Doctor Who S03 E09 – Bits and pieces

Previously: The Doctor became human to hide from aliens, but the aliens found him anyway.
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The Family of Blood

Marines: We start the episode right where the last one left off with Viserys Targaryen giving John Smith the ultimatum to either save Martha or Joan. John Smith is clearly at a loss, but in the background Latimer (baby Jojen Reed…) pulls out the Doctor’s pocket watch. He opens it and we see some of that magic Timelord ejaculation float up from it and a voice whispers, “Time Lord.” The aliens all freak out, giving Martha an opportunity to break out of alien!Jenny’s grasp and grab the gun, like a total badass (K: BEST). She points it at Viserys and tells him to shut up. Spherical Alien tells Viserys to be careful since they are, after all, looking to live forever.

Viserys wonders if Martha will really shoot, since she looks rather scared. Martha says she’s scared AND holding a gun, so maybe Viserys doesn’t want to risk it. Viserys and Spherical Man both drop their guns and Joan runs back towards John Smith. Martha yells at the Doctor to get everyone out. He stands there, huffing, frozen and not at all the Doctor. Not one bit. It’s Joan who actually starts getting everyone out of the room as Martha keeps her gun trained.

Kirsti: The more I watch this episode, the more I adore Martha Jones. Everything about this is pure “I work in the emergency room of a major London hospital and you and your alien bullshit cannot phase me”. And it is GLORIOUS.

Mari: Once everyone else is out, John Smith asks what Martha is going to do. She tells him to go ahead and get his lady friend to safety. He runs out, leaving Martha.

Outside, he grabs Latimer and tries to give him some direction, but Latimer freaks out. He tells John that he’s just as bad as the rest of them and runs away. Inside, The Family start walking toward Martha. She asks alien!Jenny what happened to Jenny. Unfortunately, Jenny is dead. Martha walks straight back into an inexplicable scarecrow. The scarecrow grabs the gun away from her, but somehow, Martha escapes and runs outside. Joan and John are just standing there. Martha tells the Doctor he’s rubbish as a human and tells them to come on.

K: “God, you’re rubbish as a human!” may well be one of the best lines to ever come out of this show. 

Mari: Latimer keeps running, only looking back when he hears laser fire. It’s Viserys, firing his alien gun and shouting at all the screaming humans to run. He says it’s all super but it sounds like sou-paaah and it’s hilarious.

K: So this is a total segue, but when I was 11 my school in England started doing this school holiday program where we got the script to a play on Monday, rehearsed all week, and put on the show on Friday night. This was perfect for my mother because we were literally about to move back to Australia and it meant Little Bro and I were out of the house while the movers were there. I had ten lines in the play, and all of them were “Oh, SUPER!”. And it was pronounced EXACTLY the same as Viserys says it. (Additional side note: Kate Middleton played Prince Charming. Not even kidding.)

Mari: Alien!Jenny accesses Jenny’s memory and sees that Martha used often walk out west. Jenny sends Spherical Alien out that way to follow Martha’s scent and discover what exactly she was hiding. Viserys and Jenny are going to go back to academy.

Back at the school, John Smith starts ringing a bell. Martha asks what the heck he’s doing and he replies that the students are all taught to stand together. He starts yelling for them to take up arms and Martha looks at him like WTF. (K: Legit, girl.)

Outside, Viserys, Balloon Girl and Jenny approach the academy. They hear the bell and decide they should proceed with caution so they don’t get the human bodies they are wearing shot. Viserys sends Balloon Girl to sneak into the academy and spy and she skips off, still holding that darn balloon.

