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Doctor Who Watch-along: Human Nature/The Family of Blood today at 7PM UK time

By James Aggas

The final story in Doctor Who Lockdown will be the crucial three-part finale to Series 3, starring David Tennant as the Doctor and John Simm as the Master.Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC. Image obtained from: BBC Press.
The final story in Doctor Who Lockdown will be the crucial three-part finale to Series 3, starring David Tennant as the Doctor and John Simm as the Master.Image credit: Doctor Who/BBC. Image obtained from: BBC Press. /
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Today’s major Doctor Who watchalong is the two-part Tenth Doctor story Human Nature/The Family of Blood, where the Doctor learns what it’s like to be human.

We’ve got the next big Doctor Who watchalong today, and it’s a great one. It’s also a David Tennant story where, despite featuring one of his best performances in the series, the Doctor hardly appears in it at all. Yes, it’s the two-part story Human Nature/The Family of Blood by Paul Cornell.

Originally written as a novel for the much more alien Seventh Doctor, the story was heavily reworked for Series 3 in 2007. This is partially because the novel itself – also written by Cornell – has always been a popular one. In fact, it’s one of the few New Adventures novels you can still get today thanks to a reprinting of it for The History Collection – eight books with key historical settings featured.

Of course, what we didn’t know until a few weeks later was that the story was also crucial to setting up the return of one of Doctor Who‘s greatest villains: the Master. The story focused on the use of a Chameleon Arch, a device that can change a Time Lord into a human, giving them brand new memories and even a completely different identity, so even they’re unaware of the change. This is why Derek Jacobi’s character of Professor Yana in Utopia was such a kind and sweet man – until he opened the watch…

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Watchalong

So who’s joining in today’s watchalong of this much-loved story? Along with Emily Cook from Doctor Who Magazine – who’s organized every single one of these grand re-watches so far – writer Paul Cornell, director Charles Palmer and Lucy Cartwright – who played Daughter of Mine – will be re-watching and tweeting about the story. I’m sure we’ll be learning a lot about the making of both episodes.

As with previous watchalongs, which have brought us alternative regeneration stories and beautiful goodbyes, we’ve got a couple of extra goodies to look forward to. At 6 PM, Shadow of a Doubt by Paul Cornell will be released as an introduction to the episode, followed by The Shadow in the Mirror at 8.45 PM. We don’t know much about these releases, but considering how strong the extras have been for previous watchalongs, we’re definitely excited.

You can watch Human Nature and The Family of Blood on BBC iPlayer in the UK, or you can purchase them on Amazon Prime Video in the US, where both episodes are currently available for free! To take part in the discussion on Twitter, make sure to use the hashtag #DoctorOfMine.

dark. Next. Many Doctors say thank you to the NHS and frontline workers

Will you be joining in today’s watchalong of this popular story? Is Human Nature one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments below.

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