‘Family of Blood'? More like 'Family of Raw Onions'

Written by Piggy Fizz

What a shame- there was an awful lot of good stuff in ‘Human Nature’, so much so that I genuinely felt ‘Family of Blood’ might buck the unfortunate, ‘first half’s great- the conclusion’s just a run-around’ tradition.

Instead, while ‘Human Nature’ took the old ‘mythical character becomes mortal’ plot and made it involving through well-drawn and well performed characters, the conclusion merely cranked up the scarecrows, left Smith with little choice but to become the Doctor and cattle-prodded us into feeling sad with hymns, moth-balled war veterans and soft focus wedding album shots. Emotional? No, just emotive.

There’s a rare skill to persuading people to care about a fictional romance by ensuring that we really enjoy seeing characters in each other’s company. In contrast, demanding that everyone knows something is tragic through mushy music and fancy framing is a technique anyone can pick up from a few bad Spielberg movies. It’s no more difficult than making an advert for animal charities by finding the most doe-eyed mutt then dubbing on the pleading voice of an actor supposedly expressing the hound’s confusion at why its owners kept wanting to hurt it. If as a result you donate cash to that charity rather than one helping actual human beings, then you deserve to be neutered.

If the above sounds a little tangential, it may in fact get to the root of why this episode annoyed me so much. It wasn’t just that ‘Family’ failed to keep up the quality of its predecessor, it’s the nasty feeling that fans are going to consider this as an unchallengeable work of genius merely on the grounds that it wheeled out the all the stock ‘boo-hoo’ techniques.

Really, what is there to get worked up about? Smith comes across as a dithering twit here and while, yes, he’s under exceptional circumstances, very little finally emerges to make him seem as noble as even Pete Tyler, Michelle Collins’ selfish space captain or any number of other ‘do the right thing’ everymen we’ve seen since the show’s return.

For Smith to defeat the Family as himself, then with the crisis over, ultimately acknowledge that he had a moral duty to transform back into the Doctor, if only to get Martha home, could have worked far more effectively. It would provide a genuine choice for Smith, torn between guaranteed contentment or surrender into life as an isolated wanderer. As it is we get the feeling that Smith under pressure didn’t really have much option, indeed he seemed extremely keen to forsake responsibility altogether until learning that the family would wipe out him and everyone else if he didn’t get on with the required sacrificing.

A constant theme of the comeback series has been the Doctor working more as an ideal or inspiration for ordinary characters (and hopefully viewers) rather than as a cosmic hero solving every crisis single-handed, so it’s unfortunate that what could have been the ultimate expression of that philosophy is passed over here.

The above of course is merely a suggestion, I’m not for a second saying that it’s the only or indeed the best way of sorting the story out, it’s just that Cornell and certainly RTD are gifted enough writers to go beyond the obvious and surprise viewers with a resolution packing a real emotional punch rather than just serving up a predictable and for me deeply unsatisfying platter of shallow cliches.

In short, the Doctor’s few brief speeches in ‘School Reunion’ or indeed his wordless, resigned response during the closing of ‘Green Death’ quietly convey a great deal more than any amount death-bed melodrama manages here.