New Who Review for “Being Human”
Posted By Kathleen David on August 27, 2007
This is where the season, for me, kicked into high gear. This episode just rocked for me on so many levels. I am so sorry that the conclusion is not going to be shown until I believe September 7th. It was kind of a sucky time to break the series.
Human Nature is based on the book by Paul Cornell which I read when it came out from Virgin Books. I thought it was one of the best Doctor Who Novels in the Virgin run of the series and it is one of my favorites of all the Doctor Who novels. This episode takes the book to the next level and what is nice it that Paul Cornell got to write this and the next episode.
Here we get to see David Tennant stretch his acting muscles as does Freema Agyeman. This is a very different episode of Doctor Who than we have seen up to this point. More of a character study with a menace lurking in the dark to up the stakes to a rather fever pitch before the episode ends. Of course spoilers behind the cut but I really ask to not discuss “Family of Blood” in the comments (Yeah I know it is hard to do).
I am grateful that I can finally talk about this episode.
I sort of had an unfair advantage going in since I read the book. I though that David Tennant did a wonderful job of making John Smith so human (a proper British Man and School Teacher) and he makes the Doctor so alien. I think you forget that watching him as the Doctor because the alien nature is really such good acting that it is in the back of your head but nothing calls it out into the stories unless it is in the script (like the first time Sarah Jane sees the TARDIS and then him). Freema Agyeman had, in some ways, the harder role. She had to play Martha fitting in with the society of the time which didn’t treat servants the best.
I loved the instructions the Doctor left Martha with to make sure that he doesn’t do anything he shouldn’t. I also love her saying that he didn’t cover all the bases and what should she do now. She knows that she had to do something.
I also like that we don’t really find out what happened until later in the show. John Smith has a bad dream but until we see Martha’s point of view, we only have the dream to try to figure out what is going on with the Doctor. I love the idea of the Doctor being in the watch. And that John Smith is a very real human.
Thomas Sangster gives a brilliant performance as Tim Latimer. The bright kid who plays dumb because he is picked on by his upper class mates. The way the older boys were treating him was not out of line for what happened to the younger kids at these sorts of schools. Harry Lloyd did a great job as Baines. Both as the human bully and as the alien inhabiting him. I didn’t see Robin Hood until after I saw this so the Will Scarlet connection when backwards for me. I see a great future for both of these young actors.
Overall I almost screamed at the end of the episode knowing I would have to wait a week until the next one. Unfortunately the American audience has to wait a little longer.
It is quite unfortunate that Labor Day has to come in to make us wait 2 weeks until the next episode. I haven’t listened to the commentary yet, but I am looking forward to hearing that. Freema Agyeman, Thomas Sangster, and Ailsa Berk (the choreographer) do that.
It was quite a surprise that John Smith was really human. When the nurse heard only one heartbeat that was quite a shock and then later we saw why. John Smith’s parents were a nice touch – Sydney (Newman) and Verity (Lambert). I had to pull out my DWM Complete First Doctor special to show their pictures to my son.
Martha talked way too much about John Smith than she was supposed to, but you can relate to her situation. The scene where she realizes her friend has changed was nicely done.
I am left wondering just what Tim Latimer’s story is. There seems to be more behind him than just being bright. Harry Lloyd played his roles so you’d hate him right away – his human aspect wasn’t much better than when he was inhabited by an alien.
It was a great episode and waiting two weeks will be really hard. When you discuss “Family of Blood” are you going to make some contrasts with the original book? Do you recommend reading the book even after seeing these two episodes?
Neil
Hmmm. I loved the book and loved Cornell re-imagining the book for the current Doctor. Tennant was superb. So was Agyeman.
Sigh, it is going to be a long wait until the Christmas Special.
I couldn’t stand Baines after his ‘transformation’ or whatever you want to call it. It was nothing new, just ‘alien takes over human body, body makes funny face and/or silly sniffing crap.’ Blah.
I listened to the commentary yesterday. One problem with it this time is that there are quite a few gaps where no one is saying anything at all. Nothing in the second part appeared to be revealed in the commentary.
They mentioned how that the inside of the school was a different place than the outside of it. The choreographer talked about David Tennant and the actress who played the nurse having dancing lessons. They also talking about all the extras in the dance having to practice in the car park in the morning. She also mentioned how they are using a regular batch of actors to be scarecrows, Judoon, Cybermen, et al.
The filming for this episode was broken up by Christmas, so it was over a longer time than usual in addition to being a two-parter. They had to make care that everyone’s hair and appearances stayed the same.
Thomas Sangster talked about how messy the trench filming was. He also talked about his instructions to imagine what he was seeing when he opened the watch.
They mentioned what a delight the episode was with David Tennant essentially playing a completely different character. Freema gushed about how refreshing Doctor Who is with so many changes from episode to episode.
Neil
I just remembered another interesting topic brought up by the commentary. Freema talks about some scenes that needed ADR (additional dialog recording/ replacement). While they were doing some scenes outside a whole bunch of cars went by. That messed up the audio, so they had to go back later and rerecord their dialog. This is slightly upsetting as when they first filmed the scene, they were “in the moment” and perhaps gave their best performance.
What I find fascinating about this is that unless you go to conventions or listen to such commentaries you know nothing about ADR. The assumption is that what you see and hear on the screen with respect to the actors happens at exactly the same time. In reality they go back and rerecord dialog a healthy percentage of the time on shows. So we have are at least two performances – one is what you see and the other is what you hear.
Neil