AROUND THE TARDIS ALL THESE CENTURIES, EH? Also if that's standard install on a type 40 (and I can't see why the Doctor would go out of his way to get such a bloody awful thing) then one might assume later TARDISes also have one, in which case there's quite an esay explanation for why Nine could sense no other Time Lords, yo.
  
  
• Yes! Benny's list! But in visual form!
  
  
• NO MONSTERS DURING THE DAYTIME. BAD WHO.
  
  
• NOT THE FREAKIN RED BALLOON, NOES, MEEPNESS. (This is the thing that freaked me out something rotten in the book.)
  
  
• "I hope, Latimer, one day you may have a just and proper war to prove yourself." That hurt even before the flash forwards. That hurt a lot.
  
  
• Mr Smith is a lot meaner in this version - he's all down with the guns and the beatings and not half as whacked out as Seven!Smith seemed to everyone else.
  
  
• Oh, he so was channelling Five with that throw. And, yes! It's even a cricket ball.
  
  
• Gallifrey mention, yay!
  
  
• EEEEEEEEEeeee! Smashing old skool in-joke! Smith's parents were Sydney (Newman) and Verity (Lambert), he.
  
  
• Oh, Martha, being all clever with teh scary!Jenny and then running like a very sensible person, well done her.
  
  
• "Martha, this is what we call a story." Patronising, then slightly racist twit. And she slaps him, hurrah! LOVE.
  
  
• And, to top it all of, my beloved Gratuitous Killing Off Of Bit Part Players is in in force. Win!
  

So unless they completely feck up next week, HN/FoB is right up there with IP/SP, GitF-ace and EotW for me. Bloody brilliant.

Comments

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Me not like :*(

Fuck! I was looking forward to this! But the lack of any Doctorness makes the experiment sort of pointless?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

But he's not seeing it as an experiment dis time, so all these complications are going to be utterly flaily ones as he wasn't looking for anything except a place to hide.

Oh, ::pets::, there will be Martha/Jack/Ten soon-ish, ys?

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Yah, but in New Who terms? What it adding in character stuffs?


And yes, cos of all that widows stuff and how Smith will so choose Joan thus implying that the Doctor would choose Martha.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

It seems to illustrate the Doctor's fundamental insecurity and his (latent/earlier) desire to fit in (which could have been indoctrinated into him by the culture on Gallifrey.)

First we have him talking to the kid about understanding why he doesn't push himself, so he doesn't get noticed (implying that the Doctor did the same, which would tie-in with the 'lonely child outside the window' in GitF'ace. His own acceptance of the racism and classism around him could reflect a time when he accepted the strict rules and such of Galifreyan society. It suggests that rather than rebellion from that society simply being the Doctor's nature, that their was some actual experience that acted as a trigger point. Smith has not had that experience, thus he might be eccentric, but he conforms.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Ooh, go you! I hope it... is better for me next week? Cos the Doctor be so not like Smith it feel bit pointless for me, also I be sad cos I wanted Ten/Joan :( It seem more like Doctor's very nature make him be rebel, though, cos of the thing he not have is that nature. Err, or something. Like how Joan asked if he is a slag and he said no is just the Doctor is big slag not him. Bit with cricket-ball seemed to shock him.

Also SAD FOR MARTHA

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

In being human the Doctor is more stereotypically Time Lord than ever?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Time Lords are pretty racist dudes when it comes to humans/yer lower lifeforms, yah, so that works. So...the Doctor is a product of nurture, not nature, which, y'know, I don't agree with, but it's supportable.

But he seems to be reaching for something in himself when he's forced to *think* about things. Like...he's being complacent and that's why he's cack, but if he gets some motivation, then maybe he'll be better. Like "people spend all their times making nice things and other people come along and brek them" and he's all yay and Joan and that's when he fixes the scarecrow. And be's a hero with a ball. He needs someone to be heroic for?

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is... hmm... defining the Doctor by showing us someone that he isn't? If he really was just a normal guy (like bits of fandom would like to believe) then we (and Martha) wouldn't love him? So Smith does stuff the Doctor would never do like be all racist and hit children and go "YAY VIOLENCE" and throw Martha out? Though how does Joan fit that, as she is someone he would so shag if he was himself?

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is... hmm... defining the Doctor by showing us someone that he isn't?

I was assuming that was the entire point of this story, really.

And I'm assuming the next episode trailer with the marriage and kids things (which I'm assuming is just a possibly future vision/something) is another show of that - the Doctor may love and/or shag people, but never settle down.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I be hoping it'll work for me more on a rewatch. Maybe I just been wrong-footed a bit? But damn it makes me just miss the Doctor.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Possibly, it is setting it up like this so we do get someone rejecting the Doctor because they don't like him for himself, and based on what we have so far Joan and Smith share a lot of values that she and the Doctor wouldn't - so it is setting up for her plausible rejection cause we have not had that dynamic yet?