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Paul Cornell interview - Radio Times, May 2007 |
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Writer Paul Cornell talks to Nick Griffiths about making the Doctor human.
"Who regenerator Russell
T Davies has flagged
this two-parter as "a very
different sort of a story",
and he isn't wrong.
Human Nature/The Family of
Blood is set in 1913, just before the
First World War, in a rural English
public school, and features seriously
scary monsters - so far, so normal -
it's just that there's no Doctor, only
this John Smith fellow, who bears
an uncanny resemblance to him…
The story is based on Paul
Cornell's 1995 Who novel Human
Nature, now rewritten by him for
television. He explains: "The Doctor
is forced to hide by becoming human,
and it's the story of what happens
when aliens arrive to destroy
everything and the Doctor isn't there.
That's why it's scary. Can Martha
make John Smith turn back into
the Doctor to save everybody?"
So aliens who can sniff out a Time
Lord anywhere in the universe are
after the Doctor, but they can't survive
long and if he can hide as a human for
just three months, he believes he'll be
safe. "But he isn't safe at all," says
Cornell. "He falls in love with a nurse
called Joan Redfern [Jessica Hynes]. Martha is trying to take care
of him, but among the many things
he warned her about, he didn't
mention that he might fall in love."
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This is a big episode for Freema
Agyeman and her character.
Suddenly, Martha's in charge,
with the class odds of 1913 stacked
against her. "We see her desperately
trying to look after John Smith, even
though she's a servant, she's black…
She's excluded from this
society, basically,"
explains Cornell.
"She has to look after
somebody of a much
higher social class
than her, who's falling
in love and doesn't
listen to her warnings
and doesn't believe her. It's
Martha's journey, really."
And it's a tear-jerker.
Besides the love
angle, there's the
knowledge that
some of these
schoolboys
will be called
up to fight in
the imminent war. "It's a kind of
spectre over the whole thing, that
doom is coming for all these people,
not just John Smith," says Cornell.
It's no coincidence that his previous
Who episode was Father's Day, from
series one, in which Rose Tyler went
back in time to see her father Pete
before he died. "The cast put
in great performances in
jerking those tears," says the
writer of his latest story.
"Jessica breaks your heart."
Small boys already
gagging at this prospect:
fear not. This is still Doctor
Who and you will get what's
coming: the Scarecrows. These
hessian sacks of malevolence
and straw, reckons Cornell,
"will scare little eight-year-olds
absolutely witless!
There's a scene where
a whole army of them
shows up, and
[director] Charles
Palmer fills the screen with
them! And there's another where
a Scarecrow grabs a child holding
a balloon. And if that doesn't get
them hiding behind the sofa…"
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What of the Doctor in all of this?
Russell T Davies, says Cornell, calls
him "the lonely god". The poor man
has sampled a human existence, an
alternative to galaxy-hopping. "He's
been there a few months and [he and
Joan] have had a lot of time to get to
know each other and we see them
falling in love," says the writer.
Will he at least get the chance to
savour a woman's embrace, before the
burden of the Time Lord forces him
to choose between love and planet?
"Oh," says Cornell, "we've got some
serious snoggage."
**
Read our 2005 interview with Paul Cornell - or take a look at our full Doctor Who guide.
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