Class - 'For Tonight We Might Die' and 'The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo'

Tanya (Vivian Oparah), Charlie (Greg Austin), Miss Quill (Katherine Kelly), April (Sophie Hopkins) and Ram (Fady Elsayed)

Welcome to Coal Hill Academy, formerly Coal Hill School and (give or take a road) the first location to appear in the TV series Doctor Who. It is also quickly established in the new spin-off series Class to have a rate of staff turnover and student disappearance equivalent to similar institutions such as Sunnydale High(1), Wexler College and Miskatonic University(2).

No... Rhodian. With an h.

Coal Hill students April 'the nice one', Tanya 'the smart one' and Ram 'the sporty one' are drawn into events surrounding an alien invasion, as the semi-corporeal Shadow Kin come searching for an exiled alien prince, currently enjoying the school's famed alien exchange programme as Charlie 'the posh outsider'. The last survivor of the Rhodians, he is protected by official worst teacher ever Miss Quill, who is actually the last of the Quill, a race who shared the planet Rhodia with its eponymous rulers, but were defeated in an attempted revolution not long before the Shadow Kin arrived to destroy the planet.

The Shadow Kin attack the prom, and the mismatched quartet have to defeat the monsters with the assistance of the very reluctant Miss Quill and special guest star the Doctor. During the fight, Ram's leg gets cut off and the rift in space-time caused by an excess of artron energy at the school can not be fully closed, and so the Doctor charges the four, plus Quill, and Charlie's boyfriend Matteusz 'the one from the conservative religious family who doesn't get regular billing', to guard the rift in his absence; because that's totally not a job for UNIT or anything. Where's Torchwood when you need them(3)?

Guns are seldom a sign that your prom game is on point (4)

As an opener, 'For Tonight We Might Die' is pretty solid, although wearing its influences on its sleeve does not help to escape their shadow (as it were.) Just because the characters call the rift a Hellmouth doesn't mean that a show about a high school where bad things break through the portal in the basement doesn't have a lot of Buffy(5) nostalgia to work through. Where it scores in this regard is in the character relationships, which are the show's own deal. April has a crush on Charlie, but he's gay (and an alien, which of course means incredibly blunt,) and she is also one of Tanya's only friends, because Tanya is the daughter of a helicopter gunship Nigerian mum and two years ahead at school. Tanya's other friend is Ram, but they only talk via Skype because he's all cool, but the fact that he begins in a fairly serious relationship with a girl who gets stabbed in the opening episode gives him a lot of angst and motivation to work with.

"You do know your mirror's broken."

And indeed all of the characters have their tragedies. Charlie is the last Rhodian, April's life is consumed by caring for her disabled mother and we learn in episode 2 that Tanya's father was killed. Even Quill, whose primary role is to be the snarky, mean, borderline abusive teacher that real teachers dream of being in their bad moments, is the last of her race and trapped as a slave to Charlie in punishment for her actions as a Quill terrorist; or, as she insists, freedom fighter. It's interesting that we aren't given enough information to know which is a more accurate name. Even the Doctor only feels that she needs further punishment because she throws another kid under a bus to protect her charge.

The episode title is surprisingly literal.

We follow the opener with 'The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo'. Ram is trying to move on by not talking and throwing himself into is sport ball, which is tough, having watched his girlfriend get stabbed through the heart and then incinerated, and then lost a leg and had it replaced with a prosthesis from an old TARDIS storage locker. Unfortunately, the coach has an oddly mobile tattoo of a dragon and people keep being skinned alive by some... thing.

After throwing the team together in the opener, this episode is all about making sure they have an ongoing reason to work together besides 'the Doctor told us to.' Ram in particular has no interest in joining the Scooby Gang and protecting the world from the things that come through the Bunghole of Time(6). He has no interest in anything, least of all discussing what happened, and the only person he will talk to at all is Tanya, who doesn't try to get him to open up, besides explaining that her own father was killed and she knows it takes time to deal with that.

So far, Ram is 2 for 2 on getting covered in blood.

It turns out that the dragon in Coach's tattoo is trapped there, and the deaths are caused by it mate killing people so that it can drink their blood to survive. The episode is really about Ram, however, and his struggle to deal with the loss of his girlfriend right before his eyes. It's done pretty well, although probably much too quickly. We end the plot with Ram counselling the dragon to accept the new reality and make it work, suggesting rather literally tanning the Coach's hide as an alternative to killing for him on pain of him scratching up his skin(7). This not until after it has killed the assistant coach, a cleaner and the head teacher, and destroyed a robot OFSTED inspector belonging to 'the Governors', mind you.

Ninja mates.

Ram finally opens up to his dad and we see him making progress, and our unit is more or less formed. While there is some busywork to this, however, the episode in and of itself is still pretty good. While still a terrible teacher, I can't think there can be many in the profession not cheering when Miss Quill hurls a stapler and a torrent of abuse at the infuriatingly silent OFSTED inspector.

Class has made a strong opening, probably stronger than Torchwood, which had a troubled first season and was only truly strong for its second(8). So far, it's blended character and plot well, although even in a high school there is an upper level of drama beyond which the sense of realism is gone, even if that level is anecdotally supportable. I've only got the episodes on iplayer, so expect more reviews soon; before they're gone.

(1) And as freakishly grown-up looking.
(2) Parallels that the show is not shy in referencing.
(3) Not something I ever expected to be asking.
(4) But I mean, seriously; Charlie barely looks younger than Quill.
(5) Or Vampire Diaries, or Black Hole High for that matter.
(6) Thanks, Tanya.
(7) What is it with NuWho and assuming that a person - in particular a woman - reduced to a vaguely communicative object is in some sort of good place?
(8) Children of Earth has the team launch a knuckleheaded attempt to harangue an alien off the planet which gets Ianto killed and leaves Jack with no choice but to sacrifice his own grandson, while Miracle Day had an overlong arc plot and a load of aggressively unlikable new characters.