CLASS
DOCTOR WHO school-based spin off

1. For Tonight We Might Die
2. The Coach With The Dragon Tattoo
3. Nightvisiting
4. Co-Owner Of A Lonely Heart
5. Brave-ish Heart
6. Detained
7. The Metaphysical Engine, Or What Quill Did
8. The Lost

FOR TONIGHT WE MIGHT DIE

Coal Hill School in London is known to the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as The Doctor. He was janitor there briefly and his grand-daughter Susan was a pupil there. He also knew one of the teachers, named Clara Oswald. Which is important because a small group of students at the Prom dance in Coal Hill School are about to find out that perhaps the teachers aren't the worst monsters in the place.

CLASS is an attempt to pitch a DOCTOR WHO spin-off aimed at an older market than that of SARAH JANE ADVENTURES. As such, this opening episode can have characters killed and maimed in reasonably graphic terms whilst broaching subjects such as adolescent attraction and peer pressure. Oh, and monsters. There are also monsters.

In this case, the monsters are a sort of hybrid lava monster/shadow creature that can be solid enough to kill for brief periods, but are also sensitive to light. They have broken through a rift in time and space to find Charlie, a youth who turns out to be an alien prince from another world and who owns a box that is either the last resting place for all the souls of his murdered race or a giant weapon, depending on your point of view. He is protected by the bitter and sarcastic Miss Quill, who was once a revolutionary on their world and who must now act as his bodyguard in payment of her sins. Katherine Kelly's turn as Quill is the highlight of the episode, though she could be even more biting.

The rest of the kids around these two are currently archetypes (the nice girl, the overacheiving geek, the arrogant captain of the football team and the exchange student. This being the opening episode, and needing to feature a visit from Peter Capaldi's The Doctor as well as setting up everyone's backstories and the imminent threat, these archetypes are barely sketched in, but the performances are fine and there are some nice moments in the script, mostly from Miss Quill, but also references to the likes of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, whose Hellmouth idea gets a timey wimey update in the set up to story.

The plot's a bit basic, but that's again down to how much has to be packed into this first episode. The connection between the heart of one of the students and the head monster's hearts is a little cloudy in its logic, but the pace rattles along to its fairly harsh ending. Now everything is set up, let's see what this spin-off can do.

THE COACH WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Whilst Quill deals with an emotionless Ofsted inspector, Ram tries to deal with the trauma of seeing his girlfriend murdered brutally right in front of him, and of losing one of the legs that made him the star of the football team. This process isn't helped by the fact there's a dragon going around brutally murdering faculty members.

There have been lots of stories in recent times of sports coaches not quite getting the line right between 'challenging' and 'brutalising'. That's one of the themes in this episode. No coach who treated his students as badly as this one does would stay in the school for very long. That's alright, though, because Ram is clearly suffering from some sort of PTSD or grief and that's the main story here. Quill's side story of the Ofsted inspector is a side setup for a later date.

After the reference to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER last week, there are clear echoes of that show's influence. The school may be different, but the setup is fairly similar and you could probably swap the plots over with just a spruce up of the script. There are some nice lines and twists in the route the story takes, but making the bad guy so obvious from the start bleeds away some of the tension. The amount of bloody gore, however, is certainly higher than might be expected in its parent show.

NIGHTVISITING

The spirits of the dead are being allowed to visit theie nearest and dearest in the area around Coal Hill School, thanks to some alien tendrils. On the second anniversary of her father's death, Tanya is particularly vulnerable.

After last week's episode focusing on the grief and trauma of Ram losing his girlfriend right in front of him, we get another episode focusing on grief. This time around, it is the loss of a parent and how that can damage the whole family. This is a tough subject to handle sensitively, but the story manages to get the balance right.

What's less successful is the alien invasion being depicted. We see one victim being whisked off to, presumably, feed the creature, but we also see many others locked in the alien tendrils, apparently asleep. Why are they not being subjected to the same visitations? Why is Tanya so obviously a target for the alien creature. Yes, her grief is great, but she herself makes the argument that it cannot be greater than that of her mother, or brothers. The alien tendrils are delightfully gooey and disgusting with just the right hint of INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS about them, but it is not possible they could string themselves through the streets around the school without anyone in the wider world noticing.

The subject of burgeoning sexual romance surfaces as Matteusz moves in with Charlie and Quill's crushing loneliness is effectively hinted at, even as she is being utterly badass with a bus. The episode is patchy, but also not just surface gloss with pretty teens. It may need longer to find its place, but this is the best episode yet.

CO-OWNER OF A LONELY HEART

The King of the Shadow-Kin is exerting a greater control over the heart he now shares with April. As a result, she is becoming angrier and taking on some of the Shadow-Kin abilities, such as conjuring deadly swords out of nowhere. This is not a good time for her estranged father to be released from prison and try to come back into her life.

Continuing the long-running theme of there being almost no good fathers in shows set in the wider Whoniverse, we are faced with a man who tried to kill himself, his wife and daughter in a car crash. Clearly this must have been as the result of some mental health problem, but it is presented simply as a bad person who did a bad thing and is now trying to muscle back into his victims' lives. Considering the understanding that has been shown to those suffering grief, loss and loneliness amongst the 'hero' group, this is a disappointing simplification.

