Class By Itself. Some Ideas That Might Have Improved 'Class'

Class did not have to meet its untimely death.

Having seen all eight episodes, I can genuinely see a germ of an idea that would have allowed for this Doctor Who spin-off to have lasted longer than it did.  There were various reasons why Class flopped, main one being low ratings.  However, why did it get low ratings?  Why did it lose so many viewers even with Doctor Who being its lead-in show on BBC America?

I've read that part of the cause of Class' collapse was scheduling.  This is probably close to the truth: if you put a show on at a time few people, let alone the target audience, is likely to watch, it might cause problems.  However, the same people who say that Class fell because of low ratings are the same ones who tell me that Doctor Who's declining ratings don't mean the show is losing fans.

What about online?  What about on demand?  What about DVR?, they all say.

I heard that a lot from Doctor Who fans whenever I pointed out that ratings were falling, which to me indicated trouble for a show.  They kept telling me with all those methods of viewing, the show was doing 'better than ever', maybe even with higher ratings.  Given that, why then don't they use the same reasoning with Class?

I've read that part of the cause of Class' collapse was lack of publicity tying it in to the Doctor Who universe (the so-called Whoniverse) or its connection to writer Patrick Ness.  I reject those assertions.  While the advertising for Class didn't feature "from the mind of Patrick Ness" (which frankly would have gone over my head since I'd never heard of Patrick Ness until Class), BBC America promoted it and its Doctor Who-connections heavily.

It made its Doctor Who cred patently obvious by having Doctor Who lead into Class.  The then-Doctor Peter Capaldi appeared in its premiere, tying Class firmly in the Doctor Who-universe.  It even advised Doctor Who viewers that if they wanted to watch clips from upcoming episodes, to stay tuned to Class.  Yet even all that was not enough to keep Doctor Who viewers tuned in to this YA spin-off.

Interesting that Doctor Who's two other spin-offs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, did find audiences in their targeted range (adults for the very adult-oriented Torchwood, children for the kid-friendly Sarah Jane Adventures).  Young adults, it seemed, got screwed with Class (and no, that wasn't a Charlie/Matteusz joke.  What would you call their coupling?  Chatteusz? Mattlie? A PC stunt?).

I think there were other reasons why Class flopped hard.  An agenda-driven storyline, uninteresting characters, bad acting with one exception (which makes one wonder why the show opted not to focus on its best quality: Kathrine Kelly's Miss Quill), and a 'monster of the week' storytelling all contributed to its downfall.

My question isn't 'why did Class flop in general and with its targeted audience in particular?' (as I've already covered that) but 'what perhaps could have saved it?'

Now that we've wrapped up Class Series Only, I would like to offer up some suggestions as to how Class could have worked better and had a longer shelf life.

1.) Drop the 'Rhodian Prince'/Last of Their Kind' bit.

First, let's put a moratorium on the 'last of their kind' business.  Both Greg Austin's Charlie (an alien prince disguised as a human) and Kelly Miss Quill (his slave/guard) both told us they were 'the last of their kind'.

Why is it that so many science-fiction writers go for this trope?  Doctor Who 2.0 is notorious for this trope. The Doctor was 'the last of his kind'...until he wasn't.  In Dalek, the title creature was 'the last of his kind'...until he wasn't.  In Aliens of London/World War III, the Slitheen were 'the last of their kind'. On and on and on.  It gets tiresome after a while, extremely cliched.  I get the reasoning behind it: being 'the last of their kind' is meant to build sympathy for these lost beings and maybe urgency about their survival.  However, putting this detail in makes Class unoriginal.  It might have been better to simply say they are exiles or just in danger or lost, letting the mystery behind it build over the episodes.

Now, let's move on to the 'Prince' business, which I'd argue is also cliched.

When Sydney Newman was overseeing the creation of Doctor Who, one of his suggestions involved the character of Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter. Susan was first conceived as an alien Princess on the run, and I think Newman thought that was a hackneyed idea.  One of his directives was to 'drop the Princess angle' for the character of Susan.  Class could and should have done the same.

By making Charlie a 'Prince' and Heir to the Throne of Rhodia, Class began tying itself into strange and unnecessary problems.  First, no matter how hard he tries, Charlie will never really be 'one of us' (even if his sexual desires are the same as 5% of the overall population).  As a 'prince', he is already by default different from us.  He is automatically distant, removed, in another world altogether.  Charlie has a 'duty', a 'mission', one that is so alien from all the viewers that it almost immediately removes us from his experiences.

When people think 'prince', they think 'commanding' and 'wealthy', and few of us can command others or have vast resources at our command.  We also don't have a target on our back, and no good political assassin wouldn't want a crack at a member of a Royal House.  A 'prince' also leads to an idea that he is a leader, and while Charlie is the tentative lead in Class, there isn't much in his character that makes him a leader, or even that interesting a character to follow.  In Episode Two, another character, April, asks him to essentially lead.  "You're the Prince," she states.  If he did lead them, the fact they had no plan shows him to be a poor leader.

By having Bonnie Prince Charlie as a member of a monarchy, we also have the question of succession popping up.  I'll grant that perhaps I'm the only one overthinking this, but it is my want.

Charlie is the Prince of Rhodia and Heir to the Throne.  An heir must produce a successor if his family's reign is to continue, which it must since all royal houses believe their rule is beneficial to their people.  Assuming that Rhodians reproduce in the same way Tellurians reproduce, Charlie is stuck with some pretty unenviable choices.

He will have the unfortunate task of having to have sex with a female Rhodian to have an heir of his own to keep Rhodia in its Golden Age, or he will have to renounce the throne to pursue his own pleasures: either Richard I or Edward VIII.  He could have a male mistress, but he will still have to marry and produce an heir.

Here is where so many appear to trip up on the idea of marriage.  Marriage was not created for 'love'.  It was created to legally recognize children who could inherit their parents' inheritance whatever that inheritance was.  Children born outside a legal marriage could get an inheritance, but it would be difficult to prove because there is no legal framework to verify that they are indeed related to their parents.

This is probably why the idea of same-sex marriage was inconceivable in any civilization until this century (no pun intended).  No same-sex couple will ever be able to have children biologically with each other.  Even transgender couples will still require semen (something only cisgender men can produce) and ovaries (something only cisgender women possess) to bring life.

Rhodia needs a secure line of succession. Putting aside the Shadow Kin's interference in Rhodia, if Bonnie Prince Charlie dies without a legitimate heir and there is no one else the Crown of Rhodia can be passed onto (no Prince Bertie to Prince Edward), the planet could descend into chaos and war.  He would therefore need to do the Rhodian version of marriage and reproduce to ensure both legitimacy and continuity.  That would require a Rhodian female, so whatever his own sexual desires be, he is metaphorically screwed.

Now, let's figure that perhaps same-sex relationships are nothing new or different in Rhodia in terms of reproduction.  If this is the case, Charlie's sexuality would therefore be 'normal' on Rhodia, negating the intended purpose of his romance with Matteusz: to show that a same-sex romance/sex isn't 'abnormal'. 

I get the whole point of making Bonnie Prince Charlie gay: to have 'representation' in a leading character.  By making the character alien, he would come in unaware of any prejudice against same-sex sex and show that 'love is love'.  All good, but if he ever were to retake the Rhodian throne, Matteusz could never be Queen.

Something to think about.

2.) Make Quill Less Antagonistic...Maybe Even Human

Even Class' harshest critics say Katherine Kelly was the best aspect of it.  She was acerbic, unpleasant, rude, and gleefully so.  So why therefore am I suggesting we alter her character?

We've established that Quill does not want to be there, and she certainly doesn't want to be Charlie's slave, even if Bonnie Prince Charlie does not see it that way.  However, let's play with the reason she is there in the first place.

What if she were more Alfred Pennyworth than Madame LeFarge, someone who is bound to Charlie willingly?  I know the idea of this antagonistic relationship was to install drama, but given she was in little to no position to do anything about it, I don't think it ever fully worked.  With the removal of the device that bound her to Charlie, what then?

This is made clear when the opportunity to free herself from her bondage presents itself.  If Class had continued past Series Only, what motive would Quill have had to stick around, especially since the Quill devour the mother, and she was pregnant? Ness would either have had to rewrite what he established or create another reason for Quill to continue working with Bonnie Prince Charlie, whom she loathes with good reason.

It might have worked better to have started out with Miss Quill being one of two things: human or a more sympathetic alien.  If she were human, she would be more open to the idea of being a mentor or protector to our young'uns, but that might also slowly shift the emphasis to her versus our teen-centric cast, which Class did not want to do.