Inside, Martha tells John Smith he can’t mobilize a bunch of boys who won’t stand a chance against aliens. But she wanted him to fight and this is what he knows, because he’s John Smith and not the Doctor. The Headmaster comes in and demands an explanation. John steps forward and says that Viserys and Spherical Alien have gone mad and murdered people right in front of his eyes. The headmaster calls on Joan to confirm this story and she does. Headmaster asks why they think the threat is coming here. John stumbles a bit, but Joan covers for him and says that Viserys threatened John. The headmaster accepts all this and starts giving out different orders, including for someone to phone the police. He wants to go outside and investigate and Martha tries to stop him because it isn’t safe outside. Headmaster tells John to control his servant and leaves. Martha doesn’t shout, “FINE. GO GET ALIEN MAULED,” after him; she actually has the decency to look concerned.

K: Martha, you’re a better person than me. “You will control her, sir!” is issued as if she’s a dog pulling on the lead. I’d punch that douche right in his smarmy face.

Mari: Martha runs out into the school. She needs to find the watch. Joan follows after her and they run right past Latimer, hiding and holding onto the watch. We hear the Doctor in voice-over saying, “Hold me. Keep me safe. Keep me dark. Keep me closed. The time is not right. Not yet. Not while the Family is abroad. Danger!” 

Meanwhile, Balloon Girl sneaks inside.

The headmaster goes outside and confronts The Family. Apparently, the Headmaster doesn’t give the scarecrows a second thought, because he’s too busy being classist and sexist with this line: Baines and one of the cleaning staff. There’s always a woman involved. (K: UGH.) Viserys creepily asks the headmaster if he’s come to give him a caning. The headmaster’s all, “keep a civil tongue!” as if the biggest concern right now, after someone just told you homeboy committed MURDER, is a civil tongue.

K: Having been to a snooty English prep school, it seems pretty accurate.

Mari: After a little talk about the scarecrow army, Viserys demands Mr. John Smith and the Time Lord consciousness. The headmaster finally twigs to the fact that Viserys isn’t himself. Viserys introduces himself and his family as the family of blood.

Viserys says the family has been far and wide looking for the Doctor and they’ve seen things. In 1914, the world goes to war and his students will fall, and Viserys asks if they will thank the man who trained them for war and taught them it was glorious. The Headmaster gives an impassioned speech, because he’s been a soldier, using the bodies of fallen soldiers as sandbags, but he’d go back and do it again for king and country. Viserys is unimpressed by this speech and shoots the teacher standing with the headmaster.

K: That line about having taught them war is glorious gives me all the feels because it never fails to remind me of the Wilfred Owen poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, which can basically be summed up as “you lied to us about war and so we all signed up and now we’re all dead or broken. THANKS A LOT.” But, you know, more moving and eloquent. (Seriously. It’s my favourite poem ever.)

Mari: John Smith watches this whole exchange and quickly hides as Viserys tells the headmaster to run along and send out Mr. Smith.

Inside, Headmaster reports that that other teacher was murdered. John Smith says the phone lines are disconnected so they are on their own. Headmaster tells the boys to prepare themselves to make a stand, in the name of the King.

Douchey Boy finds Latimer still hiding in a hallway. He grabs Latimer and tells him that he will do his duty, just like the rest of them. The preparations go on and Balloon Girl watches.

Outside, Viserys yells for his soldiers and more scarecrows animate and come marching toward the school. Boys ready for war, scarecrows march on. Just after the scarecrows arrive, Balloon Girl communicates with her family through telepathy and tells them to hold off on attack because the Time Lord is playing some sort of trick. Viserys tells her to find out what it is.

Martha is turning John Smith’s room out, looking for the watch, trying to explain what it is and who John really is to Joan. She’s obviously struggling with the whole “alien” thing. She asks who Martha is, then, in this whole fairy tale. Obviously we have to have our once-an-episode moment of Martha being like SIGH, I’M NOT HIS GIRLFRIEND. She says she’s just a friend. But more than that. She doesn’t just follow him around. She’s training to be a doctor. Joan scoffs.

        Joan dismisses this, saying she could’ve just read that in a book. Martha tells her they need to keep looking for the watch, but Joan needs to go. The boys will be fighting and she’s still their nurse.

