Class 1.06
Nov. 20th, 2016 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI think by now I'm in love with this spin-off. Pulling off a bottle show this early in the game with flying colours - go team!
It was also a wise decision not to split the episode between the kids and Quill, but devote the entire episode to the locked up kids (which addiontally enhances the claustrophobia) and the entire next one to Miss Quill to show us what she was doing in the mean time. Not to mention by letting all the cast (minus Quill) be stuck in one place and forced to interact with solely each other, we get an investigation of the group dynamics, as opposed to two or three in separate plot threads.
For all that the episode makes the "everyone feels like an outsider for reasons/has truths they'd rather not share" point, I also appreciated that it made equally clear not everyone's issues are the same. Tanya feeling patronized isn't solely because she's the youngest, it is tied with awareness of her being black as well. Ram and Matteusz both confess issues tied to their current romances, but again, different issues; Ram is aware that April doesn't feel as strongly about him as he does about her, which is standard teen angst; wheras Matteusz is afraid of Charlie's alien-ness (and ashamed to be so), which is pretty specific to Charlie. Whose alien-ness has been so far quite specifically tied to his royalty status (here, too, when mentioning the closest thing to a friend he's had pre-genocidal war had been his speech writer, who wrote speeches for him since he was seven, hence the utter inexperience in friendship, never mind romance, and lack of knowledge of how/whether arguments are normal), but also to the survivor-of-war part, and the capacity to kill not on impulse but on thought. That Charlie ends up as the last speaker/confessor, and that he figures out the solution by confessing his truth (that he really wants to go genocidal on the Shadowkin (almost) as much as Quill does) first, then touching the rock and accessing what the prisoner truly wants not so coincidentally ends up in that last desire/truth being death. "You are... my murderer." "Yes, I am." Reminded me a bit of the exchange between the Doctor and Margaret in Boom Town - "You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared because she smiled, because he's got freckles, because they begged. And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind." "Only a killer would know that."
April points out to Ram that relationship change and develop, and Matteusz to Charlie that part of the truth is just that, a part, not the complete truth, with his love being just as real. That they're forced to have these pretty intimate conversations in front of the rest of the gang again enhances the sense of claustrophobia and makes the plot device of heigtening suspense by adding the possibility the enforced closeness could result in everyone killing each other believable though on a Doylist level you know it won't happen.
Sidenote: Matteusz using the Narnia novels and the Problem of Susan in his convoluted explanation to Charlie both amused me and made me expect some incensed Narnia friends writing to the BBC about the scriptwriters misrepresentation. But hey, it's one character's impression of the novels, not a dissertation, and also I wouldn't have wanted to miss Charlie's conclusion that he's Susan.
(Matteusz continues to be my not so secret favourite, I think.)
Two more points: Tanya instinctively assuming leadership looks like foreshadowing to me. And I n ote that both she and Miss Quill use the term "slave" again (with Charlie still refusing to admit to it), which makes me even more look forward to the big Quill episode next week and to find out what she'll be like without the compulsion to save Charlie's life in her mind.
It was also a wise decision not to split the episode between the kids and Quill, but devote the entire episode to the locked up kids (which addiontally enhances the claustrophobia) and the entire next one to Miss Quill to show us what she was doing in the mean time. Not to mention by letting all the cast (minus Quill) be stuck in one place and forced to interact with solely each other, we get an investigation of the group dynamics, as opposed to two or three in separate plot threads.
For all that the episode makes the "everyone feels like an outsider for reasons/has truths they'd rather not share" point, I also appreciated that it made equally clear not everyone's issues are the same. Tanya feeling patronized isn't solely because she's the youngest, it is tied with awareness of her being black as well. Ram and Matteusz both confess issues tied to their current romances, but again, different issues; Ram is aware that April doesn't feel as strongly about him as he does about her, which is standard teen angst; wheras Matteusz is afraid of Charlie's alien-ness (and ashamed to be so), which is pretty specific to Charlie. Whose alien-ness has been so far quite specifically tied to his royalty status (here, too, when mentioning the closest thing to a friend he's had pre-genocidal war had been his speech writer, who wrote speeches for him since he was seven, hence the utter inexperience in friendship, never mind romance, and lack of knowledge of how/whether arguments are normal), but also to the survivor-of-war part, and the capacity to kill not on impulse but on thought. That Charlie ends up as the last speaker/confessor, and that he figures out the solution by confessing his truth (that he really wants to go genocidal on the Shadowkin (almost) as much as Quill does) first, then touching the rock and accessing what the prisoner truly wants not so coincidentally ends up in that last desire/truth being death. "You are... my murderer." "Yes, I am." Reminded me a bit of the exchange between the Doctor and Margaret in Boom Town - "You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared because she smiled, because he's got freckles, because they begged. And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind." "Only a killer would know that."
April points out to Ram that relationship change and develop, and Matteusz to Charlie that part of the truth is just that, a part, not the complete truth, with his love being just as real. That they're forced to have these pretty intimate conversations in front of the rest of the gang again enhances the sense of claustrophobia and makes the plot device of heigtening suspense by adding the possibility the enforced closeness could result in everyone killing each other believable though on a Doylist level you know it won't happen.
Sidenote: Matteusz using the Narnia novels and the Problem of Susan in his convoluted explanation to Charlie both amused me and made me expect some incensed Narnia friends writing to the BBC about the scriptwriters misrepresentation. But hey, it's one character's impression of the novels, not a dissertation, and also I wouldn't have wanted to miss Charlie's conclusion that he's Susan.
(Matteusz continues to be my not so secret favourite, I think.)
Two more points: Tanya instinctively assuming leadership looks like foreshadowing to me. And I n ote that both she and Miss Quill use the term "slave" again (with Charlie still refusing to admit to it), which makes me even more look forward to the big Quill episode next week and to find out what she'll be like without the compulsion to save Charlie's life in her mind.