OK, let's make her still alien, maybe even an antagonistic Quill to Charlie's Rhodian.  However, she could have been less Warrior Queen and more reluctant warrior or worse, someone who ended up betraying her people for reasons unknown.  Granted, not the best of ideas, but somehow, once she got her free will back, what was Class seriously going to do with her?

It's a pity we had to rush through all that we did when maybe having an episode that established the Quill/Charlie relationship could have set things up better than the rushed manner.  We could have had fans take sides on whether Quill or Charlie was right.  The way Class set it up, there's no way of truly knowing (though given how Charlie is, I'm firmly #TeamQuill).

3.) Have Ram be Charlie's Closeted Lover

It seems clear that Ness and the BBC were dead-set on having 'representation', particularly when it comes to making the lead character of Charlie gay.  Fine, let's try and work with that.  As I've already stated, perhaps having Charlie be our representative might not have been the best choice due to the question of succession.  Later, I'll touch on how Charlie being gay seemed more like pandering than any actual stab at true representation, but for now, let's see how making a slight change could have given better stories that might have actually resonated with the target audience.

Class wanted us to look at Charlie's sexual orientation through alien eyes.  Charlie, being not of this world and thus, not bound by human ideas of sexuality, would find nothing objectionable about being sexually same-sex oriented.  He genuinely wouldn't understand the concept of not being with the one he loved, and that it was immaterial whether it was a woman or a man.  Class' message was simple: Love Is Love, which is a good message but one the show bungled for reasons I'll touch on later and that I've touched on in my last Class-related post.

I've already made a lengthy case as to why it would matter once he was on the Rhodian throne, but let's forget that for now.

If you must have a gay romance, why not go for something not strictly original but something that might provide actual drama and character development?

Why not have Ram be Charlie's lover?

We have the makings of something that still exists: closeted gay men.  In the world of Class and Doctor Who, everyone who is gay is out and loud (very loud).  In the world I live in, many gays are still closeted, either by fear or by choice.  Certain gays I know don't want others to know for their own reasons.  Others genuinely think their private lives are exactly that and while not hiding their sexuality don't make it a central point of their lives.

Making Ram into Charlie's lover can lead us into many interesting avenues.  Here is this jock, one who loves football/soccer, one who has a girlfriend, and who is Sikh.  Yet, let's say that while he loves soccer, he also knows that he is uncomfortable whenever his mates talk about girls.  Ram goes along with it, but in his heart he knows he prefers looking at men, has erotic dreams of men, and even fantasizes about marrying a man (a dream sequence where he and Charlie are in bed, for example, could startle him, as Ram begins to acknowledge to himself that he is not straight).

Charlie, as the out gay student, would bring an emotional conflict to him.  On one hand, he is envious of Charlie and his ability to be so free.  On the other, he yearns to have someone like himself, if not to be sexually intimate with at least to talk about things he can't express to his teammates.

I think it would be a fascinating journey for Ram to have taken.  Why should we limit gay portrayals on television to just being about sex or love?  A gay Ram would serve to create a true character arc: his struggle to reconcile his desires with his own worldview.  Ram could be same-sex oriented and still love football/soccer for itself, not for desires towards the players.  As a Sikh, he may struggle with faith and carnal desires.

Imagine if he went on dates because he is trying to convince himself he is straight or can make himself straight or is still struggling with his desires.  He might even be bisexual, who is to say?  Imagine that he struggles with his sexuality in the various episodes: maybe even sleeps with April in an effort to prove to himself that he is heterosexual but finding no pleasure in it.  Imagine that in Detained, his confession is that he is in love with Charlie.  He outs himself unwillingly and unwittingly, and now has to face the ramifications of that (no pun intended).

In a certain way, the Matteusz/Charlie affair is stereotypical.  Matty has no real purpose outside of being Charlie's sexmate, but a Ram/Charlie affair is something we haven't seen much of: that between a closeted man and an openly gay man.   Ram's character arc if he had been Charlie's partner could have taken several routes.  He could have slowly come to terms with his desires and come out.  He could have pursued a sexual relationship and kept himself closeted.  He could have avoided sex with Charlie and just found a kindred soul, one whom he could unburden himself.  He even could have chosen to deny his desires for whatever reason.

A Ram/Charlie relationship need not eventually turn physical.  It could be strictly emotional.  However, it could give something to both Charlie and Ram that they desperately needed: character development.  Class could have done wonders with the notion of 'coming out'.  Again, Class and Doctor Who exist in a universe where homosexuality is almost routine.  That's not the world that exists, and Class does a disservice to all those who for whatever reason have/choose to remain closeted.

The worst thing that happened to Matteusz was getting thrown out of his house, which ended up being good because it got him into Charlie's bed.  The worst thing that can happen to someone else is getting killed.

4.) Have Matteusz Be a Sympathetic Homophobe

It would at least give him something to do other than serve as Charlie's mistress/boy toy.

When I say 'sympathetic homophobe', I'm not suggesting or implying that homophobia is good.  When I say 'sympathetic homophobe', I am saying that it would have been interesting to have a character who does not like Charlie because he is same-sex attracted but who is also not a stock villain.

As a side note, given Rhodian biology, it's unclear whether Bonnie Prince Charlie is an outlier among his people or his sexual orientation is more predominant.

If Matteusz's sole characteristic in this scenario was that he was homophobic: bullying Charlie, making remarks, he would have been just as useless a character that way as he was in Class, where his whole purpose was to be Charlie's top.  Let's play with my idea a bit.

Let's say Charlie is openly gay.  Let's say Ram struggles with his own sexual desires and they eventually have a tryst.  We might even have Ram not join Matteusz's behavior but not say anything about it.  Let's now have Charlie decide to confront Matteusz about his behavior.  He goes to his home and finds Matteusz caring for his mother/father/grandmother/sister-what have you.  Let's say that Charlie finds that Matteusz, his bully, has issues of his own: maybe his Polish parents bully him too, maybe he protects his sister from bullies, maybe he cares for injured birds, maybe his sister is gay and he accepts that but takes out his own anger or confusion about that with Charlie.

What I'm driving at is that Class could have not only made better use of Matteusz, but also shown that a homophobe is not a monster with no feeling.  There is a marked difference between someone who is evil and someone who is misguided.  Matteusz, rather than being Charlie's whore, could have been something of a human antagonist, but one who was much more complicated than just a 'bully'.

I find that sometimes people are not evil, merely wrong.  As such, it would open up Class to tackle real teen issues: bullying, but also give the bully a touch of humanity.  People, I have found, are more than their faults or their virtues.

5.) Develop the Mystery of Charlie Over Time

I'm not a Harry Potter fan.  Potheads is what they're called, right?  One thing that I did think worked somewhat with Jo's work was with regards to Harry's introduction to the world of witchcraft and wizardry.  Granted, we were essentially told straight off the bat 'You're a wizard, Harry' when Dumbledore, Hagrid and McGonnagal dropped him off at his Muggle relatives doorstep, but Harry himself didn't know of his true identity from the start.  He's allowed to discover this through a series of strange events.  WE know he's a wizard, but he doesn't.

With Charlie, we know everything we need to know about him quickly: he's an alien who doesn't understand human behavior (unless it revolves around gay sex, and then he understands it better than anyone on GayTube), he's a Prince, and he's gay.  That's pretty much it for Charlie.  He doesn't have much of a personality.

Why don't we instead make Charlie a bit of a mystery to others, but a mystery that takes longer to solve?  If you were really daring, maybe make it a mystery to Charlie himself.

We've already dropped that 'prince' bit, which I always found problematic at the minimum.  Maybe he didn't know he was alien.  Maybe he did know, but is working hard to keep that a secret.  Maybe the others are trying to find out who this 'Charlie Smith' is and either discover Charlie's secret or are taken into his confidence.

How is it he does not know what 'folk dancing' is but can handle an extraterrestrial weapon with the greatest of ease?  Class could have taken a page from the very first Doctor Who episode, An Unearthly Child.  They pretty much have the same premise: a student at Coal Hill who has great abilities in certain subjects but is ignorant of basic human knowledge (one particularly chilling moment, the title character of Susan reads a history of the French Revolution and states how something there isn't true).  The mystery of who Susan was built up over time.  Class could have done the same, maybe even make the revelation the series/season finale.

Class, however, rushed through everything, perhaps matching Millennials' short attention span. Another wasted opportunity.

6.) Drop the Agenda

Perhaps I find the idea of 'representation' on television odd because I know some gay people.  Yes, being homosexual is part of who they are.  It, however, isn't all that they are.  I know gay men who are passionate about football and it has nothing to do with sexual desires for Tom Brady.  These men care more about player's overall statistics than their vital statistics.  Class, however, lives in that alternate universe: not only are gay people able to be open about it without anyone batting an eye, but the gay people in Class have no defining characteristics apart from being gay.

