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Getting a "with" credit in the title sequence (only "with"? Surely it should be an "and...as the Doctor"?), it takes about 35 minutes before Peter Capaldi shows up in "Tonight We Might Die", the first episode of new Doctor Who spinoff, Class.
Why is this important, you might ask? Well, it's because I spent about 35 minutes waiting for him to arrive. Now, I'm not sure whether this is because without a new season of Doctor Who this year I'm a little starved for it, or whether Class wasn't really gripping me as much as I wanted to. If I'm genuinely honest, I sort of think it's the latter.
Class is an odd beast, to be honest. It's hard to tell exactly what audience it's aimed at. Definitely not The Sarah Jane Adventures audience, but also not the Torchwood audience. Strangely, though, it doesn't seem to be targetting the Doctor Who audience either, and that makes you wonder, what demographic is actually left? It genuinely feels like this has been made for 15 - 17 year olds, which is a pretty niche market, and means that I'm not really in a good position to make critical comment.
For instance, I didn't particularly like many of the characters. They're all quite well acted, don't get me wrong, but Charlie and Miss Quill - our two nominal aliens - don't really endear themselves very much. The latter is basically an unlikable bitch, while the former is just too remote to care for. Ram and Tanya are OK, and there's some attempt to give them some character depth, but it's a bit flimsy and doesn't really work. Sophie Hopkins' April is the only really likable character, but in the same way the first series of Torchwood wasn't made good by Tosh being the only character you wanted to see live, so too, Class is going to need more than just April to make this show worthy.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the show so far is that it seems to lack any originality. The dialogue makes this a little on the nose, as the school is compared to the Hellmouth and various other gateways in television, which seems less a knowing wink to the audience, and more an unfortunate admission of guilt. It's a bit like that moment in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE where Jean says the third movie is always the worst. That kind of comment doesn't work if it's actually true of what you're making. Equally when Tanya points out that April mentioning a guy makes causes the Bechdel Test to fail, I was hit by how hard the show was trying to do the right thing. From that point on, I realised the show doesn't actually pass the test; even April's chat with her mother is based on her getting a prom date.
The story itself is also fairly generic - alien race invades, our heroes stand up to them, the Doctor arrives to point out there weakness and this is exploited by child genius Tanya. Ram gets his leg cut off, while April loses her heart (a plot point which genuinely makes no sense to me), and the Shadowkin are defeated.
So was there anything to like? The Shadowkin are brilliantl realised and look absolutely fantastic. Special effects are on par, and as I mentioned earlier the acting is pretty good - it's just unfortunate the characters aren't. There's a few Doctor Who references (keep an ear out for the ninth and twelfth Doctor's musical motifs, while the honor board mentions S Foreman, D Pink and C Oswald), and it's probably a good thing the show is embracing it's heritage rather than sidestepping it, the way Torchwood did in the first series.
It's only the first episode, so judging it too harshly seems a bit churlish, and I'll certainly be watching it to the end, so I'm happy to see it improve. But I do feel that improvement is required.
Why is this important, you might ask? Well, it's because I spent about 35 minutes waiting for him to arrive. Now, I'm not sure whether this is because without a new season of Doctor Who this year I'm a little starved for it, or whether Class wasn't really gripping me as much as I wanted to. If I'm genuinely honest, I sort of think it's the latter.
Class is an odd beast, to be honest. It's hard to tell exactly what audience it's aimed at. Definitely not The Sarah Jane Adventures audience, but also not the Torchwood audience. Strangely, though, it doesn't seem to be targetting the Doctor Who audience either, and that makes you wonder, what demographic is actually left? It genuinely feels like this has been made for 15 - 17 year olds, which is a pretty niche market, and means that I'm not really in a good position to make critical comment.
For instance, I didn't particularly like many of the characters. They're all quite well acted, don't get me wrong, but Charlie and Miss Quill - our two nominal aliens - don't really endear themselves very much. The latter is basically an unlikable bitch, while the former is just too remote to care for. Ram and Tanya are OK, and there's some attempt to give them some character depth, but it's a bit flimsy and doesn't really work. Sophie Hopkins' April is the only really likable character, but in the same way the first series of Torchwood wasn't made good by Tosh being the only character you wanted to see live, so too, Class is going to need more than just April to make this show worthy.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the show so far is that it seems to lack any originality. The dialogue makes this a little on the nose, as the school is compared to the Hellmouth and various other gateways in television, which seems less a knowing wink to the audience, and more an unfortunate admission of guilt. It's a bit like that moment in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE where Jean says the third movie is always the worst. That kind of comment doesn't work if it's actually true of what you're making. Equally when Tanya points out that April mentioning a guy makes causes the Bechdel Test to fail, I was hit by how hard the show was trying to do the right thing. From that point on, I realised the show doesn't actually pass the test; even April's chat with her mother is based on her getting a prom date.
