3 out of 5

Created by: Patrick Ness

covers season 1

Class is a consarned mess.  Doctor Who fans are legion, so when positive reviews started piling in for the spin-off show’s initial episodes, I took it with a grain of salt.  Still, I had trouble believing that the majority was truly in favor of such a slapdash ADD stew as the season opener, so I strapped myself in Clockwork Orange style and determined to give a few more episodes a shot.  Remaining cognizant, mind you, that I never really got in to Torchwood’s very cheeky style, and if I ever make it through my sloooow viewing of the original DW seasons to get to the 00-era New Whos, maybe I’ll discover a similar cheek, and Class’ teen-ized appropriation of the same will seem wholly more appropriate.

Without that entire context, though, and thus only a high-level take on the universe’s cinematic vibe, Class views as though someone speed-balled some CW shows and then lathered that overwrought angst atop Torchwood’s over-sexualized, forever distracted plottings.  And despite my sort-of criticism of the latter, when the show sets aside that CW influence (…something I wish CW itself would do more often), it’s actually pretty fun, and fulfills a quick-and-dirty sci-fi need that gets to also benefit from having a tonal mythology already intact.

Coal Hill as an educational institution has had a winky reputation in the DW Universe, due to its appearance in the very first episode.  Wiki tells me the school has returned more and more frequently in the show as of late, and now Class centers us there, giving six attending teens a reason to come together and battle the baddies that are frequently arriving through space/time tears centered on the location.  We’ll go ahead and excuse – or at least this was partially my rationale – the need for the first episode to zip through everyone’s character summaries (not the easiest task, considering they’re not all exactly human) as the reason for the opener feeling like such a cut-and-paste-and-play-it-back-at-high-speed affair; with this out of the way, we could very much expect the show to settle into a baddie-of-the-week routine.  And it does, and it doesn’t.  And it both strengthens the show and cripples it at the same time.

Series writer Patrick Ness ties pretty much every episode to a convoluted mess involving a race of evil shadow beings – the Shadow Kin – and a weapon, possessed by one of our leads, that can wipe them out.  Having an ongoing nemesis is always a fine idea, but it goes deeper than that, the mentioned weapon (and the lore surrounding it) informing a lot of the decisions the group makes, and The Shadow Kin being kept somewhat at bay by being very directly tied to another member of the group.  The plus side to this is that every episode – 3/4ths of which have some non-Shadow Kin threat – gets an injection of ticking-clock adrenaline, as the teens seem to always be running away from the Kin in some fashion and into another boiling pot.  The negative side is that that particular storyline isn’t very fun, and uses up every iota of the overwrought angst aspects of the CW influence.

But, like Misfits and the recent Crazyhead, Class knows to thrive off of momentum.  So it has all of these frustratingly cheesy elements – fine, designed to appeal to its young adult demographic – and then, thankfully, its dashed away by a ridiculously fun idea like man-eating flowers, or the occasional superbly weird episode like the microcosmic adventures of the chaperone-like Ms. Quill in episode 7.  (Perhaps worth noting that the kids don’t appear in that one…)

If you’re wondering why I haven’t named character names or actors, the sad truth is that they never mattered to me.  This somewhat violates my principle of a show not being worth it if I can’t remember character names, but the roles are such generalisms that I gave up worrying about their arcs to just enjoy the sci-fi side of things.  That shouldn’t be seen as an outright criticism of the actors, whom I think bring as much depth as they can to their roles.  That is, they feel committed.  But I think if we can set aside all the ‘we’re not a team’ and star-crossed love bickering, the actors can stretch out more and maybe ‘earn’ their names.

So you tell me, DW fans: Maybe I’m missing the key appeal here having not watched New Who.  I’ll be back for next season to catch some of the funky ideas, but I hope the CW writing can be cooled a bit, since we have capable actors and a great premise that really don’t benefit from the distraction.