K: I love Martha so much in that scene. SO MUCH. There’s a lot of “I’ve put up with racist bullshit for three months now and I am 10,000% done. Excuse me while I mic drop” about it. 

Mari: Honestly, I’m just surprised she doesn’t say more. Bless her restraint.

Spherical Alien uses the green-face telepathy (a green light shines on their faces any time they use it… (?)) to announce that he’s found the TARDIS. The Doctor can’t escape. (K: I can’t help but laugh because his accent when he says TARDIS has a very long, West Country R to it. Kind of like all the villagers in Hot Fuzz. Or, you know, a pirate. “His TARRRRRRRDIS”. Tee hee.)

John Smith finds Joan and tells her it’s not safe. She’s doing her duty, though, just the same as him. Joan very calmly asks him to tell her about Nottingham, where he grew up. All he can manage are facts and Joan practically begs him for more, something to prove her really grew up there. John gets it and wonders how she can question his realness. When he kissed her, was that a lie? She says it wasn’t.

Joan says that Martha was right about one thing: the boys are just boys and shouldn’t be fighting. She says the John Smith she knows would think it was wrong, never mind what the Doctor would think. John asks what choice he has and gives her a kiss.

Huh. I’m trying to think about this in the grand scheme of things, but I cannot imagine the Doctor putting those boys to fight. He’d tell them to run, to go, to get out and he’ll take care of it. His usual answer for everything is that he’ll take care of it. He’ll be clever and figure out a way that harms the least number of people and things. I don’t think we’ve seen anything from John Smith that tells us he wouldn’t be okay with this. He was overseeing their training last episode and let Latimer be punished for his failures. What Joan doesn’t know is that if there is a part of John Smith that thinks this is wrong, I absolutely believe it is the Doctor shining through. But she has no way of knowing that.

K: A+. There’s no way in Hell the Doctor would let those boys fights. Especially not when he knows that World War I is right around the corner.

Mari: Latimer is helping Douchey Boy with his ammo again. DB yells that he better do it correctly, because this is life or death. Latimer tells him that they survive this and we see the flash forward he had last episode, of them fighting together in the upcoming war. Douchey Boy is real confused and then angry again when Latimer takes off running. Latimer thinks he was given the watch so he can help. That’s a fine view of things, especially considering that he stole the watch.

Latimer’s found another corner to sit in and he’s asking the watch what he should do. “Beware,” it whispers and damn, I want this pocket watch now. “What should I have for lunch,” I would ask it, because these are the kinds of decisions that cripple me.

K: Same, but less with food and more with encouraging me to do stuff that’s not Tumblr related. “Should I exercise or sit on Tumblr?” “Should I go to bed or sit on Tumblr?” “Should I maybe actually see my friends or sit on Tumblr?”. 

Mari: “Tumblr,” it would say every time.

The watch says Latimer should beware of Balloon Girl, who is standing at the end of the hall opposite him. He stands and tries to hide the watch, but she can tell he’s hiding something. Latimer says that whatever is inside Balloon Girl (who is also dead. I mean the real little girl. Sad.) it’s still in the shape of a child. Latimer asks if that child is strong enough to withstand THIS. He opens the watch and points it at her, Time Lord magic streaming out. Balloon Girl runs off, but now Viserys and Jenny know that the Time Lord consciousness is in the watch. Viserys yells for the scarecrows to attack.

We get lots of shots of a serious John Smith and scared but resolved school boys. They take aim, some of them cry, and they wait. Once the scarecrows are through, they open fire. He Who Would Valiant Be starts playing until the headmaster calls for a cease fire, all the scarecrows seemingly taken down by the bullets. He examines them and see they are just straw. One of the boys, relieved, says that this means they haven’t killed anyone.

K: Given that it featured a bunch of scarecrows being shot, this scene was surprisingly powerful. Cadets may be trained for war, but they’re not ready for the realities of it. The headmaster sees them as soldiers, but they’re still children in so many ways. 