Class suffered greatly from the idea of 'representation', no matter how well-intentioned.  The show applauded itself for making its lead character homosexual, and I've already pointed out some things that were wrong with this idea.  Now let's look at another aspect about 'representation'.

According to GLAAD, in 2016 4.8% of characters on network television were LGBT.  The self-identifying LGBT population in the U.S. is 3.5% as of 2011.  In short, there is technically speaking, an over-representation of the gay community on television versus the overall population.  Class may have been congratulated for having a gay teen leading character, but despite the praises it was receiving, it was not in the vanguard.

It IS hard not seeing an agenda when the whole 'gay romance in space' story was already covered on Doctor Who with the Doctor's Companion Bill Potts, the first openly gay Companion as were (endlessly) told.  Bill mentioned or referenced her lesbianism in at least 5 out of the 12 episodes of her run.  A case of she doth protest too much?

It had gone from a positive step to a running joke: where could Bill drop the hints that she was a lesbian?  Curiously though, Bill never mentioned it to her foster mother.  We got that she was gay, and I imagine the Doctor Who production team congratulated itself (as did Class) for giving gay audiences someone to 'identify' with.

However, Class and Doctor Who got carried away with this (and let's not get started on the same-sex bestiality of Madam Vastra & Jenny Flint).  Bill's lesbianism came up in almost half of her stories, and Class rarely failed to show how intimate Matteusz and Charlie were.  It became almost obsessive this constant referencing, as if the audience might be in danger of forgetting that they had gay characters.

It would be nice to get a gay perspective on this, and while I can only guess I imagine some gay Doctor Who or Class fans probably might have found the whole thing irritating rather than empowering.

I was never been convinced that Matteusz was a real person.  Instead, I think his character served one purpose: to be Charlie's lover.  As I've pointed out, every scene that Matteusz had involved Charlie: it was either with Charlie or with Charlie in it.  Only once can I remember a scene in Class where Matteusz spoke alone to someone else.  That was when Matteusz talked to Miss Quill...asking if Charlie was there.

I'm not convinced that ignoring the real issues same-sex couples face is 'progressive' or rational.  Despite the advancements the LGBTQIANBGN community has made there is still homophobia, ranging from words to physical violence.  Class wants to make that world nonexistent, that everyone is cool with Charlie & Matteusz.  That would be a nice world, but it's not the world we live in.

Where's Matteusz? Probably still in bed,
waiting for Charlie to turn him on
(in more ways than one).

If that was the goal of Class, to be a demonstration of how far the world has come, rather than being a science-fiction show with teen drama elements, it's no wonder it flopped.  Who wants to be lectured?

Ultimately, Class needed to stand on its own, and it didn't.

It had an incredible inability to balance "alien invasion or teen angst", it gave viewers no reason to keep following these characters who were shockingly thin save for Katherine Kelly's Miss Quill, and if tried to fit in so much within a brief running time.  Perhaps if things had developed more slowly (that episode where Ram and April discover each other versus Class' notion of  having them leaping into bed only to say there can't be love because they've known each other only a month).  Perhaps if greater care were taken with the characters and situations.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

Now, Class is finished, and apart from its few fans, won't be missed.  Class was a massive misfire, and perhaps one of Doctor Who's biggest mistakes; then again, I hadn't counted on this...

Class Dismissed And Then Some. Thoughts on Class Series One

Class, the Doctor Who spinoff that was meant to attract more young adults into the so-called Whoniverse, flopped.

Flopped big time.

Despite its Doctor Who tie-in (with The Doctor himself making an appearance in the premiere), Class was dismissed in more ways than one.  Why did Class, despite its pedigree and appeal to the YA audience, fail to catch on?

I think the reason can be summed up by a line said by Katherine Kelly as Miss Quill to one character coming up to see his boyfriend:

"Alien invasion or teen angst?"

I take it that other supernatural shows, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Teen Wolf, were able to balance the otherworldly with the teen drama.  They, however, had advantages Class didn't.  First, they weren't trying to tie themselves to another show and its nearly half-century mythology. 

These other shows had their own mythologies, their own universes.  They weren't inhibited by trying to tie themselves to a long-standing one.  Class hasn't exactly hindered by Doctor Who, but by being part of that world, it already had some limitations.

My immediate view is that Class never built a case for being.  You can ride Doctor Who's coattails for so long before you have to stand on your own, and Class never gave viewers a reason to keep coming back.  Imagine if it didn't have the Doctor Who background.  Imagine if there was no Doctor Who, that we came upon these five kids and their mysterious teacher for the first time in For Tonight We Might Die.   Would they be interesting enough to follow and care about?

Audiences en masse said, 'No'.  The characters were boring, essentially tropes: alien prince, jock, sweet girl, brainiac, and 'gay Polish immigrant'.  That last one, Matteusz, was probably the worst of the characters, not because he was gay, but because he was only gay.  He never was actually part of any of the alien fighting.  He served no purpose save being the main character's sexmate.

Matteusz never interacted with any of the characters if the main character, his lover, was not also interacting with them.  In short, he was there to verify the main character's agenda...err, sexual orientation. 

Matteusz provided the teen angst, the main character Charlie provided the alien invasion.

Second, they had longer time periods to tell their stories versus Class' need to squeeze in so much in eight hours.  If you have a limited time frame, you are hampered by trying to put in sometimes competing ideas into one, making things unbalanced.  It's that 'alien invasion or teen angst' again.  Patrick Ness, the creator and writer of all Class episodes, might have done well to maybe have at least one or two episodes where we focused on the characters versus an 'alien-invasion-of-the- week'.  That could have made that element of the stories flow, and we could have had a pause on things.

The entire Ram/April storyline felt so rushed: they slept together after knowing each other a month.  I don't think they had that many conversations prior to their first kiss, and them becoming lovers feels even more rushed.  At least with Matteusz and Charlie, they had a little bit of a build-up (and I do mean little: they had apparently one date before Matty comes rushing into Charlie's bed and declares undying love).  Ram declaring undying love to April (whom he deflowered) near the end of Series Only after a.) his previous girlfriend Rachel was killed and b.) after him telling her earlier that he wasn't going to say he loved her because as he says, 'we've known each other for a month' really solidifies how rushed and unbelievable the Ram/April romance was.

It's a bit of a wild turn: one hour Ram is having sex with April, a couple of hours later he's telling her he wasn't going to tell her he loved her.  It should be noted that, if we go by the timeline in Class, they had sex and fought the Shadow Kin King in the same day.

How's THAT for rushed?

Maybe, just maybe, if a previous episode had them on a date or at least talking into the wee night, their love story could have been established or hinted at.  Here, it was thrown in almost as if for balance: having featured a homosexual love scene, you needed a heterosexual love scene for equal time.

Speaking of romance, another thing that has gnawed at me about Class is the lead character's sex life.  A big to-do has been made about the fact that Charlie is homosexual, complete with boyfriend.  This was done, I imagine, to show the progress that has occurred in society where we are supposed to not even shrug our shoulders at a same-sex couple.  The fact that Charlie is alien is also important when it comes to his sexual desires, to show how to suggest that there might be anything strange about such desires would be a truly 'alien' concept, and that an extraterrestrial, free of such bigotry, would do as we are supposed to: love whomever he/she loves as an individual, not as a gender/sex.

Though I did not finish it, I think lack of sexual inhibitions was better-explored in Stranger in a Strange Land.

All well and good, but if you are going to have a character have a sexual orientation that is not held by the majority of people (in the U.S., the gay population is at most 6%) for no other reason than to showcase a same-sex relationship, then I think we run into a few problems.

We circle back to Matteusz, Bonnie Prince Charlie's sexmate.  Did we ever see Matteusz as an individual, as someone not defined by his sexuality?  I don't think so; everything about his character was related to him being gay: his parents throwing him out, his surprisingly explicit deflowering of Charlie (at least I assume Charlie hadn't had some good ol' same-sex Rhodian humping), his connection to all the other characters in Class. 

Tanya, April, Ram, Charlie and Miss Quill all had scenes where they talked to another character one-to-one, sometimes with each other (Tanya and April or Ram), sometimes one-to-one with a guest character, (Ram and a cafeteria lady, April and her parents or Quill with the Headmistress Dorothea).

Matteusz, conversely, never had one moment, one scene, let alone a conversation, that did not involve Charlie in some way.  Sometimes it had Charlie in the scene with others, others with him and Charlie alone, but never in all of Class did Matteusz interact with anyone on his own for his own reasons. Charlie was Matteusz's whole raison d'etre.  

He too, is an 'alien': a Pole who is now living in a country not his own, where English is another language.  So much could have been explored regarding Matteusz: how in some ways, Charlie and Matteusz are similar, but Ness and Class were not interested in that.

