Class 1.01 & 1.02
Oct. 29th, 2016 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Class, the new Doctor Who spin-off. When hearing it was set at Coal Hill (the school where Ian and Barbara back in the day and more recently Clara and Danny taught), I thought it was meant to replace The Sarah Jane Adventures as the spin-off aimed at kids, but the gore part in the first two eps as well as the not-yet-team relationships at times made me wonder whether it's going for the Torchwood audience, so the answer is probably: both. There are also obvious Buffy parallels, textually acknowledged.
Speaking of earlier DW spin offs, my favourite moment was when Ram, near the end of the second episode, told his father the truth about what had happened. One of the things that kept irritating me in SJA - which I otherwise loved - was that Rani's parents were being kept in the dark. I get the problem of justifying parents not stopping their kids from risking their lives each week, but I'm out of patience with the "clueless parent/partner/relation" plot device, so one of our teenage heroes who has a parent with whom he has evidently a good relationship deciding to confide in said parent about the horrible things he's just gone through was very welcome indeed.
(I can even understand why Tanya, by contrast, doesn't tell her mother. She's three years younger than Ram.)
Tanya being of Nigerian background while Ram is a Sikh means the SJA tradition of team diversity is continued; Charlie being gay (or at least so far only shown to be romantically interested in boys, though of course it's entirely possible he's bi) is one of the more Torchwoodian elements (and welcome, because before the reveal it looked like we were heading towards a predictable Cinderella April/Prince Charlie romance). The two friendships already in existence by the end of the second episode - Ram and Tanya, April and Charlie - and the fact that otherwise they're still strangers to each other, and the second episode with Ram lashing out at everyone due to his grief and PTSD emphasizes that - make me speculate that in the rest of the season, we'll see various cross combinations. And then there's Miss Quill; asjesuswasbatman remarked, she's practically the Master/Missy in many a "the Master travels with the Doctor, trying the non-supervillain life for a while" fanfiction. Or, to put it semi-canonically, she's the Master in Scream of the Shalka, the Paul Cornell written cartoon, down to the moral ambiguity of the set up (slavery or not, in both cases: discuss). I like jesuswasbatman's theory that the reason the Doctor goes along with this in the pilot is that he's aware of the similarity and wants to see whether it works out for Miss Quill. Who in addition to being a Missy parallel also covers the sarcastic, student-loathing teacher and morally ambiguous/evil team mate archetypes; she'll probably try to find a way around the relationship with Charlie at various points during the season, and will find a method in the finale, because I recognize a set up when I see one, with the question then being whether by then she'll have other reasons to stick around and/or not kill him and the rest of the kids. That both Charlie and Miss Quill are the last survivors of their people (more or less: that cabinet reveal was obvious) provides another Doctor and Master link.
"The Governors" : apparantly the mystery of the season. That they use robots can point in any number of directions within the DW-verse.
All in all: not something I fell in immediate love with, but so far, so good, I'll keep watching.
Speaking of earlier DW spin offs, my favourite moment was when Ram, near the end of the second episode, told his father the truth about what had happened. One of the things that kept irritating me in SJA - which I otherwise loved - was that Rani's parents were being kept in the dark. I get the problem of justifying parents not stopping their kids from risking their lives each week, but I'm out of patience with the "clueless parent/partner/relation" plot device, so one of our teenage heroes who has a parent with whom he has evidently a good relationship deciding to confide in said parent about the horrible things he's just gone through was very welcome indeed.
(I can even understand why Tanya, by contrast, doesn't tell her mother. She's three years younger than Ram.)
Tanya being of Nigerian background while Ram is a Sikh means the SJA tradition of team diversity is continued; Charlie being gay (or at least so far only shown to be romantically interested in boys, though of course it's entirely possible he's bi) is one of the more Torchwoodian elements (and welcome, because before the reveal it looked like we were heading towards a predictable Cinderella April/Prince Charlie romance). The two friendships already in existence by the end of the second episode - Ram and Tanya, April and Charlie - and the fact that otherwise they're still strangers to each other, and the second episode with Ram lashing out at everyone due to his grief and PTSD emphasizes that - make me speculate that in the rest of the season, we'll see various cross combinations. And then there's Miss Quill; as
jesuswasbatman remarked, she's practically the Master/Missy in many a "the Master travels with the Doctor, trying the non-supervillain life for a while" fanfiction. Or, to put it semi-canonically, she's the Master in Scream of the Shalka, the Paul Cornell written cartoon, down to the moral ambiguity of the set up (slavery or not, in both cases: discuss). I like jesuswasbatman's theory that the reason the Doctor goes along with this in the pilot is that he's aware of the similarity and wants to see whether it works out for Miss Quill. Who in addition to being a Missy parallel also covers the sarcastic, student-loathing teacher and morally ambiguous/evil team mate archetypes; she'll probably try to find a way around the relationship with Charlie at various points during the season, and will find a method in the finale, because I recognize a set up when I see one, with the question then being whether by then she'll have other reasons to stick around and/or not kill him and the rest of the kids. That both Charlie and Miss Quill are the last survivors of their people (more or less: that cabinet reveal was obvious) provides another Doctor and Master link. "The Governors" : apparantly the mystery of the season. That they use robots can point in any number of directions within the DW-verse.
All in all: not something I fell in immediate love with, but so far, so good, I'll keep watching.
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Date: 2016-10-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-29 11:36 pm (UTC)I think it's explicitly aimed at the Buffy market (I read one review arguing that Quill is a revamped (ha) Spike. So that would be, what, Young Adult? I expect I will keep going; if I can handle children's TV, why not YA? Though suddenly I am wondering what a Whoverse show for the middle-aged would be like. If they ever make one, Mr Singh can be in it; he's probably my second-favourite character after Quill. Who is a bit too obvious, but heck, maybe young adults need things spelled out.
PS Just watching episode three; iPlayer made me click a box saying I was over 16, so that's who they're aiming for.
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Date: 2016-10-30 07:32 am (UTC)16: yeah, makes sense.
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Date: 2016-10-30 12:38 pm (UTC)PS No Mr Singh, though.
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Date: 2016-11-01 06:32 pm (UTC)It's certainly got a high gore count....
Is is possible for there to be a school with a higher body count than Sunnydale High?
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Date: 2016-11-02 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 12:52 am (UTC)As usual, I'm getting so much more out of it now I know where it's going. Mateusz in particular - the only scene of his that I remembered from my first viewing of this episode was his kissing Charlie as he leaves his parents' house. This time, in addition to noticing him in the classroom, I realised that he probably beats April in the "niceness" stakes, but no one dares call him "nice" because he's a big burly Pole. As soon as he realises April doesn't have a date, he suggests that she dances with him and Charlie. He's the first to notice when April collapses and, during the attack, I kept spotting him in the background trying to protect Tanya. More and more baffled that he isn't in the credits! Maybe he grew on the writers?
Oh, and I think I spotted Mrs Singh. On my initial viewing, I assumed Mr Singh was a single parent (probably widowed) until there was some reference in the finale to Ram's mother. But there was a very good-looking young woman standing near Mr Singh on the touchline, who didn't say anything but smiled at Ram, so I think that was her. Presumably we'll meet her properly in the second season.