Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #479660 in Books
• Published on: 1995-05-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 255 pages

Synopsis
The Doctor takes Benny to an English village just before the outbreak of World War I. He has chosen to give up his alien powers, forget his identity, and become human. Benny keeps an eye on the ex-Time Lord as he starts work as a schoolteacher. Which is just as well, as some aliens are in pursuit.

Customer Reviews

Back on track..!
After several largely disappointing entries into the New Adventures series Paul Cornell has come up with a cracker. To be honest I hated 'Love and War' and was indifferent to 'No Future'; 'Timewyrm:Revelation' was mildly intriguing but 'Human Nature' is easily his best effort (that I've read so far).
The tantalising concept of The Doctor exchanging his Timelord physiology to become human for a while becomes reality when The Doctor meets a group of renegade aliens. He becomes housemaster at an Etonesque public school and falls in love - the latter is handled well enough to avoid being as awful as it sounds. Meanwhile, Benny becomes involved with a suffragette - with amusing consequences...for a while at least.
This was the first 'New Adventure' that has been a pleasure to read - the reviewer before last must have stumbled erroneously across 'Doctor Who' because there is no way any fanboy (or girl!) could fail to be charmed by The Doctor's whimsical take on humanity and the taut way the narrative strands are woven right to the end.

Fear makes companions of us all
This is a classic Dr. Who tale that attempts to explore what makes the Doctor a hero. The idea of the Time Lord taking a break from himself is novel, but it is the way in which this is handled that makes the book special. The plot which acts as the background to this premise is not as impressive as Cornell's "Revelation", but the character of Dr. John Smith makes up for this. Love, fear and death are the major themes but ultimately the idea of man fighting evil with only his intellect and personality to rely on is why we fell in love with the TV show all those years ago.

Excellent story idea, well written, but sometimes confusing
I enjoyed the new TV series episodes "Human Nature" and "Family Of Blood" so much that I tracked down a copy of this out-of-print novel that the TV episodes were based on, and it's just as enjoyable.

The book features the Seventh Doctor (aka Sylvester McCoy), who I always enjoyed on TV but this story actually suits the youthful exuberance of the Tenth Doctor better, as he's young and vulnerable enough to be in love.

In places the book is identical to the TV script, but in many places it weaves into a totally different story. In particular there is a much more gradual build-up explaining how and why the Doctor bumped into these aliens and why he had to hide in human form. It's interesting to see how a book evolved into a TV episode several years later, and a good read for Who fans.

The story has some much more adult elements in the book- some of the deaths are much more brutal, and there are sinister sexual undertones, so I wouldn't recommend this book to young kids.

The last few pages do get a little confusing as there is a story arc being tied up here that ran through a lot of the Virgin New Adventures books, and for some mostly unexplained reason Death pops up and completes a previously arranged bargain with the Doctor, which having not read the previous books in the series I didn't understand at all. But despite this it's still a gripping read.

There are also some curious coincidences between the book and the TV show, such as members of the school named Moffat and Sangster- both names with connections to series 3.