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Class For Tonight We Might Die |
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| Story No. | 1 | 
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| Production Code | Series One Episode One | |
| Dates | October 22 2016 |
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With Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins, Vivian Oparah and Katherine Kelly.
Special guest appearance by Peter Capaldi.
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Class For Tonight We Might Die |
|
| Story No. | 1 |
|
| Production Code | Series One Episode One | |
| Dates | October 22 2016 |
|
With Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins, Vivian Oparah and Katherine Kelly.
Special guest appearance by Peter Capaldi.
|
| Synopsis: Strange things are going on at Coal Hill Academy. Shadows stalk the students, people go missing and the strange new teacher has something to do with it. Charlie, April, Ram and Tanya must team up to battle the Shadow Kin. If all goes well, prom won't be an utter disaster. |
Just a Pilot by Jacob Licklider 10/4/26
When announced, the Doctor Who spinoff Class was received with fan backlash for being something that nobody really wanted in the first place, but it was something that we were stuck with anyway because the BBC didn't want to give us a season of Doctor Who during 2017. For Tonight We Might Die is the pilot, and it is pretty much a paint-by-numbers of what a pilot should do. It introduces us to the main characters, the conflict, the location and the rules the show will play by, as well as establishing a tone for us to start with. Pilots usually are at least a little bit enjoyable when done well, but this one comes across as sort of an average story held up with some pretty loose characters. Comparing this to other Doctor Who-related pilots isn't fair as on television there has always been a sense of mystery about them. Remember the shadowy opening of An Unearthly Child? The cloak and dagger activities of Torchwood: Everything Changes? The mysterious neighbor of The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of the Bane? They all work as a hook as if you don't know about each series you are extremely intrigued from the get go.
How does Class decide to open? Well, aside from a pre-title sequence establishing that Miss Quill is responsible for getting a child killed --- something that may become important later --- we get a brief flash of the main characters. Now, this could have been done well, but director Ed Bazalgette doesn't make it go over well. The decision was made to work with what is a subpar introduction done entirely in stereotypical cliches and all in a long shot. What do we know? Ram is a jock, Charlie is the new kid, Tanya is young for her year, and April is shy. It also doesn't help that they're all spouting off stereotypical dialogue that made me cringe when I saw it. The writing doesn't really improve, as the characters either get bad development (April is still a stereotypical shy girl with the whole Shadow King heart trying to be something of character), have dialogue pandering to social-justice warriors (Tanya's bits about the Bechdel tests and how Downton Abbey is racist comes to mind) or are just plain dull (Charlie's defining trait is he's gay royalty). The only character I manage to really like is Mrs. Quill, but that's because she's kind of a likeable asshole, and the arc the episode sets up seems like it could be nuanced and almost subtle. I mean, she is basically a slave to Charlie, and the Doctor would save her (he approves of freedom fighters after all), but she killed an innocent. The episode is still preoccupied with being meta, which is done in an extremely cringe worthy manner.
Ram comes closest to Mrs. Quill in terms of likability, as he goes through the death of his girlfriend at the hands of the Shadowkin, the villains of this episode and the villains of the entire series. While the obvious filling of a diversity quota is very distracting, with Ram they don't really shove it in your face, and he gets his leg chopped off. He gets a pass when he inevitably goes through the stages of grief. The Shadowkin as the villains also fall flat. While their introduction is really good and they do bring on the gore (which is flashy, but at least death means something), my problem with them is that nothing is really explained about their motivations. All we know is that they're evil for evil's sake, which doesn't really work in context of the story. Peter Capaldi appears as the Doctor to try and legitimize this show as a Doctor Who spin-off, but his performance is bland. He's obviously trying, and that can be said about the entire cast on this series, but his characterization is this weird hybrid of the Series 8 and Series 9 performances. It would be better if the episode skipped over the sixty seconds or so dedicated to reminding us of the Mary Sue, Clara Oswald, especially if a reference to Ian or Barbara would make it feel a bit more legitimate.
To summarize, For Tonight We Might Die is average. That's really all I can say, as it makes it possible for the series to improve, but nothing else really sticks out to me when watching the episode. It doesn't do anything to make me not want to watch and there is potential there. 50/100