They were only interested in Matteusz the same way Charlie was: for his body.

Matteusz is the worst kind of character, one that should be studies by future scripting students in the class 'Don't Let This Happen to You'.  He is a variation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a character whose sole purpose is defined by how in this case he serves the main character.  Everything about Matteusz is about Charlie.  Matteusz has no independent existence.

You could argue that Class would or could have explored that in a Series Two.  My reply would be: why not explore it in a Series One?

Now, another reason why I think Class failed was that it was focused on the wrong character.  Charlie Smith, our Rhodian Prince, was a badly-created character.  He was wildly inconsistent: unaware of basic human behavior (except for sex, where his skills would put most Pornhub videos to shame), he is meant to be almost a wide-eyed innocent (unless it's in the bedroom, where he's quite the master...or is it submissive).  When it comes to Miss Quill, he is far from naïve.  In fact, he's an obnoxious, arrogant prick.

He belittled.  He abused.  He 'commanded' someone in no position to fight back.  He would take any opportunity to pull rank, which was bad enough.  However, given that she was doing all this against her will only made him a bigger monster than the aliens finding their way through cracks in time and space at Coal Hill Academy.  When anyone dared suggest he was being cruel, like Tanya did, he curtly dismissed her objections.

We again have a wild inconsistency with the characters.  Is Charlie an innocent, unaware of what 'folk dancing' is and taking things literally, or is he an arrogant Prince forcing his slave (whom he would not recognize as one) to doing she didn't want to without taking her feelings into consideration?

Charlie was the main character, but he, like just about every character, was boring.  There was only one worth anything:  Miss Quill.  I think this is for two reasons.  One: she had a fascinating backstory: she saw herself as a freedom fighter stuck serving our Boy Prince on a backwater, then forced again to watch over a group of hot young teens.  Quill had conflict, she had moments of genuine emotion.  She had a motive in working with the Governors: to free herself of Bonnie Prince Charlie. 

She also was played by the only person on Class who gave a genuine performance.  In fairness, Sophie Hopkins' April was on occasion pretty strong, her backstory of her family torment played well (and with the title song from the finale, The Lost, not a bad singer) but the rest of the young adult cast ranged from inadequate to downright awful.  Fady Elsayed's Ram was at times cringe-inducing, his inability to express any emotion shocking.  Sometimes it was hilarious: his reaction to seeing his father killed should cause giggles, same thing when he sees the cafeteria lady eaten up by a dragon.

Vivian Oparah's Tanya too was unable to do much.  When Tanya's dead father suddenly appears, Tanya appears more irritated than shocked or moved, as if Dead Daddy was an annoyance to endure rather than a chance to resolve any issues she had with his sudden passing.

Our lovers Greg Austin and Jordan Renzo as Charlie and Matteusz were forgettable, and in a curious twist Austin, who was only 24 when he played Bonnie Prince Charlie, looked twice that age even though he was comparatively the same age of anyone save Kelly, and she was playing an adult.

A show built around Kelly as Miss Quill would have been fantastic: her acting ability and storyline would have been fascinating to explore.  Sadly though, she was not the focus of Class.  That belonged to a group of actors who are pretty but perhaps might not have the experience to do much with poorly-written parts. 

Weak stories with weaker villains (the Shadow Kin proved hopelessly boring and clichéd), uninteresting characters (I truly cannot find a worse character than Matteusz), bad acting (Elsayed should look back in anger at what Class did to him), and nothing that would draw viewers back for more adventures with our British/Polish Scooby-Doo gang all led to Class' collapse.

No great loss to see that Class got a failing grade.

Next: Ideas on How Class Could Have Been Improved

Class Episode Eight: The Lost Review

CLASS: THE LOST

We end Series Only of Class with the perhaps appropriately named The Lost.  It suffers from a lot of what doomed Class already: a lot of rushing through stories that could and probably should have taken longer, some unintentionally hilarious moments and despite its claims to the contrary, no real desire to meet up against next term.

Six days after the events of Detained/The Metaphysical Engine, Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly) is still visibly pregnant. This leads to our first unintentionally hilarious moment, our gay Polish immigrant Matteusz (Jordan Renzo) asking how that could be possible.  The sarcastic in me wonders whether, perhaps being gay, Matty does not understand how pregnancies work.  Yet I digress.

We see the Scooby-Doo gang still is split, with April (Sophie Hopkins) singing a new folk song, The Lost (about the only highlight in what proved an almost embarrassing episode).  April senses Corakinus again, and her on/off-boyfriend Ram (Fady Elsayed) knows our Shadow Kin is back...because he ran his scimitar through Ram's dad, Varun (Aaron Neil) right in front of him.

And all that was before the opening credits.

More murder and mayhem are in store, as a devastated Ram goes to April for comfort and help after seeing Daddy killed.  Charlie and Matteusz (seriously, has there been a single scene in all of Class where Matty interacted with anyone else without Charlie being present?) continue to say dumb nothings to each other: "No promises except one.  I promise to love you today.  And tomorrow I make this promise again", Matty coos to Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The teen angst has to give way to the alien invasion, for Corakinus is at it again, killing Vivian Adeola (Natasha Gordon), right in front of her daughter Tanya (Vivian Oparah).  This is second unintentionally hilarious moment: the actual killing of Vivian.

As Mother Dearest attempts to comfort her daughter over the loss of her friends, Tanya is having none of it.  "Things will get better," Mother Dearest begins.  "You'll get older...", with Tanya whispering "Are you sure of that?" and Mother Dearest ignoring her.  "If there's one thing I KNOW...!!" she continued until a shadow scimitar runs right through her.  It almost sounds as if she's saying "NO!!" as well as "KNOW!!", but the whole sequence is just flat-out hilarious. 

I'm not a sadist, but I was laughing my head off at this moment, constantly rewinding it to see this laughter-inducing moment again and again.  I think it's because Gordon's voice goes up 500 octaves when she's interrupted midsentence, and on perhaps the worst word to stab someone on.  The wild back-thrust she has adds more hilarity to it all.

What is it about a show that almost delights in killing parents off, and does so in a way that makes people laugh out loud?

Now that Tanya is an orphan and unless her brothers are of legal age will force the state to become Tanya's legal guardian, she does what anyone whose mother was run through by the Shadow Kin would do: race over to Miss Quill to train in martial arts.

Corakinus finally makes an appearance, holding April's mother hostage.  He can't kill her because of the powers she got earlier as a result of his connection to April (I think), but by this time, Mattlie finally stop making googly-eyes at each other long enough to try and help the others.  Charlie (Greg Austin) is holding an alien gun, but Prince that he is, can't actually shoot it.  Worse, Corakinus has infected him to where if Charlie kills Corakinus, he kills himself.

As April explains, "He's put a shadow on your heart", which is unintentionally hilarious moment number three. 

Speaking of numbers, Corakinus tells them that Matteusz is Number 5 (was writer/creator Patrick Ness inspired by the young adult series I Am Number Four?), as Numbers One and Two were already done in.  If it were up to me, Matteusz would have gone straight to Number One, but again I digress.

It's by now that Tanya, Miss Quill, and later on Ram and I think even April by the end all push Bonnie Prince Charlie to use the Cabinet of Souls and eliminate the Shadow Kin, who are slowly entering Earth through tiny cracks in time and space.  Charlie, being a.) moralistic and b.) more concerned about what his boyfriend thinks than on saving humanity, continues to refuse.  Instead, he and Matteusz (because Matty insists on being at Charlie's side at all times) go to the Headmistress, Dorothea Ames (Pooky Quesnel).  Dorothea insists that the Governors are academics, interested in research to gather knowledge for "The Arrival".  They, she tells our lovers, manage time.

As is the case throughout all Class, Charlie generally proves inept at things.  It's up to Quill to save Numbers 3 and 4: Tanya's brothers, though it's hard to say if they were of legal age (doubtful since they're also going to Coal Hill Academy), and/or whether or not they are twins (having both of them wear shirts that are similar shades of orange does not help matters). 

It all comes to a head at the assembly area, where Quill and Tanya are fighting furiously to stop the invasion.  Corakinus' pledge that the Earth will be spared if she comes with him is a lie: he plans to kill everyone.  Ram returns to join the fight when he sees the shadows are going after people, and at long last, Charlie uses the Cabinet of Souls that Tanya & Quill brought to defeat the Shadow Kin.

To his intense disappointment, Charlie finds that he is not the hero of legend, for the Rhodian souls have not returned to take forms again.  Dorothea is a terrible disappointment and will not see "The Arrival" and is killed by...a Weeping Angel!

April appears dead, but to everyone's surprise, Corakinus rises, speaking in April's voice and asking why is everyone looking at her like that.

