History Recap / DoctorWhoNSS3E9TheFamilyofBlood

* ChildSoldiers: Somewhat subverted. [[spoiler: The children at the school are armed with an array of machine guns and facing a very powerful enemy. When they realise they only shot down scarecrows, even the nastiest bully is relieved.]]
** [[spoiler: Then it hits you, it's only one year later that those school kids are crawling through barbed wire and bullets.]]

** Also Latimer's vision of his experience in WorldWarOne. [[spoiler: It saves his life when he lives it for real]].

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:John, offscreen.]]
* HeyItsThatGuy / HeyItsThatVoice: [[PhineasAndFerb Well, no wonder Ferb is so good with semi-futuristic technology.]] [[LoveActually And why Sam can get through airport security so easily.]]
** And [[GameOfThrones Viserys Targaryen]] is the insane son of an insane family ... [[RetroactiveRecognition again.]]
** As well as [[GameOfThrones Jojen Reed]] having psychic powers ... [[RetroactiveRecognition again.]]

* IdiotBall: Somehow the Family completely fails to notice the fact that [[spoiler:Smith / the Doctor seems to be going out of his way to trip over himself and press certain buttons.]] It's not all that well concealed.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: When Smith enters the Family's spaceship. [[spoiler:He's not Smith any more. He's the Doctor.]]

* [[spoiler:UnderestimatingBadassery: the Family of Blood realises too late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he gets his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he was just trying to avoid what he could do to them.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: ''The entire episode'' falls into this trope. Although [[spoiler:a descendant of Joan Redfern has written a book about John Smith and his Journal of Impossible Things]] in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]'', the Family's attack on the village, from the disappearances to an ''aerial bombardment'', seem to have completely vanished from English history, as the show never mentions it again.

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: [[spoiler: The Family certainly don't by the end.]]

Timothy asks how it's possible that he himself can learn things from John's watch and even see the future sometimes. With John now holding the watch that contains his Time Lord self, the Doctor's MotorMouth starts automatically explaining how it's just a regular human "low-level telepathy field" (which will become [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E13LastOfTheTimeLords important later]]). "You were born with it, just an extra-synaptic engram causing--"

With the help of Timothy, John eventually makes the decision to open the watch, essentially commit suicide and become the Doctor again. He defeats the aliens without much effort, and as punishment for what they've done, traps them in different time event horizons... for all eternity. The creatures realize that the Doctor wasn't simply escaping from them -- he was being ''kind'' to them, in giving them a chance to die without ever encountering him.

* BadassBoast: Oddly, made about The Doctor by someone else:

-->'''Son of Mine:''' And so we found out the reason this man, who had fought with gods and demons, had run away from us and hidden - he was being ''kind''.

* ChildSoldiers: Somewhat subverted. [[spoiler: The children at the school are armed with an array of machine guns and facing a very powerful enemy. When they realize they only shot down scarecrows, even the nastiest bully is relieved.]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E17E18TheEndOfTime This wouldn't be the last time The Doctor equated a personality change with dying.]]

* ObfuscatingStupidity: When Smith enters the Family's spaceship. [[spoiler:He's not Smith anymore. He's the Doctor.]]

-->"He never raised his voice; that was the worst thing. The ''fury'' of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with Gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden. He was being kind."
* [[spoiler:UnderestimatingBadassery: the Family of Blood realizes too late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he gets his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he was just trying to avoid what he could do to them.]]

-->''He was braver than you, in the end — that ordinary man. You chose to change. He chose to die. … If the Doctor had never visited us, never chosen this place — ''on a whim'' — would anyone here have died?''

** And his other options were: pick somewhere different where some ''other'' people might have died (Joan apparently doesn't care as long as it wasn't [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality anyone she knew personally]]?), or just killed the Family outright (which... same thing, really).

** As well as [[GameOfThrones Jojen Reed]] having psychic powers [[RetroactiveRecognition again.]]

** Also Latimer's vision of his experience in WorldWarOne. [[spoiler: It saves his life when he lives it for real]].

** And [[GameOfThrones Viserys Targaryen]] is the insane son of an insane family ... again.

* [[spoiler:UnderestimatingBadassery: the Family of Blood realizes to late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he get his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he just was trying to avoid what he could do to them. ]]

-->"He never raised his voice; that was the worst thing. The ''fury'' of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why."

-->"He never raised his voice; that was the worst thing. The 'fury' of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why."

* [[spoiler:UnderestimatingBadassery: the Family of Blood realizes to late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he get his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he just was trying to avoid what he could do to them. "He never raised his voice; that was the worst thing. The 'fury' of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why."]]

* ChildSoldiers: Somewhat subverted. [[spoiler: The children at the school are facing a very powerful enemy armed with an array of machine guns. When they realize they only shot down scarecrows, even the nastiest bully is relieved.]]

* [[spoiler:UnderestimatingBadassery: the Family of Blood realizes to late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he get his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he just was trying to avoid them what he could do to them.]]

--> '''Tim Latimer''': He's like fire, and ice, and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And… he's ''wonderful''.

* FridgeBrilliance: This episode is why the Doctor [[spoiler: is afraid to regenerate in "The End of Time"--he remembers John Smith's death.]]

* UncannyValley: All of the Family, Most notable offenders are Son of Mine and Daughter of Mine.

* [[spoiler:UnderestimatedBadassery: the Family of Blood realizes to late that they seriously underestimated the Doctor. As soon as he get his memory back, he defeats them easily in a matter of seconds. It's then revealed he wasn't afraid of them; he just was trying to avoid them what he could do to them.]]

[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E11Utopia Much later]], the Gallifreyan technique to hide in human form will become important again...

* AccidentalNightmareFuel: What happens to Daughter of Mine. You'd be forgiven for thinking StevenMoffat came up with this one.
--> '''Son of Mine:''' [[spoiler:''There she is, can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror.'' Every ''mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you, just look for a second. That's her. That's'' always ''her.'']]

Still frightened and confused, John quizzes Martha on the Doctor, and is horrified by what he hears: an alien, the sole survivor of the universe's greatest holocaust, as remote and inhuman as a force of nature, who -- for all his careful planning -- never even considered that he might fall in ''love'' while hiding among humans.