Family of Blood

Well, Family of Blood has just finished airing, completing the Paul Cornell Dr Who two parter. And what a great duo of episodes it's been, with the slower Human Nature episode getting some substantial pay off in this week's final part. I was hoping that this story would pull the quality of the season up a notch and it certainly succeeded, thanks to an intelligent and touching storyline and some deft performances.

There was some wonderfully strong ideas bubbling away throughout - the slower first part built up on some of the themes - love, loneliness, the war allegory - and the second part did a wonderful job taking all these themes up a notch and developing them. From the start, the unexpected direction took this story to places I was surprised by and built on the sense of period. It's 1913 and it felt like that, with the gathering clouds of WWI on the horizon, the polarised class system and racial inequality, the certainty of the ruling classes.

Some fantastic scenes, notably between the Doctor and Joan, the battle for the school, the darkly horrific fate of the family and that final, heart rending ending. Wonderfully judged writing, wonderfully judged acting.

The effects must be commended too - recreating the Somme in a field in Wales in December after torrential rain must have added to the authenticity, but was probably not the most pleasant of experiences. Costume detailing was superb and imust have been hard to pitch a battle between scarecrows and gatling-gun toting schoolboys with hits the note of being horrific instead of farcical.

All this and managing to balance the Doctor perfectly as vulnerable and forever alone and terrifying, vengeful angel.

Bang on the money, for me. Top notch episode.

The only weakness, for me, which barely came into play this week at least, is that Martha didn't seem ready to carry the action by herself. The performance from Freema Agyeman just seemed a little too heavy. I don't think she's a natural actress to the degree Billie Piper was and she's struggling as a character both from being a little too Rose-lite and, in my opinion, not being a wholly convincing actress. It made relying on her to carry an episode a risk and I don't think it quite paid off.

However, less of an issue this episode as Tennant and Jessica Stevenson were more than enough to carry it and the delightfully wryly twisted "family", particularly the borderline hammy Harry Lloyd as Son-of-Mine, made the villains enjoyably wicked.