Class series one discussion thread (spoilers)

[The Wormhole]

The monologues in Class really were poorly placed. Moffat's bad enough with his scripts in recent years being largely monologues, but at least for the most part they are in circumstances where people talking excessively isn't that big a deal, although Clara delivering a lengthy monologue while the raven of death flew towards her is definitely a very WTF circumstance for a monologue.

The problem with the monologues in Class is their placement just makes no sense. Someone fighting an alien king and has beaten the king to submission, has him on his knees, with a sword to his neck and all his followers watching is not just going to deliver a five minute monologue on the matter. There's no way the defeated kind is just going to kneel there the entire time and not try to attack again thinking you're too distracted with your speech to be a threat. Likewise, his followers aren't just going to stand their patiently while you say your piece while their king is being threatened. If they like they're king, they're going to attack and defend him during the monologue. If they don't like him, they may just decide two birds with one stone, the unpopular king and the overly talkative challenger.

Even in prose, I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe as thoughts the character would think while fighting, but once an enemy is in submission a quick a decisive finishing move is in order, not a speech.

 

[Steve Roby]

Yeah, that episode was the low point of the series for me.

 

[Velocity]

This show just isn't for me. After watching 2 shows, I'm out.

 

[starsuperion]

Buffy was better. Class is just a shoddy replica with Doctor Who woven into the fabric. I'll say it again. Class sucks, no where near the Quality of SJA or even Torchwood.

 

[Christopher]

They showed episode 3 on BBCA this week, and I could see examples of it being too talky -- Ram and April were supposedly rushing to Tanya's house to save her from the tendril monster, but they kept stopping to have slow, introspective conversations about April's life story. The entire plot was exceedingly talky and static, with the "ghosts" having to sit still and talk their targets into taking their hands, but at least that meant the exploration of Tanya's and Miss Quill's backstories actually connected to the plot.

 

[Starkers]

Aside from ep7 ep3 was possibly the best

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Class is cancelled. I'm not sure there was really any doubt of this, but it's been confirmed by the BBC that it's not returning.

 

[Butters]

Seems fair enough.

I only watched it out of whovian duty, though some might argue I'm hardly the target audience. Fortyoddteen isn't young adult, apparently, what do they know?

I'll just assume that the weeping angels were thwarted by the Doctor at some point off screen.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I'm not surprised. Maybe they'll put more effort into the next spin-off. I'm sure we'll see another eventually but I bet it'll be awhile before we see one.

 

[Mr Awe]

In all honesty, my interest in DW spinoffs has waned over the years. I'd be hard pressed to think of a premise for one that I'd be dying to see. I'd be more interested in something like a miniseries that follows a past Doctor (even recast, such as Bradley), or something like that. I don't think that'll happen though.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

The only past adventures I would be interested in would be The Eight Doctor or The War Doctor and neither will happen (aside from the sad passing of John Hurt) simply because BBC doesn't want multiple Doctors running at the same time even temporary.

I would be interested in a spin-off featuring the Paternoster Gang but I'm not hard pressed to see it.

 

[Christopher]

I've seen it suggested that they could reshoot the lost Hartnell episodes with David Bradley. Although the question is, what would they do with the ones that partially exist? Reshoot the whole things?

 

[TommyR01D]

Now that the thread has been bumped back to life, I thought I might finally make a contribution.

When Class was first announced my main reaction was confusion - Why would they come up with this? Surely it would make sense to do the much-rumoured Paternoster spin-off instead, or even try to revive Torchwood. I was not enthusiastic at all.

When the first episode was released I missed it, by the time I realised this I had missed the second as well. Then I couldn't be bothered to watch the rest of them either. Based on the reviews in this thread and in other places I have no strong desire ever to do so.

Many in this thread have said that they cannot properly judge this series because they are too old for the target demographic. I am the right age to be a Class character, but I can only echo the comments made by The Wormhole - I don't really "identify" with the average BBC Three ensemble either, whether that's on television or in real life, so if I ever tried to write young adult fiction I doubt it work at all so far as authenticity is concerned. For what it's worth I never liked Courtney Woods or Rigsy either, despite them receiving much praise in other circles.

Overall the programme just strikes me as lacking any purpose, or any significant hook to draw people in. Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures had recognisable companions from the parent series, but Class just relies on Coal Hill School to get people excited - despite it never being a major element of the classic or revived series. This is reflected in the reviews I have found - most are coming for the crossovers, a few are staying for the eye candy, many are leaving because of boredom.

Yet again, I give you Stuart Hardy:

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He also does a parody series.

 

[The Wormhole]

When Class was first announced my main reaction was confusion - Why would they come up with this? Surely it would make sense to do the much-rumoured Paternoster spin-off instead, or even try to revive Torchwood. I was not enthusiastic at all.

A popular theory that's floated around ever since the concept of the series was first announced that I tend to agree with is that Class was first meant to be an original YA sci-fi series that Patrick Ness developed and pitched to BBC, who then decided to connect it to the Doctor Who universe and make it a spin-off. Indeed, the first episode is the only one with any kind of significant connection to the DW universe with the Doctor himself having a supporting role in the episode. Otherwise the rest of the series is more or less not connected to Doctor Who in any significant way. The cliffhanger with the Weeping Angels was likely meant to move the show into more of a connection with Doctor Who in a second season.