I guess this means that April and Ram may find Coitus Corakinus a bit difficult.

As always, The Lost shows that Class made a terrible, terrible mistake by making Charlie the main character because Katherine Kelly so dominated the show as Miss Quill.  She was the only actress and only character worth our time and interest.  Her pregnancy makes things quite curious in that if her children live up to the Quill manner of being, they will literally eat her.

Maybe if that's the case, we were lucky not to get a Series Two.

Whether attempting to be tender, almost motherly to the devastated Tanya or delighting in the idea of smacking Bonnie Prince Charlie around (There's some Princes I'd really like to start punching," she tells Tanya when they plan to force Charlie to use the Cabinet of Souls), or stating the obvious (when Corakinus bemoans his defeat of him by Quill when she saved Tanya's brothers by telling her, "You will die," she replies, "All of us die, genius"), Kelly as Quill has been nothing short of brilliant. 

Why she ended up playing second fiddle to this motley group of models defies belief.

I simply cannot understand how any of the young adult cast-members save Hopkins can have careers if they don't get more acting training.  Elsayed is especially ghastly whenever he tries for any kind of emotion: whether it's him trying to show devastating grief ("What do I SAY?!", he asks April in how to explain his dad's death to him mom, whom we've never seen) or anger at any of them for not attempting to fight (as a side note, did anyone bother trying to get in touch with UNIT or maybe even Torchwood?). He's even bad at trying to declare his undying love for April, whom he told not that long ago he wasn't in love with (despite taking her virginity) because he'd known her for only a month.  Now we're supposed to believe he loves her passionately?

Oparah too showed she has limited range: her tears at seeing her mother sliced were unconvincing.

The Lost also vindicated by view that Matteusz served no purpose in Class apart from being Charlie's top.  Throughout all of Class he never did anything outside of Charlie (no pun intended), and Renzo either was directed to make Matteusz incredibly dim or that was how the character was meant to be. 

Dim was also how Austin's Charlie was.  He kept to that 'alien who does not understand things' bit by looking confused when April gives him a comforting hug (even Quill caught on to that particular human need faster, and she has no genuine love in her).  He comes across as weak and almost self-righteous in his stubborn refusal to use the Cabinet, and worse, it looks like he didn't want to use it...because it would make his boyfriend cry.

Something that The Lost perhaps might not have thought out well is that now, Charlie is pretty useless.  The Governors' sole reason for their interest is that he had this one-time-only Doomsday Device.  Well, now it's used, and if there had been Class Series Two, what cards could an exiled Prince with no guard and no weapon use?  Further, why would the Weeping Angels even care?

It was such a waste that the Governors didn't end up being a group of renegade Time Lords.  At least that would have been a genuine shocking twist ending.  However, given that the Weeping Angels were created by Class executive producer Steven Moffat, it was decided to use something to please Moffat's ego (and give him copyright compensation).  I see no other reason to have the Weeping Angels be the big baddies in the end.

The Lost lived up to its name.  Bad acting save for Kelly and Hopkins, a rushed, even chaotic story where it looked desperate to end one set of stories and tease others that will never come outside fanfic, many hilarious moments all made The Lost something to not remember. 

It would have been better if the villains turned out to be not the Weeping Angels but The Silence...at least they'd make us forget we ever saw any of Class.

4/10

Next: Class: An Overview

Class Episode Seven: The Metaphysical Engine Review

CLASS: THE METAPHYSICAL ENGINE, OR WHAT QUILL DID

The Metaphysical Engine, Or What Quill Did is a companion piece to Detained as both stories take place simultaneously.   Here, we see what might have been: a Quill-centered episode that managed to actually be worth the time to watch.  The Metaphysical Engine, however, played like something we should have had and will never get: a highlight reel of Quill: The Series.  That is both a good and bad thing, as we also get a cliffhanger that seems a bit outrageous, even if in a sense it is not a stretch.

Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly) is now going to do her best to get the Arn, the creature inside her head that controls her free will and binds her in service to Charlie.  She has been promised this by Dorothea Ames (Pooky Quesnel), the new Headmistress at Coal Hill, working for the still unknown 'Governors'.  To perform the surgery is Ballon (Chiké Okonkwo), a shapeshifter imprisoned by the Governors.  They will release him if he can perform the surgery.

With that, the three of them travel all over the place in a madcap race.  To get to their destinations, they use a metaphysical engine.  This tiny device will take them to places that theoretically do not exist, but that can exist if they are believed to exist.  That is how they are able to go to the 'Arn Heaven', where they can collect one to study, to the Ballon version of Hell, to get blood from their Devil to allow him to shapeshift, and to 'Quill Heaven', where the Ballon kills their newly-born Goddess.

No worries: as Dorothea explains as these places theoretically exist, the Quill Goddess can be reborn.  Ballon manages to perform the surgery and the Arn is out of her head.  There is a large scar across her face, but that's a small price to pay for Quill's freedom.  Soldier to soldier, they make love.

It's now that they discover they are not at Coal Hill as they thought.  Instead, they are actually inside the Cabinet of Souls, where Dorothea has one last trick up her sleeve.  There is enough energy to transport one of them, so they must fight to the death.

Did writer Patrick Ness just watch Spartacus when he wrote this?  Just a thought.

Obviously, we know who will win, and Quill returns to Coal Hill, where she saves Charlie's life but whom now mocks the Prince with the fact that she has her free will back...and there are going to be some changes.  One of them is her, as Quill is now pregnant.

It just seems such a tragedy that with one episode to go, we wasted so much time on the kids when Class should have focused around Katherine Kelly and her character, Miss Quill.  She was a fascinating character: in turns sarcastic and blunt but also one driven by revenge and a desire to be free.  She endured the slings and arrows of Matteusz's bottom, and she did it with a mix of quips and action.

In other episodes, she showed that despite being the warrior queen, Quill was also one with deep emotions that she couldn't or wouldn't accept.  The hurt of seeing her people destroyed, the long-suffering of being forced to care for someone she loathed (and have it lorded over her): Quill was an all-around fantastic creation.  The Metaphysical Engine allows Kelly a full range of emotion.

She's still the sarcastic, even brutally honest creature she's always been, but she is also a woman who has found love.  I think that having her and Ballon become lovers is a wild stretch, but she did need some release.

Kelly is simply pitch-perfect as Quill.  From the opening quips (when asked by Dorothea, 'Is that what you're wearing?', Quill doesn't miss a beat by replying, 'Is that what you are?') to her moments of rage ("Where are we?  Who is this Little Lord Growls-A-Lot and why are we all so bothered that he killed a kitten?" she screams when they are unbeknownst to her in 'Arn Heaven') to her acceptance of things ("What good is a soldier without a scar?" she replies when told of her facial post-surgery look).  There isn't a single moment when I did not care about Quill or her Wild Ride.

One last quip: when Quill thinks she's returned to Coal Hill, she calls it "my own personal Hell".

Quensel brought a curious bit of humor as Dorothea, a bit of a bumbler who is still trying out the Metaphysical Engine (she explains she's been through various simulations, but that this is the first time actually operating it).  In her Indiana Jones-like ensemble, Quensel makes Dorothea amusing, even endearing.

Okonkwo gets slightly short-shifted as Ballon, the surgeon/love interest, but he also manages his moments well, particularly the more touching ones.  As Quill snaps that she does not want pity, he tells her "I do not offer you pity.  I offer you a shared sorrow."

Pity we knew he wasn't going to make it out of The Cabinet of Souls.

The idea of the metaphysical engine itself is a brilliant one, and Ness should be congratulated for coming up with something that allows for an ethereal world to be made concrete.

The Metaphysical Engine should rate higher.  It is certainly the best Class episode, and unless The Lost ends up being a masterpiece I doubt any will be better than The Metaphysical Engine.  The episode gets points knocked down, however, because a lot of it has to be rushed and chaotic because Class is attempting to squeeze in so much in such a brief running time.  Essentially, The Metaphysical Engine is trying to fit in a whole season/series worth of story into one episode, making things zip by so quickly we can't get a full baring on things.

I think it would have been interesting if Class had spread this story out over several episodes, having brief moments where Quill, Ballon and Dorothea travel to each location for her ultimate aim.  It would have allowed for the Quill/Ballon relationship to grow over time.  It would have given us a mystery: would Quill manage to break free from Bonnie Prince Charlie?  It would also have allowed viewers a chance to be ahead of the characters and know that Quill had a secret agenda.

I also think that the actual surgery is rather graphic both for the target audience and in general.  I was surprised at the gruesome nature of having her eye essentially removed, and think they should have pulled back and/or reedited the sequence.

