Doctor Who/Recap/S29/E09 The Family of Blood: Difference between revisions

Mild-mannered [[The Edwardian Era|Edwardian]] schoolteacher John Smith is baffled when alien monsters turn up and demand that he turn himself into "The Doctor". But the strangeness is jogging memories deep inside him, memories of a life he's sure he never lived but only dreamed, and more and more fragments of his dreams are turning out to be real. Deny it he tries, but eventually John has to consider the possibility that Martha and the aliens are telling the truth: "the Doctor", his dream-self, is the reality, and John Smith is the fabrication.

 

 

Timothy asks how it's possible that he himself can learn things from John's watch and even see the future sometimes. With John now holding the watch that contains his Time Lord self, the Doctor's [[Motor Mouth]] starts automatically explaining how it's just a regular human "low-level telepathy field" (which will become [[Doctor Who/Recap/S29/E13 Last of the Time Lords|important later]]). "You were born with it, just an extra-synaptic engram causing--"

John would give anything to stay human and marry Joan. While spending his last evening with her, he even has a brief vision of that future: a long and happy life and a peaceful death, secure in the knowledge that everyone he loves is safe. But even that future is illusory, as the aliens are closing in on John and will spread destruction across the galaxy if they win. John must sacrifice himself and become the Doctor, though he doesn't even know if any fragment of his identity will survive.

 

 

The Doctor returns for Joan. She's horrified to see him, even though he tells her that John is part of him now, somewhere deep inside him. He invites her to the TARDIS, and asks her if she wants to give him a proper chance for what he really is, starting their relationship again from a blank slate. She refuses. Decades into the future, Martha and the Doctor visit Timothy, now a war veteran, and give him some closure.

[[Doctor Who/Recap/S29/E11 Utopia|Not much later]], the Gallifreyan technique to hide in human form will become important again...

 

* [[And I Must Scream]]: "We wanted to live forever… so the Doctor made sure that we did."

* [[Badass Boast]]: Oddly, made about The Doctor by someone else:

{{quote|''We'll blast them into dust, then fuse them into glass, then SHATTER THEM ALL OVER AGAIN!''}}

* [[Psychotic Smirk]]: Son of Mine. '''''[http://www.danielkanolik.co.uk/Images/harrylloyd.jpg SON OF MINE.]'''''

* [[Refusal of the Call]]: Joan. See [[What the Hell, Hero?]] below.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: A ''[[Tranquil Fury|calm]]'' example.