And after last week's homosexual tryst, we are given a heterosexual one as April and Ram get it on. This certainly sets the target age group in the higher teens, which is sometimes at odds with some of the more juvenile elements of the science fiction plot, such as a heart jumping backwards and forwards across dimensions between each beat. We also get a sexual tryst between the Shadow-Kin, which is sufficiently alien enough to work as a counterpoint to the April/Ram connection. The Shadow-Kin world is shown for much longer than before and it impressively realised throughout.

The background story of what appears to be a carnivorous flowering plant and Quill coming to the attention of the interesting new headmistress seems to be languishing in no-man's land until it becomes clear that this is not going to be a single episode story. It's not quite up to the standard of Nightvisiting, but there is enough going on to keep the interest going. And the questioning of Charlie's right to treat Quill as he does, and the devastating potential of the Rhodian spirit box are all simmering on the surface.

BRAVE-ISH HEART

April and Ram are on the planet of the Shadow-Kin, where she must challenge the king to mortal combat for leadership. On Earth, the flowers are starting to kill people and a battle is waged for Charlie's soul between salvation and vengeance.

The story turns out to be a two-part one, but there is an awful lot packed into this second episode. The most successful strand is that of the battle between Quill's need to wipe out the Shadow-Kin that killed both their races and the Headmaster's desire to save Humanity from the carnivorous flowers. The floral threat isn't really a visually strong one, though there are some suitably gory effects on a couple of victims, but the loss it represents to Charlie, taking the souls of his race and the only hope he has for the future is a strong motivator not to use it for a measure of personal satisfaction. The moral arguments and threats and posturing make for the more believable, and interesting part of the episode.

It is much harder to take the April vs the Shadow-King storyline seriously. He is the battle-hardened leader of countless campaigns and she is a pissed=off teenager. Even if she has some of the King's abilities and knowledge, her body doesn't match his strength and she can't possibly have his fighting skills. This makes the ease with which she defeats him utterly ridiculous. And that's even before the long monologuing from everyone else about why she is better than them and better than killing him. That an army would stand around whilst all this was going on beggars any kind of belief. The depiction of the Underneath, as the aliens call their world, remains impressive, however.

DETAINED

Quill places the entire group in detention, but a fragment of rock blasted through one of the cracks in time and space throws them into a no-place and the only way to find a way out is to speak the absolute truth, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

This is a bottle episode, in which the cast get locked in a single space with a threat and their bonds are either strengthened or shattered. There is only so much unvarnished truth any person can take and, with a little bit of anger added by the space rock, tempers fray and fragile relationships are torn asunder. It's a tense situation. Unfortunately, we haven't known the group for long enough to have really developed the relationship we need to care enough about their adolescent angst for this to work to its full potential. The mystery is fine and the tensions between them do ramp up in a nice way, but some the performances can't quite match what the script is asking of the performers and there's only so many times someone can explain the plot again before it all gets a bit repetitive.

Add to that a Deus Ex Machina resolution that also serves a cliffhanger ending and warning that everything is going to change and it manages to entertain without every convincing or reaching its full potential. It's also very reminiscent of an episode of the rebooted THE OUTER LIMITS series, Abduction.

THE METAPHYSICAL ENGINE, OR WHAT QUILL DID

Whilst the youngters are in detention, Quill follows the Headmistress and a fellow solider with no freedom on a journey through worlds created from pure belief in order to gather what is needed to effect her release from the creature in her head.

Taking place in tandem with the events of the last episode, this story features Quill and the Headmistress. Both actresses are having a great time, revelling in the interplay between them. Pooky Quesnel is great as the shady Headmistress with whom you never know where you stand. Assuming she is on the level is never a good idea, but you can also never be sure that she's not. Katherine Kelly's Quill has never quite lived up to the promise of her early appearances, the writing having never allowed her to release the full depth of her anger, hatred or withering sarcasm, trying always to hint heavily at the lonely creature beneath all that, struggling towards redemption. This is a fault of the writing never quite having the nerve to risk making her too unlikeable. That is also a problem here. Though she declares herself to be war incarnate, she is reluctant fight anyone and the decision she is given once she has her free will back is tragic, wholly expected and a trifle manufactured.

The situation is left only slightly further along than at the end of the last episode, but there is one development that promises even more change.

THE LOST

The king of the Shadow-kin returns and starts to kill the loved ones of the gang. April realises that only by surrendering her life can he others be saved. Charlie is left with a terrible decision to make, the one that Quill has been urging on him since the beginning.

This is the final episode of the season and it is a suitably epic ending, though with more than enough loose ends for any future second season. Quill remains pregnant, with all that means for the end of her life, Charlie is saddled with huge guilt, April is locked within the body of the Shadow-Kin king and a little bit of the nature of the Governors and their plans have been revealed.

The show goes to a very dark place in this last episode. Parents are murdered and genocide is committed, a deadly threat greater than anything faced yet is revealed and a Headmistress has her head turned. This is all pretty brutal and there is very little light in the impending darkness. It's enough to make us overlook the patchy nature of the show and look forward to what might lie ahead. If anything does, of course.