Mari: And the first thing that’s said is not, “WTF, straw??” but rather relief that they haven’t killed anyone.

Headmaster hears someone approaching, but it turns out to be Balloon Girl. He tells her to come in. Martha, who has been watching, runs outside and tells Headmaster to stay back. He tells her to shut up again, but she insists and turns to Joan for help. She rather unconvincingly says that the Balloon Girl did kind of sort of maybe appear to be involved. Headmaster won’t listen, refusing to leave the little girl out there. He reaches for her. She reaches for her gun and kills the Headmaster.

Balloon Girl asks which of them is going to shoot her, then. John tells them all to put their guns down. He won’t watch them do this anymore. It’s time to retreat. Viserys arrives and yells for the scarecrows to reanimate.

Martha, Joan and John lead a bunch of boys through the school. Another bunch are brought before Balloon Girl, so she can try and spot Latimer. Just then, Latimer opens the watch again and The Family all snap to. They head upstairs.

John tries to head back inside the school to look for more boys, but the scarecrows block his way. Instead, he runs out with Martha and Joan.

By the time Viserys and Jenny get upstairs, Latimer is gone.

Outside, Spherical Alien has SOMEHOW managed to transport the TARDIS right in front of the school. (K: Contrivance. Or, like, scarecrow lifting power?) Spherical Alien is calling for the Doctor, telling to come claim his prize. Martha asks John if he recognizes it. John says he’s never seen it in his life but Joan apologetically reminds him that he has. He dreamt about it– the blue box. John breaks and his voice goes high pitched as he asks why he can’t just be John Smith. Why can’t he be that man and have his job and his love? Why can’t he stay? Martha tells him they need the Doctor but this does nothing to calm John down. Is he just a story then? Is he just nothing? John runs off and the ladies after him.

K: A+ acting, Tennant. Seriously.

Mari: The Family has some new plan to bring the boy, the watch and the Doctor all to them. In their ship they start preparing something nefarious.

Joan leads John and Martha to a place where they can hide. Turns out it’s Balloon Girl’s house. Joan correctly assumed Balloon Girl would’ve killed her parents. John sits and after a beat, says he’ll go to the aliens, give himself in so no one else will die. Joan rejects that idea and asks Martha if there is nothing she can do. Martha can’t do anything without the watch. John yells at her, asking what she’s good for then.

 

I think the answer to why the Doctor needs a companion is a little bit more complicated than loneliness. I think it’s some parts because he’s alien and terrible, and more so when he’s alone. Does Martha know that yet? I’d say no because what the Doctor mostly is to Martha is wonderful and lonely and pushing her away from that loneliness.

K: It’s interesting that during the RTD era of Doctor Who, the Doctor almost exclusively had companions who were lonely themselves. Not necessarily in the spend-all-my-time-alone sense, because they all have families and lives of their own. But they’re all bored of those lives, bored of the family drama. They’re all stuck in a rut, they’re all missing something in their lives. And travelling with the Doctor essentially lets them be alone together. They still have their own lives, but they seem more interesting now that they can pop out and see the universe at a moment’s notice.

This was a terrible explanation, but it feels like the companions are quite different in the Moffat era. They’re still filling a void in the Doctor’s life, but for them it feels like more of a WANT to travel than a NEED. 

Mari: There is a knock on the door and Martha is the one who answers. Latimer is there, holding out the watch. Back inside, Martha asks John Smith to just hold the watch, but he can’t. He won’t. Joan asks if Latimer has had the watch the whole time and he confesses that at first the watch was waiting, but then Latimer was scared. He’s seen the Doctor.

This is all interrupted by an explosion. The Family is attacking the village, rightly assuming that this will smoke the Doctor out. Viserys says blowing stuff up is sou-paaah, sou-paaah fun.

