Dr. Who-The Family

This week's episode was the second part of two parts. This one is called the family. This is a group of creatures which is a family and they require the timelord's knowledge in order to survive. If they don't have that then they have a limited life span and they are dead within three days. The doctor, because he relizes that they are on to him, he has taken his personality and hidden it in a watch. He appears to be human even though he is not.

The bad part about it is he completely looses all recognition and for all intensive purposes becomes another person, so he has a normal life that he has created for himself. Although his past is all fabricated, he believes it to be real. His companion, Martha knows that he has done this, so she disguises herself as a maid at the school where the doctor is teaching and she kind of keeps an eye on him and at the end of a month, she is suppose to take the watch and open it and restore his personality.

Well, unbeknownst to everybody one of the students at the school comes across this watch and being like any other teenager, he is curious and pockets the watch and doesn't know what he has. He doesn't realize that each time he opens it up, the family of aliens are able to get a whiff of the doctor's presence. They honed in on the watch every time the teenager opens it. They recognize that the doctor is one of the people at the school, and so they attack the school. But, here is where it gets to be cute. The British have a tendancy to be able to do this. They will take something old fashion and purposely for example like a scarecrow and put it into a modern science fiction drama. The crazy part about it, is that it works.

The fact that they explained them as re-animated creatures that they are able to control, it's a different twist on the regular sci fi stuff that you plan. You get so use to gadgets and what nots so instead of strange gadgets, you have scarecrows. The scarecrows are kind of like the phantom army. The aliens are using scarecrows to attack the school, but the students are able to hold the scarecrows off, because of their training. Remember this is pre World War I days. Part of their training was to train them in the military science to prepare them so when they graduated from that school that they could go and serve in the British armed forces. Once the standoff between the aliens and the students and the scarecrows were over, the aliens decided to go back to their ship and use the cannon on the ship to literally bombared the countryside thinking that this would bring the doctor out.

At that point the doctor has fallen in love with a different maid at the school and wants to marry her. The woman starts to realize that there was a strange book that she found with the doctor that has his handwriting in it with all of these drawings. She starts to put two and two together and what Martha is saying to her too about the watch. She realizes that the doctor is not really who he seems to be even though she is in love with him. So she convinces the doctor that he is going to have to make a choice and that he is going to have to give up this life that he thinks he has for the other life which he has no idea he has which is really him.

Around that time the young man that has the watch shows up. The bottom line is the doctor is then reconstituted and of course in doing that the life he would have had with the woman is no more. Once he is back to his senses he deals with the situation with the family. Abruptly, he is able to split them up and neutralize them. By him having his personality back, he realize that he doesn't belong there and he and Martha get back on the tartus and that is pretty much the episode.

But, what makes it nice is there is one last twist and that is the young man that had the watch actually does have the vision to see the future. When he was holding that watch he recognize he was seeing a point in time that he did not realize was going to be not even two or three years later in World War I when he and his school buddies were going to be standing in a spot where a shell was going to land and they are going to die. But because he remembers it the doctor tells him to keep the watch with the date and time on it. So ironically while they are at war fighting the Germans in World War I, sure enough at this point where enemy shells come down and the guy looks at the watch and it reminds him of what he had seen and he was able to move him and his brother out of the way and they survived. When they came back from the war they lived long lives. At the end of it you see at the funeral of one of the students there's the young man who had the watch who is now a very old man who looks over and there's the doctor and Martha kind of off to the side at the funeral. The old man gives them a wave and a smile and then they are gone.

I loved the writing in the episode. The British out did themselves. One of the things I like that they do is they let you know who the writer of the program is up front. Because trully without the writers actors don't have a lot to work with.

It's time now for me to take a break and have a good cat food snack, them I'm going to curl up and take a nap while the humans are busy working.