 

[Christopher]

A popular theory that's floated around ever since the concept of the series was first announced that I tend to agree with is that Class was first meant to be an original YA sci-fi series that Patrick Ness developed and pitched to BBC, who then decided to connect it to the Doctor Who universe and make it a spin-off.

Ness has said otherwise:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Class_(TV_series)#Genesis

Patrick Ness revealed to Radio Times, on 29 July 2016, that the idea for Class started up with the rejection of a Doctor Who episode; "At first they asked me to write an episode of Doctor Who, and I said it's a brilliant show, but I've just spent so much time doing work for other people, and I really want to do something of my own. And they said, well we have this idea for setting a spin-off in a school. And it was like, 'ding'!"

So they had the idea for the show first, then they invited Ness to make it. I imagine the idea for a school-based spinoff arose out of the recurring use of Coal Hill as a setting in the 2014 and 2015 seasons of Doctor Who. But Ness wanted to make something of his own, as he said, so he took it in a very different direction rather than continuing what DW had set up.

 

[Starkers]

I can't quite decide what the problem with Class was. The premise? The execution? The casting? The Tone? It's just fairly bland on every level aside from Miss Quill who deserved to be in a way better show, when Capaldi was on screen, pretty much the entirety of episode 7, and then the Weeping Angels cliffhanger. There just wasn't enough good stuff to justify a second season.

Plus for all the acclaim Ness gets as a YA author none of the teen characters ever felt that three dimensional to me, and the show didn't ever seem to really address issues affecting modern teenagers. All the kids being just such drahma school graduates didn't help either.

 

[Christopher]

For me, the writing was the main problem -- the stories and characters just didn't engage me. And the situations were so blatantly contrived, so unsubtly engineered specifically to create drama for the characters. An alien that replicates their dead loved ones so they can spend the whole hour sitting around talking about their feelings? A cosmic anomaly that traps them all in a single room together with an alien presence that heightens their anger and literally requires them to reveal deep truths about themselves in order to beat it? It just felt forced, self-conscious, and overliteral. Yes, you want tell stories that create opportunities for character development, but you don't want it to be that obvious.

Also, the characters never really connected as a team. Sure, you want your cast members to have enough conflict to be interesting, but you also want them to mesh as a group, to see friendship and deepening bonds grow out of those tensions. That never really happened here. The characters just had their own largely separate preoccupations and a lot of the storytelling was about how they weren't really working as friends or as a team.

 

[The Wormhole]

Ness has said otherwise:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Class_(TV_series)#Genesis


So they had the idea for the show first, then they invited Ness to make it. I imagine the idea for a school-based spinoff arose out of the recurring use of Coal Hill as a setting in the 2014 and 2015 seasons of Doctor Who. But Ness wanted to make something of his own, as he said, so he took it in a very different direction rather than continuing what DW had set up.

Odd, since the show does not feel like an organic part of the DW universe at all. Indeed, change the name of Coal Hill, and this show could easily be its own thing with very little changing. Only the first episode has an kind of meaningful connection to Doctor Who, and even then given all the Doctor really does is show up and watch the characters in action, he's easily excised from the plot. Just say Miss Quill and the prince took a ship to Earth (or leave it vague). The they got a prosthetic leg from said ship after Ram's got cut off.

 

[Christopher]

Odd, since the show does not feel like an organic part of the DW universe at all. Indeed, change the name of Coal Hill, and this show could easily be its own thing with very little changing.

Well, like I said, once Ness was onboard, he took it in his own distinct direction. Where a concept ends up is often extremely different from where it begins. But there's a pretty obvious throughline from DW's heavy Coal Hill focus in 2014-15 to a Coal Hill-set spinoff in 2016.

If anything, though, one of Class's problems for me is that it felt too much like things we've seen in Who spinoffs before. The Coal Hill rifts are just a rehash of the Cardiff Rift in Torchwood, a handy hole in the universe to provide an excuse for constant aliens in an Earthbound series. The unofficial Australian K9 spinoff did something similar in its own idiotic way -- aliens kept coming through the Space-Time Manipulator that the main scientist character was brilliant enough to have invented but apparently too stupid to turn off or unplug once it started causing problems. The show also felt similar to Torchwood in being too self-consciously dark and gritty and sexy, like it was just trying too hard to differentiate itself from Doctor Who.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

When Class was first announced my main reaction was confusion - Why would they come up with this? Surely it would make sense to do the much-rumoured Paternoster spin-off instead....

It's more accurate to say that a Paternoster Gang spingoff was "much-desired-by-fandom" rather than "much-rumoured"; from all indications, there wasn't any interest by Moffat or the BBC in making one.

I liked that Class took a DS9-approach or SVU-approach as a spinoff -- very few hooks to the parent series and a willingness to develop its own narrative identity. Much as I enjoyed Torchwood and Sarah Jane, both had the problem, in my view, of trying too hard to be "Doctor Who without the Doctor." Yet, I also understand the indifference that Who fandom showed Class when it was announced, because Class was as tangential as it was to Doctor Who, with no pre-established characters, only a pre-established location.

I'd like to see BBC America develop their own Doctor Who spinoff series. I don't have anything specific in mind.

The show also felt similar to Torchwood in being too self-consciously dark and gritty and sexy, like it was just trying too hard to differentiate itself from Doctor Who.

The thing is, Class was, by design, going to be "dark and gritty and sexy" because it was aimed at an older audience than Doctor Who is. Class was developed for a YA audience, while Who is aimed younger as a "family" (ie., "all-ages") program.