John Smith grabs the watch. Latimer asks why he was able to hear it and as the Doctor, the Doctor responds that it was a low-level telepathic field. David Tennant didn’t change his voice very much to play John Smith, but in this moment, switching from the two, you can really note the cadence with which he plays the Doctor.

K: It really is a phenomenal piece of acting. 

Mari: John asks Martha how she could stand by, knowing all this, and let him fall for Joan. Martha says she didn’t know what to do. The Doctor left instructions but this wasn’t part of it.

    The Family have a limited life-span so the plan was always to wait them out. John says that means Martha was to be his executioner. Martha, bless her, doesn’t really seem to be grasping this because she’s looking at John Smith and not seeing anyone other than the Doctor. And the Doctor is everything to her. She’s only just met him and he doesn’t even look at her, but he’s everything. She loves him to bits and pieces.

John, still panicking, says that he can just give the family the watch. They’ll have what they want and he’ll be able to live as he is. Joan has been quietly flipping through John’s dream journal the whole time. She’s made it to the end, which predicts lots of death and destruction if the family get their way. Joan asks if Martha and Latimer can give them a moment. John openly sobs and Joan holds him. (K: FEELS.)

We cut to Joan saying that if she could do this instead of him, she would. John says that the Doctor won’t love Joan. If the Doctor isn’t John, she wouldn’t want his love anyway. She grabs the pocket watch, cursing it and working it around in her hand. John places his hand over hers and they have a shared vision. John and Joan getting married, John holding a baby, John and Joan walking with their family and finally, John on his deathbed as an old man.

K: Dammit, watch. That’s monumentally cruel. Not only to John and Joan, but also to the Doctor, who lost his family so long ago. And to my tear ducts.

Mari: Joan says the Time Lord has such adventures, but he could never have a life like their vision life. After an explosion, Joan asks what he’s going to do.

Family Ship. Viserys is being his creepy, killer self when John stumbles into the ship, bumping into a bunch of buttons as he comes. He tells them to stop the bombs. He’ll do anything they want. Viserys and Jenny power down and after a big sniff, decide this is still John. He falls over himself again, pushing more buttons as he claims his innocence in all this. He hands over the watch, though Viserys pushes him down (and into more ship buttons) for his trouble.

Viserys very dramatically opens the watch but it’s empty. John is like, “oh no! Where did it go!” but it isn’t John at all. In a second, Tennant switches and he’s the Doctor now. They’ve been fooled by some really sci-fi-y human perfume. Trust me, my explanation is better. Not only that, but the Doctor pressed a lot of buttons on the ship. He leaves The Family with a final word of advice: run! (SHOTS!)

They all make it out before the ship explodes. (K: Including the balloon.) The Family all ends up on the floor, with the Doctor standing over them. Viserys, in a voice over, says, “He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he’d run away from us and hidden. He was being kind.”

The Doctor doles out his punishments: he wraps Spherical Alien in chains and drops him into a pit; he sends Jenny into a collapsing galaxy to stay there forever; he trapped Balloon Girl in every single mirror, probably without her balloon (K: Nope, the balloon’s there too. Poor, long suffering balloon…); and he suspended Viserys in time and made him a scarecrow.

       

“We wanted to live forever so the Doctor made sure that we did.” 

Creepy.

Joan is still waiting at Balloon Girl’s house. The Doctor goes back to see her, but she can barely look at him. She asks where John Smith is. He’s still in the Doctor’s head, somewhere, like a story. He could bring him back, but he won’t.

K: It’s an interesting juxtaposition to Rose asking Ten if he can change back into Nine. 

Mari: Joan says that makes John Smith braver than the Doctor. The Doctor chose to change, but John Smith chose to die.

The Doctor straightens and asks Joan to come with him, to travel with him as his companion. They could start again. He assures her that everything that John Smith was, he is capable of. Joan says she can’t. John Smith is dead and the Doctor looks like him. The Doctor gets closer to her, insisting that John Smith is in him. That potential to be human and simple and sweet and wonderful is in him. Joan just has one question though: If the Doctor had never visited us, if he’d never chosen this place on a whim, would anybody here have died?

