I spent all last night – other then a lovely dinner with Jules, Deb and Doov – entering in people’s names and adresses into our invite spread-sheet.  Deciphering my father’s non existent hand writing was most of the struggle.

Preperations for the wedding are moving on nicely.  A week or so back I hired the cars… and next week the invites will be out there… spreading there wings… 

I think that Jules and I might just survive the experience.  Just.

And then there’s my other love (see what I did there Jules?) Doctor Who.

Family of Blood, for me, was better than Human Nature.  On some forum, somewhere I posted —

— how this was such a brave story.  It actually casts the Doctor as a coward, with the real hero of the story being John Smith.  The Doctor running because he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, doesn’t want to have to kill the Family, sounds great in theory, but in the end all he did was cause so much emotional pain and horror.

Some fans have complained that the Doctor beating the Family so easily was a rubbish resolution to the story.  And I might have agreed if that’s where the story had actually ended.  But what we get is the repercussions of the Doctor’s decision to run.  Angry wth himself for scarpering in the first place, the Doctor takes his anger out on the Family.  Through the Family he sees what a coward he’s been, he sees that by running he’s caused all this horror, and remembers himself as John Smith and a part of him is disgusted at how human he was.  But rather than berate himself he takes out his anger and frustration on the Family.  And he punishes them in the most horrible way.  It’s no accident that the Doctor’s punishment is mythical and magical in nature.  It’s so very different to how he was as John Smith.  The perfect reaction and rejection of being human.

Most times, the Doctor *is* the hero of the piece.  But this was the first time, in the New Series, that the Doctor and his action are critiqued.  Oh yeah, we’ve had companions and people questioning him on his motives.  And there’s that theme running through the show that where the Doctor treads, death shortly follows.  But here, we have Joan actually tearing shreads off the Doctor, calling him a coward and making it very clear that he’s not someone she could spend time with.

I don’t really speak about the New Series much, but Human Nature and Family of Blood asked to be written about.  

A brilliant, fantastic story.  And brave and bold as well.