YMMV / Doctor Who S29 E9 "The Family of Blood"

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: Rubber balloons such as that carried by Daughter of Mine were possible. In fact, they were invented a century prior, 1824. That said, a helium filled balloon in 1913? Not so much.
• Base-Breaking Character: Joan Redfern. To some, she's a perfectly ordinary and kindly (barring the Deliberate Values Dissonance of her era) woman who gets caught up in the Doctor's wake (and has to deal with the resulting fallout). To others, she's a bland racist and Ungrateful Bitch carrying around a Romantic Plot Tumor. Plus it's debatable if her holding the Doctor accountable for what had transpired was justified or not (and, whether or not it was justified, if it's understandable for her to blame him after everything that's happened, with her limited amount of knowledge, anyway).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Doctor wears a tweed suit and bowtie during this episode (and "Human Nature"), and everyone calls him, "Mr. Smith". Cut to three years later...
  • In the Flash Forward where we see the life John Smith could have if he doesn't open the watch, he looks uncannily like Peter Capaldi on his death bed.
  • After John Smith/The Doctor is unable to have his married life with Joan Redfern, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes were later cast as a married couple in the tv series There She Goes, where the actors found their familiarity with each other from being in Doctor Who helped them better act as a couple.
• Sacred Cow: Generally considered one of the best episodes of the revival series.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Joan Redfern is supposed to come off as a nice woman who's lucky to have found love with the Doctor. However, there's a moment where she spitefully tells Martha that "a skivvy" and "one of your colour" will never be a doctor. This is while Martha is not only trying to help save the Doctor, but her as well, causing her to come off as an Ungrateful Bitch. Then there's the matter of her Victim Blaming the Doctor for attempting to get away from the Family using peaceful means and ingratitude when he saves the day. Her question about whether anyone would have died if the Doctor hadn't come there on a whim also falls flat when one considers that anywhere the Doctor would've gone, the Family would've chased him and murdered innocents to get to him.

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