The Metaphysical Engine does end on a pretty outlandish note when we see Quill is pregnant.  OK, so time inside the Cabinet of Souls runs differently than on Earth or another world, but this seems a bit of a stretch and there just to provide a shocking conclusion.

Still, The Metaphysical Engine is the best Class episode.  It reinforces my view that the series should have been centered around Katherine Kelly and her Miss Quill, and if this had been a highlight reel versus just a mere episode, it still would have been better than almost all of Class (or Doctor Who for that matter).

6/10

Next Episode: The Lost

Class Episode Six: Detained Review

CLASS: DETAINED

We've confirmed the sad truth about Class, the young-adult Doctor Who spinoff, with its sixth episode, Detained.

Class is pretty bad.

No, I'm going to walk that back.

Class is just plain bad.

Detained is the first Class episode fully focused on our teen characters (all played by people who run from 19 to 25).  Apart from the beginning and a very intriguing end, Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly) does not appear in Detained.  As such, you would think that having a teen-focused episode on a teen-focused show would be the breakout Class so desperately needed.

It wasn't.  Instead, it was a reminder that the characters are uninteresting, the situations dull, the actors generally weak, and that in some ways, Class is almost a spoof, worthy more of mockery than fandom.

Miss Quill is using what little power she has over Bonnie Prince Charlie (Greg Austin) by putting him in detention.  As it so happens, everyone he knows is also in detention: Ram (Fady Elsayed), April (Sophie Hopkins), Tanya (Vivian Oparah), and Charlie's sexmate, Matteusz (Jordan Renzo).  She locks them all inside for detention while she attends 'other matters'.  Charlie, who is claustrophobic (something no one knew until now), begins panicking, but just as they manage to get the locked door open an asteroid crashes right through, causing them to be taken out of time and space.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

As our Scooby-Doo gang begin investigating, things are traced to the asteroid (technically, the meteor as Ram, constantly dismissed as a dumb footballer, reminds them).  Matty picks it up in order to throw it out, but then something strange happens: he starts talking about the time he came out to his Grandmama back in Poland.

He also confesses that he is afraid of Charlie.

L'e scandal!

Detained pretty much follows this pattern: each of them picks up the Asteroid (Meteor) of Truth to a.) find out more about their situation and b.) offer up some memory and confession.  Tanya picks it up to find out more, learning that they are in a prison and that the rock contains a prisoner.  She also tells the others that they don't consider her a real friend because she is so much younger than them.

Ram picks it up and confesses his love for April, and that he knows she does not love him as much as he loves her.  April picks it up and admits Ram's thinking is true.

The Meteor of Truth not only compels them to tell the truth, but it also increases their aggression.  They are at each other's throats, constantly fighting and fighting to remain sane.  They find that they have been taken out of time and space, so in some respects they are not in danger.  However, they will be trapped there forever, so in some respects they are very much in danger.

Charlie starts confessing before picking up the rock, telling them how afraid he is of both losing Matteusz and hating him for holding him back from his desires for revenge, and how he does not have any friends apart from them and on his guilt about his lost world.  Now, with Meteor of Truth in hand, the rock has found someone guiltier than he in the rock and the rock is freed.  However, the rock still needs a prisoner, and that's Charlie.

Charlie is saved at the last minute by Quill, who now sports a scar on her left eye, longer hair and a gun.  How can this be if she's been gone only forty-five minutes and cannot fire a weapon?

Quill has news for Bonnie Prince Charlie: the creature that was inside Quill's head is now gone, so she is free.  Things are going to change.

Detained has received much critical acclaim, with some calling it the best Class episode.  I want to believe those who say that are being sincere.

I just don't believe them.  I can't believe them, because I saw Detained, and far from being the best Class episode, I thought it was the worst Class episode.

It's as if writer/creator Patrick Ness was throwing in the towel, showing us everything that is wrong with Class in one sitting.  If I didn't know better, I'd say Ness is pretty contemptuous of everything Class-related after watching Detained.

The whole episode is built on coincidence: that the Meteor of Truth would hit this precise spot at this precise time.  IF, say the Governors with whom Quill is working with orchestrated this, or if Quill herself had a hand in any of this, then it would have worked better.  Having this incident happen in the way it did when it did seems way too much of a stretch.

Detained showed the four students tasked by The Doctor from Doctor Who to be shockingly, embarrassingly stupid.

We already know Matteusz is stupid ("Do you often see your parents after sex?" from Nightvisiting). We already know Matteusz's bottom is stupid (he thought Tanya said that Ram and the Shadow Kin were having sex in Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart). What we hadn't counted on was on how Ness took time to show everyone else is stupid too.

Granted, they were snapping at each other due to the Meteor of Truth (as a side note, that would be a great name for a band), but why did April snap at Ram for a perfectly good observation. Charlie tells them, "I've got friends," to their inquiry about whom he would call in an emergency.  Ram replies, "Besides us?", which leads April to try and hush him.  Why?  Ram's correct: Charlie has no friends, no one he can be intimate with, unless you count his sexmate, but that's another kind of intimacy.

Most of their barbs, however, showed the lot of them to be imbeciles.

When the room is rattled, Ram asks, 'What was that?' Matteusz responds with 'An earthquake?', leading Ram to reply, 'In London?!'
After they are swept out of time and space, Charlie looks into the void and asks 'Is detention always like this?'
When Matteusz is remembering when he was a child in Poland, coming out to Grandmama, he says, 'I'm in Poland', to which Ram replies, 'This is what Poland looks like?'
After Matteusz tries to comfort a panicking and upset Charlie, Matty begins telling him about a character from books he read to help his English, books given to him by his religious mother: the Narnia stories.  "Narnia?", Charlie asks.  "Is that in Canada?"

No wonder at one point, when she holds the Meteor of Truth, Tanya explodes at Charlie.  "Ask about what?" he says, and she snaps. "About the rock, Alien Boy! God, you keep saying how you're this PRINCE but all you do is stand around, asking stupid questions and getting obvious things wrong!".

That was pretty much my description of Charlie.  That and that he's a bottom.  Pretty much that's all there is to Charlie as a character.  When Charlie tells them, "You think I'm this Pampered Prince?" I replied, YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!

Ram too tells the world what the world thinks of Matteusz.  "Who are you anyway?  Why you always hanging around with us?!"

Ness pretty much is using dialogue to state the obvious about characters: Tanya is insecure and a racist (at one point, she dismisses April's efforts at comfort with 'White People!', a term that no one else would have gotten away with save Ram), April doesn't love Ram, Ram (allegedly) deeply loves April, Charlie is both clueless and imperious, Matteusz does nothing on Class except serve as Charlie's mistress.

I'll give Matteusz one good point though.  Tanya in another tirade when people dare question her leadership snaps at our gay Polak, "Sometimes action isn't pretty you big Polish giraffe".  An unamused Matty replies, "That isn't even a logical insult".  What could have been a good moment for him, finally, was undone when he defended his height and neck as being perfectly proportional.

That frightful dialogue might be forgiven if it were well-performed, but by golly were the actors on Class determined to show they couldn't do much.  Austin's 'panic attacks' were comical, so was Elsayed's indignations and disbeliefs, Hopkins' shock, Oparah's anger, and Renzo's, well, everything.

The one moment, one, that saves Detained from being an absolute disaster is a series of close-up shots of our cast.  It was an effective, even eerie visual moment: almost frightening and intense, well-filmed.

Other than that, Detained was a disaster.  It shows all the weakness of Class and none of the virtues, those being Kelly as Quill.  The cast was asked to carry an episode by itself.  It failed, failed spectacularly.

What a total waste of detention.

1/10

Next Episode: The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did

Class Episode Five: Brave-ish Heart Review

CLASS: BRAVE-ISH HEART

Of all the things that surprise me about Class, the Doctor Who young-adult spinoff, one at the top of the list is the nonchalant nature of parents.  Alien invasions, possession by otherworldly beasts, legs replaced by a time traveller...all things that the adults at Coal Hill Academy readily accept as perfectly normal.

Given that alien invasions are accepted but homosexuality isn't, one wonders exactly what kind of adults live within the Coal Hill area. 

Brave-ish Heart again draws its name from other media, and once again the wild imbalance between the supernatural and the commonplace (as Miss Quill so aptly put it, 'alien invasion or teen angst') continues.  In some ways, it is surprising how good ideas (the Invasion of the Petals) are wasted for bad ideas (King April, Mistress of the Underneath).  Sometimes, you just wonder what possessed the BBC to try and peddle this as being good, let alone part of the so-called 'Whoniverse'.

Picking up where we left off last time, April (Sophie Hopkins) along with her sexmate Ram (Fady Elsayed) are in The Underneath, the realm of the Shadow Kin.  April is now determined to defeat the Shadow King by killing him.  Ram is there to help her, though there isn't much he can do.

