Human Nature has just overtaken Prisoner of the Daleks as my favourite Doctor Who book. It was really spectacular in every possible way and somehow it was even more beautiful and moving than the TV episodes.

For one thing, there was much more time to explore the characters in-depth and, in fact, one of my favourite scenes was the humanisation of the thus-far awful headmaster. There are also many more characters than we meet in the TV series, including Alexander, Hadleman and Constance. Not only the humans, but the family itself was a lot more fleshed out in both character and motive. The vague ‘they want to live forever’ is much more complex in this novel, coming from a race whose lives are empty and meaningless so they just conquer. The futility and idiocy of war is nicely paralleled with this truth about their species.

A lot more happens in the book as well. There’s 8 hours of material, as opposed to the hour and a half we get on screen. I still love the condensed form of the story, as it is a lot pithier, and there were certainly some unnecessary parts of the book, especially at the start, as it was being tied over from the previous story in the series. However, there was a much better sense of scale with all the extra scenes. The book gives more of a picture of how John Smith and Bernice have built up lives in this community and the romance between John and Joan is given the appropriate time to blossom, though that scene with the cat at their dinner date was highly strange and unnecessary…

One of the things I loved about this book in comparison to its TV counterpart was that Timothy was not just a little psychic, but quite manic, affected by the pod (the fob watch of the book) so that he became otherworldly and almost Gallifreyan himself.

This was my first encounter with Bernice and I have to say that I loved her. She was intelligent, sarcastic and very capable. I listened to this as an audiobook and Lisa Bowerman’s performance brought her very much to life for me and I wish she were a companion for the TV series. Lisa Bowerman was also brilliant with all the other characters. Often with audiobooks, especially Doctor Who ones, the narrator can be a bit hit and miss, but she perfectly acted every single character and not once was I confused about who was talking. I often forgot it was a cast of one, as Lisa Bowerman’s voices for each of the characters were so individual.

I also liked the hints to Benny being queer. I looked it up and apparently ‘ambisexuality’ (or omnisexuality) was the norm in her culture. It was fairly subtly referenced and could easily go over the heads of some readers, but she seemed to be quite enjoying a woman’s advances on her and immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was gay (assuming that by ‘coming out’ she meant it in our current sense of the phrase and then being surprised when the answer was yes to her asking whether the character had a boyfriend), though she said that the advances had come at the wrong time, as she was mourning the death of her lover, and rejected them. Not only this, but later on in the story it became evident that another couple of characters were gay/bisexual, which was still subtle for most of it, but became explicit by the end.

This was all part of a larger theme of romantic love in the book, which forms a large part of the Doctor’s motive for becoming human, rather than him already being on the run as on TV. Other themes it explored were race (in reference to one of the school boys), feminism (including the suffragette movement and other restrictions on women), politics (the story had a strong socialist leaning), the stiff upper lip mentality of the time and the masculinity expected of all the men, war and, subtly, queer stuff as well!

The story was also a lot darker than the TV episodes, with much more death and a lot more focus on some of the moral issues involved in a war, including examining the choice not to fight and the idea of being a conscientious objector.

A really excellent book and I would especially recommend it in its audiobook format.

P.S. Also, no scarecrows! They were an easy shortcut for the TV episodes, but it was a surprise that one of the most iconic elements of that story wasn’t even in the original book.
P.P.S. Oh, and the ‘I hate pears’ line that we all love so much was actually on the original list of things for Bennie to not let the Doctor do!