The story itself is also fairly generic - alien race invades, our heroes stand up to them, the Doctor arrives to point out there weakness and this is exploited by child genius Tanya. Ram gets his leg cut off, while April loses her heart (a plot point which genuinely makes no sense to me), and the Shadowkin are defeated.
So was there anything to like? The Shadowkin are brilliantl realised and look absolutely fantastic. Special effects are on par, and as I mentioned earlier the acting is pretty good - it's just unfortunate the characters aren't. There's a few Doctor Who references (keep an ear out for the ninth and twelfth Doctor's musical motifs, while the honor board mentions S Foreman, D Pink and C Oswald), and it's probably a good thing the show is embracing it's heritage rather than sidestepping it, the way Torchwood did in the first series.
It's only the first episode, so judging it too harshly seems a bit churlish, and I'll certainly be watching it to the end, so I'm happy to see it improve. But I do feel that improvement is required.
Reflection: Doctor Who - The Timeless Children
Well I suppose that's Lungbarrow out of continuity... The Timeless Children closes off a season that is without doubt a step up from the previous one, giving us episodes that are of a much higher quality in terms of writing than what we had before, a more confident performance from Jodie Whittaker (though it would appear at the cost of her companions' performances) and Chibnall learning to give 'em the old razzle-dazzle. After watching the episode I kinda thought I liked it. Lots of surprises, shock revelations that would "change everything" and my favourite monsters - the Cybermen. Working with the Master again. Wait-a-minute. Gosh, there's so much I want to say, and in truth most of it is a criticism, which is going to sound very negative, but it's hard to grab hold of the positives. Sorry Chibnall, I'm not sure your end-of-series finale quite pulled it off. I love the Cybermen. They should be brilliant. They were astonishingly scary in the black-and-white days, lumbering around
Reflection: Doctor Who - Ascension of the Cybermen
The Cybermen are an odd Doctor Who monster. As a concept they are wonderfully creepy, but all too often they are used as a standard "monster of the week". In those situations, there's a real problem with how to deal with them, and so as a result they have convenient weaknesses that can be exploited to deal with them. Arguably they aren't the most effective monsters, but when used well, they are definitely the most creepiest. The Lone Cyberman is a great use of the Cybermen, let's be clear. The partially converted head beneath the helmet is disturbing and gives us a better idea of what the Cybermen are supposed to represent. This one, though, is odder than most - an arm from the originals, a body from the most recent, a head from Davies era; he's less a partially converted Cyberman, and more a Frankenstein's monster of Cybermen - pun, presumably, intended. But he works. He has an anger that plays against his emotionless offspring. He's scary because he's a stepping stone, and that
Reaction: Doctor Who #12.8
One of the biggest problems about Doctor Who is that fans - actually not even fans, anyone really - all have their own on idea on what Doctor Who is, and what makes it good. It's part of the reason why Doctor Who feels so different everytime a new producer takes over, and a big part of the reason Doctor Who fans argue over whether the current series is "proper" Doctor Who or not. I won't lie, I've long learned that Doctor Who is anything and changes frequently, but I obviously have a preference and that is scary. Doctor Who needs to be scary. Action/adventure is the secondary genre for me. As such "The Haunting Of Villa Diodati" was always going to have a leg up in terms of brilliance for me. Ghost house...you can't go wrong really. Meeting Byron and Mary Shelley has been a surprisingly long time coming (or not if you like the Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories, and if you do, you probably spent a lot of time fretting over the fact this episode over-writes those). With the Doctor
Reflection: Doctor Who - Can You Hear Me?
There's a new villain in town. He's got a bald head and tattoos and in love with a woman trapped between two worlds feeding off nightmares. He's also playing games with human beings... Is he the Nightmare Man, stepped out of The Sarah Jane Adventures to tussle with the Doctor? Is he the Toymaker, the Doctor's deadly foe resurrected for the new millenium? Or is it the Black Guardian...one of the immortal figures that balance chaos and good in the universe? No. It's not the last two, even though both are mentioned and it's not the first, but just happens to be quite similar. Although I quite like it when the new series references the past, I do feel that name dropping is sometimes a double-edged sword. If you're going to introduce a character very similar to the Toymaker, and then have him say "The Toymaker would be proud", you should possibly be asking yourself either a) why didn't I just make it the Toymaker in the first place, or b) why did I waste time referencing a character so
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Comments5
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It's intended for a young adult audience so that is around 15 to 17 years old. I feel it was decent for a pilot episode but the pacing was all over the place. I preferred the second episode, which in my opinion was a lot better.