Back on Earth, our Scooby-Doo gang has a task of its own: defeat The Invasion of the Petals.  These are not ordinary petals.  They are carnivorous and multiply with a single drop of blood.  Dorothea (Pooky Quesnel), the new Headmistress at Coal Hill, wants Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly) to help her convince Bonnie Prince Charlie (Greg Austin) to use the Cabinet of Souls against the Petals.  He steadfastly refuses to use this Doomsday Device. The moral dilemma grows in that if Quill wants him to use the Cabinet to destroy the Shadow Kin.

In Quill's view, it will be avenging both their people.  In Charlie's view, along with that of Charlie's mistress Matteusz (Jordan Renzo) it will make him a genocidal maniac.

Dorothea really does not have any interest in all this: she wants the Cabinet used, and is willing to shoot Matteusz to do it.

As a side note, I'd be happy if Dorothea shot Matteusz: no reason needed, no questions asked. He just needs to go, preferably back to Poland.  #MakeBritainGreatAgain

Tanya (Vivian Oparah) gets Ram's father Varun (Aaron Neil) and explains everything as they race to Coal Hill, where April's parents are.  They soon become trapped as the petals start eating people.

April does battle with the Shadow Kin King Corakinus (Paul Marc Davis), and during the battle her connection with her mother Jackie (Shannon Murray) allow her to tear into space and time to send Ram back.  Instead, Mr. Singh and Huw (Con O'Neill), April's father, go into the Underneath to save their children.  April does defeat Corakinus but does not kill him, for she is good.  However, it's enough to have Corakinus lose his crown and April become their King (as monarchy is gender-neutral in The Underneath).

Who knew the Shadow Kin would be so 'woke'.

Charlie is compelled to use the Cabinet of Souls, but as to whether he will use them on the Shadow Kin or the Carnivorous Petals will never be answered.  As King April, she orders the Shadow Kin to devour the petals, saving everyone.  Quill is incensed that Bonnie Prince Charlie has put his own morality over avenging both their people.

All this in the end was basically an experiment.  Dorothea explains to an angry Quill that the petals were essentially one, so Charlie need have used just one soul to destroy them.  The mysterious Governors just wanted to see what Charlie and Quill would do.  However, true to her word, Dorothea tells Quill that since she helped them, they will help Quill by removing the creature that binds her to Charlie.  Dorothea also tells Quill she still has to go to Parent's Night, however.  April, no longer King, now helps the newly-healed Jackie start walking.

I should point out that all this, All This, ALL THIS, both Brave-ish and Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart, takes place in ONE day.

Losing your virginity to a guy you've known a month, fighting an alien overlord almost to the death, becoming King of the Underneath, and helping your formerly paralyzed mother walk again.

And she still has to go to Parent's Night!

Ah, to try and balance saving the universe with your love life.  Talk about 'hard choices'.

Brave-ish Heart wants things simultaneously played for laughs and played straight (and no, that wasn't a Matteusz/Charlie joke).  When they are in The Underneath, Ram snaps, "Fine, Frodo.  Let's go hope into the volcano," which leads to April's very puzzled "Frodo?".  "Yeah, it's from a movie my dad likes," Ram replies.

Far be it for me to say that kids nowadays have no attention span, but the last Lord of the Rings movie came out just fourteen years ago (the year Tanya would have been born).  Can it be possible that Generation Z has already forgotten this epic film series, even if the last of The Lord of the Rings prequels, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, was only a mere three years ago?

How soon they forget...

That's for laughs, I guess.  Serious is the idea of Ram's and April's relationship, particularly when Ram defends Sikhism to April despite him not following some of its precepts.

You can't get more mix of silly and serious as when April is about to face off against Corakinus (which shouldn't really be all that hard given what a weak character he is: all bellowing and nothing more).

"Don't say that you love me," April warns her first-time lover.  "What?  I wasn't.  I've know you like a month," is Ram's deeply felt reply.

They've known each other for a month.  They haven't had that many conversations.  Yet they had sex less than maybe two hours ago.

If I were April, I would have slapped Ram at that moment the way Quill slapped Charlie.  In a literal case of 'it hurt me more than it hurt you', Quill suffered slight pain for hitting the one she's forced to protect, but from my perspective, I was cheering her on.  Bonnie Prince Charlie is pretty insufferable: pompous, arrogant, and quite abusive towards Quill or everyone really, his only real positive is that he's Matty's bottom.

Brave-ish Heart could have given Charlie a chance to expand, and it isn't as if Austin didn't give it his all in making Charlie's struggle about using the Cabinet a genuine emotional conflict (even if at 24, he looks considerably older than his equally-aged castmates).  Instead, the resolution came easily.  Patrick Ness could not have allowed Charlie to use the Cabinet of Souls since it's a one-time-only weapon.  Why waste it on petals?

Other parts are unintentionally hilarious, particularly with any of their parents.  A huffy Mr. Singh proclaims "Four children are supposed to fight an ongoing threat?!  It ends.  Today, it ends!"  He does himself one better when Ram comes back from the Underneath.

"If the world is going to end in shadows or in petals, I WANT TO KNOW!"  How Neil got through saying that without bursting into laughter I'll never know.

Again and again, it is astonishing how none of the parents seem genuinely astonished or shocked to be seeing any of this, let alone questioning it.  I've never know a parent that understanding.

In fairness, Brave-ish Heart does have some really good positives.  As always, Kelly's Quill is the only reason to watch.  Not only does she show Quill's shifting loyalties, but she shows a rare vulnerable side.  As the moralistic Matteusz accuses her of being a monster when she wants to use the Cabinet on the Shadow Kin, she explodes in rage and hurt.  She tells him off, screaming in agony that if he'd seen his people killed, he might better judge who is monstrous.

Hopkins did well too for the most part, though seeing her as a Warrior Princess was a stretch.

Even Renzo's Matteusz, who here again is just there to provide Charlie a motivation to use/not use the Cabinet, managed a moment.  Matty knocks Dorothea out, quipping "Even with a gun, you should never turn your back on an angry Pole".  In her defense, it's easy to ignore Matteusz.  Everyone else does.  He pretty much just hangs around, waiting to screw Charlie and nothing else.

At a certain point when Dorothea is holding a gun to Matteusz, I shouted KILL MATTY!  KILL MATTY NOW!

Whatever good is in Brave-ish Heart (Kelly and Quesnel) is undone by Class' poor mix of humor and horror ("It's time for some regicide", April says, confusing Ram and ending with April telling him, "Tanya would have gotten that"), quick resolutions to things, and a pretty laughing series of unfortunate events (the fathers going in to rescue their kids elicited giggles, and isn't it a bit patriarchal to have men do rescuing).

Their Brave-ish Heart is in the right place.  We just don't know where their brain is.


3/10

Next Episode: Detained

Class Episode Four: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart Review

CLASS: CO-OWNER OF A LONELY HEART

Is it just me, or would it be difficult to do battle with an alien overload right after losing one's virginity?

Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart, the first of a two-part Class story, has another unintentional Class element: really lousy titles.  I'm sure that none of our hot twenty-somethings were around when Yes released Owner of a Lonely Heart, so given that Class is aiming to be Doctor Who for the young adult set, why echo such an 80s song?  Writer/creator Patrick Ness could have picked Break Your Heart by Tao Cruz with Ludacris, or even Heart of Glass or Total Eclipse of the Heart if he wanted to be more contemporary.

I'm just being a picky Gen-Xer.

Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart still can't find the balance between science-fiction and teen drama, shifting madly between the two.  Moreover, an element of one crowds into the other, leading to one of the most hilarious moments in science-fiction television history, one of those 'am I really watching this?' situations that should make people break out into laughter.

The Shadow Kin King Corakinus (Paul Marc Davis) wants to break free of sharing a heart with April (Sophie Hopkins).  This sharing of a heart is causing them both problems, particularly for April, our sweet folk music-playing girl who is becoming more aggressive, and with reason too.

Her father Huw McLean (Con O'Neill) is now out of prison and despite warnings continues to try and make contact with April, which she does not appreciate.  In fact, her aggressiveness, mixing with Corakinus' own, makes her violent and able to reproduce Shadow Kin scimitars to threaten Huw.  To help her out is Ram (Fady Elsayed), both whom have grown amorous with each other.  So upset and agitated is April that Ram takes her home, and then just takes her.

April and Ram make love in a surprisingly soft-core montage that seems more fitting for a Danielle Steele adaptation than a YA science-fiction show.  In perhaps the wildest crossover effect I've seen, this impromptu deflowering has an effect on Corakinus too.  As they share one heart, April's metaphorical giving of it to Ram causes the Shadow King to have a little sexy time with Kharrus (Kelly Gough), the Shadow Kin attempting to help Corakinus release himself of April's heart.