And there’s the thing. Because the Doctor might have some of John Smith in him, but he’s so much more. This isn’t the first time someone has said that death follows the Doctor and usually, that’s so unfair. The Doctor steps in to prevent more death than could’ve been. He’s saving the world and saving species and making the hard decisions. This time, though? He chose this place and this time on a whim. He created a person, for all intents and purposes, without giving mind to what that would mean.

The Doctor doesn’t answer. Instead he turns and he leaves. Joan clutches John Smith’s diary and cries.

The Doctor walks back to the TARDIS where Martha is waiting for him. She asks how it went and he simply says that its time to move on. In a big of a too fake way, Martha says that she would’ve said anything to get him to change. The Doctor is like, “right, sure, okay,” and so they are just going to keep pretending Martha doesn’t love him to bits and pieces. The Doctor thanks her for taking care of him and gives her a big hug.

    K: Martha’s look of relief gives me feels. 

Mari: Latimer comes to say his goodbyes. He thanks the Doctor because now he’s seen the future and knows there’s a war coming. The Doctor gives him the empty watch back for good luck. They say goodbye and Latimer watches the TARDIS disappear.

We flash forward to the war. Latimer knows just when a bomb is going to fall, thanks to his vision of this moment, and gets out of the way. He thanks the Doctor and keeps helping Douchey Boy to safety.

We cut to a war memorial. Latimer is an old man now, decorated in medals and still holding his watch. As a vicar conducts the ceremony, he looks over and sees Martha, pinning a poppy to the Doctor’s lapel. He smiles and then closes his eyes, overcome with feelings.

K: He’s definitely not the only one. 

Mari: I really enjoyed this. First, I’ll emphasize that I think a lot of really great acting sold the crap out of it. I often find Tennant’s style to err on the side of over the top and sometimes jarring, but I bought it here. He was very calm and understated as John Smith, until the end, when all the panic of dying bubbled up in him. Viserys was just so damn creepy with what was an actual, literal crooked smile, plastered on his face the whole time. Even the headmaster in that moment where he yells that he’d do it again for king and country gave me feels.

There were no simple answers here, not even for the Doctor. Viserys tells us in the end that the Doctor went through this whole crazy thing to show kindness to The Family, to let them fade rather than be directly responsible for their deaths. Yet, we see the problem with the Doctor right up against his virtue because, as I mentioned, he didn’t stop to think what it would really mean not only to become a human, but to insert this human in the lives of others.

The hero of the whole damn thing to me was Martha. Three months of the Doctor hiding is nothing to him. He’s a Time Lord so what is time to him? Martha agreed to stay in this place three months, in what ended up being very disagreeable circumstances for her. I love HER to bits and pieces and I wish, for the millionth time, there weren’t such an emphasis on her infatuation with the Doctor. I get it, I do, but TAKE A BREAK.

K: I second everything Mari already said. This episode, more than any we’ve seen so far, marks the beginning of the Dark!Doctor. We spend so much time seeing the Doctor as the hero, the one who sweeps in and saves the day, who saves the Earth time and time again, who destroys the villain with his sonic screwdriver and a witty one liner.

But here? Here, he’s the villain. Sure, he still saves the planet. But people die because of decisions he made. He hands out cruel punishments with no authority to do so. He creates an identity with little thought for that identity or the people who would interact with it. This is the reason the Doctor needs companions: to keep him in check and give him a moral compass. To tell him when he’s gone too far, like Donna did in The Runaway Bride. 

Basically? This two-parter is brilliant from start to finish for many, many reasons. 

 

Next time on Doctor Who: The Doctor has to leave clues for a stranger when he’s stranded in 1969 in S03 E10 – Blink.