This Coitus Corakinus does not help either him or April break one from the other.

We'll get back to our teen angst to move into our alien invasion story.  Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly) is suspicious of the new Headmistress of Coal Hill, Dorothea Ames (Pooky Quesnel).  All this talk of the Governors and how they so admire Miss Quill has her thinking.

However, there is little time to actually look in on things, as Bonnie Prince Charlie (Greg Austin) and his sexmate Matteusz (Jordan Renzo) continue discovering each other.

Personally, I think one should discover one's sexual partner before schtupping, but I'm rather old-fashioned in my views on sex.

Charlie tells Matteusz about the Cabinet of Souls: it's not empty, far from it.  It possesses the souls of every deceased Rhodian, and it will respond to the Rhodian leader (that being our Prince) to seek out and eliminate whomever the enemy is, a single-time use weapon.  The knowledge that the Cabinet is not empty infuriates Quill and makes Matteusz dubious about using this Doomsday Device.  The legend about it being possible to bring the dead Rhodians to life in the form of new bodies if used by a 'hero' is also not to Matty's liking, as he is not convinced his lover is capable of being a hero.

Charlie does not display any actual heroic traits, culminating in his abuse of Quill.  He orders her to attend Parents Night for his other classes as they live together, and Quill has no choice in the matter due to the creature controlling her free will.

It's here that Quill learns a few things from Dorothea.  First, she notes what Matty has already brought to people's attention, but since he's nothing more than Charlie's sexual release no one pays attention to him: a curious invasion of petals out of season.  These petals, Dorothea informs Quill, are capable of reproducing at a rapid pace, and they also are carnivorous.  Second, she asks Quill if she'd like to have that monster removed from her head, something The Governors can do if she helps them with the killer petals.

Back to our teen drama.  After Ram lived up to his name to April, who happens to wheel herself into the room but her mother Jackie (Shannon Murray).  It's a bit surprising for her to find a hot young naked Sikh in bed with her equally hot young naked daughter to say the least, and Jackie is none too thrilled about that.  Jackie is also not thrilled to learn Huw has contacted April, and more outlandishly seeing Huw arrive at their home too.  April's anger allows Corakinus to finally track her down, but it also unleashes a fierce aggression in April to where she attacks both her parents.

By this time the rest of the Class Scooby-Doo Gang has arrived at the MacLean home: Mattlie and Tanya (Vivian Oparah) to witness April going bonkers and thrusting her hands into poor Jackie's heart.  This allows April to give her mother the ability to use her legs (which I suppose is better than her going up to Jackie and shouting, "BE HEALED!") but it also allows Corakinus to rip time and space to her.  April jumps into the void and Ram follows before the gap is closed.

Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart continues a very bad trend in Class.  Actually, it continues a lot of bad trends and throw in some new ones.

Bad Trend Number One is with Matteusz, who halfway through the first series shows he really has no function outside of screwing Charlie (as we learned last episode, Matty is the top in this relationship).  In the episode, he does not interact with any other character save Tanya, and even then it was in relation to Charlie.  Tanya asks Matteusz "Is he all human, down there?".

As a side note, Tanya does seem a little sex-obsessed.  Not only does she ask someone with whom she has barely shared a conversation with essentially if Charlie has a penis, but she also adds this bit, which leads to Bad Trend Number Two: Charlie's inconsistent characterization.

Tanya tells them that Ram called, saying that April's in danger of having her body taken over by the Shadow Kin. She also adds, "His voice sounded kind of funnier; I think they had sex".  At this point a clearly puzzled Charlie asks, "Ram and the Shadow Kin?", obviously believing that Tanya was suggesting Ram had Coitus Corakinus.

Class does not seem to have any real idea of who or what Bonnie Prince Charlie is supposed to be like.  Sometimes he's made out to be hopelessly naive and clueless.  There's the aforementioned moment when Charlie thought Tanya was saying she thought Ram had sex with the Shadow Kin.  There's earlier in Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart when, talking about Parent's Night, he says, "Don't we want to be better students to help our parents?" and then looks puzzled when Matteusz and Tanya give him and each other knowing looks.

Other times, he is extremely brutal, even vicious and imperious.  He is particularly arrogant when it comes to Quill.  "Do this.  I command it," he tells her in a particularly cold manner.  Moreover, when Tanya draws it to his attention that he is treating Quill like a slave, Bonnie Prince Charlie makes it clear he will not be questioned in how he treats her.

This inconsistency, along with the vague idea that he might either be a genocidal lunatic or a hero who brings his people back from the dead, is something Class should never have introduced, let alone try to keep making fit.

Things are not helped in the 'representation' department when April manages to make Jackie walk again.  It is rather unfair to the disabled community to have their one representative suddenly healed, even if the paralyzed mother character seemed to be there just for 'representation'.

Bad Trend Number Three is in the imbalance between as Quill puts it 'alien invasion or teen angst'.  This is the second consecutive Class episode where two characters are sidelined by lovemaking.  It's already odd that Ram and April have become romantically involved given neither has shown anything that would indicate that they are in love.  Here, we have this excessively lush lovemaking montage that borders on hilarious.

As Ram lives up to his name with April, he asks if he's hurting her.  Our presumably virgin April says no, then asks if she is hurting him.  Far be it for me to wonder about one's deflowering experiences, but...

If all that isn't bad enough, seeing Corakinus get it on because April is getting it on is hilarious.  I'm not sure I think anyone thought Kharrus telling Corakinus, "Are you not into it?" when we get Coitus Corakinus would in any way not sound like a spoof of sci-fi teen dramas.

As a side note, Gough played Kharrus and Rannus, the Shadow Kin who first failed him to get his heart back.  Shows the Shadow Kin are quite boring as villains if one actress can play more than one without making each distinct.

Bad Trend Number Four is in Patrick Ness' sometimes overwrought dialogue.

"The Shadow Kin wants your heart, and that's one battleground he's going to lose," Ram tells April.  Her response is that she thinks that line is cheesy.

That might be Bad Trend Number Five: too much self-awareness.

At one point before Coitus Corakinus, Kharrus tells Corakinus, "I have a different way to cure your heart".  Since April and Ram are in a sense controlling Corakinus, one wonders if this line is serious or equally cheesy.

Again, it is Kelly who holds the viewers interest, far about the One Coal Hill crowd.  In her anger against Charlie (justified by now), her curiosity about the Governors, and the temptation to break free from Bonnie Prince Charlie's tyranny, we see Quill as a fascinating character.  Kelly brings a mixture of menace and mirth to her role.

The only false moment with Quill is unable to figure out Dorothea is an alien but Ram and April are based on how she, after less than one day knows everything about everyone.  It seems out of character for Quill to not go for the obvious.

She is equalled by Pooky Quesnel as the mysterious new Headmistress of Coal Hill.  She is in equal terms charming and menacing, keeping her character mysterious about whether she is friend or foe.

As a side note, 'Pooky Quesnel' is perhaps the most elaborate name for an actress in a sci-fi story since Star Trek: The Motion Picture featured Persis Khambatta.

O'Neill as Huw was also quite strong in his brief moments, that sense of regret and fear coming through.  As his former wife, however, Murray was bad, screaming unconvincingly whether finding her daughter was not innocent anymore or finding her daughter was a scimitar-wielding psycho.

Out of our Coal Hill Diaries cast, Hopkins scored the best for playing the 'kind' but also highly enraged April.  Her moments where she is close to killing her father are quite intense and well-done.  Whether attempting being gentle with Ram as he rams into her or screaming about why anyone would show empathy for that bunch of cowards (those cowards being the men at Dunkirk), Hopkins shows she can be stronger than her material.

Pity everyone else was not on her level.  I cut Oparah some slack in that she had little to do, though she was generally expressionless here.  Renzo continues Matteusz's sometimes dim manner ("You lie...because sometimes princes have to lie?" he asks his lover).  Then again, Renzo is nothing more than Charlie's himbo, so I guess that works.

Elsayed struggles in making even the cheesy lines believable, but he's not bad in the lovemaking scene.

Take that any way you want.

Austin continues to look far too old to be high school student, let alone one this naive save for Coitus Matteusz, about the only thing the character has shown any aptitude for.

Unintentionally hilarious (Coitus Corakinus, apart from being a great band name, will be one of the most weirdly oddball moments in Class no matter what), with lines so frightful even the characters can't believe them, some bad performances and uninteresting characters save Quill and Dorothea, with the intriguing 'carnivorous alien petals' all make Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart another clumsy Class episode.

Teen drama and alien invasion can go together.  It just can't during Class time.

4/10

Next Episode: Brave-ish Heart