There was only one thing really wrong with this year’s Doctor Who spin-off, Class: the fact that the Doctor showed up.
Sure, it gave fans a glimpse of Peter Capaldi’s number 12. But that join-the-dots cameo was by far the most jarring moment of a series strong enough to stand alone.
We have seen Doctor Who spin-offs before, of course. But Torchwood, the Sarah-Jane Adventures and (lest we forget) K-9 and Company felt organically part of the Whoniverse – and featuring familiar characters was a comfort blanket to reassure you that, yes, this was definitely part of the same thing. So the Doctor’s intervention was probably necessary to qualify Class as the spin-off it purported to be. But the fact that Capaldi’s appearance broke the tone just proved that this show is a different thing entirely.
The odd reference aside, and the final reveal that the Weeping Angels have some stake in the goings-on at Coal Hill school, Class felt like part of Doctor Who in licensing opportunity only.
Patrick Ness, the creator and writer of every episode, must be credited for coming up with something wholly unique, and the tone – by turns emo, traumatic and quirky – only raises the question of why it took British TV so long to tackle Young Adult, probably the biggest entertainment genre in the world.
Class made you believe, and root for, a peer group comprising a head girl who shared a heart with a murderous despot; a shapeshifting alien gay prince and his Polish boyfriend; an unworldly child genius and a conflicted jock with a prosthetic alien leg. And Katherine Kelly as Miss Quill, always a formidable presence (and here gifted all the best lines), managed not to overshadow her young co-stars.
Indeed, Class was impressive for how intricately it built its world – establishing the Rhodean/Quill/Shadow Kin civil war in an east-London secondary school. Limited to eight episodes, there barely felt enough time to catch one’s breath before things fell apart. It had to move swiftly through monster-of-the-week to midseason two-part finale. Aside from sombre series highlight Nightvisiting, this brevity meant it only really hit its stride in the two recent bottle episodes; the one with the truth stick that made the students turn on each other in detention, and the barmy caper that gave Quill her free will back. Ironically, the biggest weakness was how ineffective the Shadow Kin – so similar to Steven Moffat’s own Vashta Nerada from the main show – were as a Big Bad.
As is YA’s wont, Class crammed in an awful lot of feelings. Quill’s cack-handed comforting of Tanya after her mother’s murder proved one of the most moving moments of recent Whoniverse lore. April’s status as King of the Shadow Kin played admirably fast and loose with gendered pronouns. And then there was Quill’s predicament which observed the Golden Hollyoaks Rule of teen drama: that if you ever have casual sex, you will immediately become impregnated.
The show didn’t make too much heavy weather of the Gay X-Men Syndrome, which is to say that not too much of a parallel was made between Charlie’s outsiderdom as alien-prince-out-of-water and his inherent gayness. That can be considered progress. And a cunning spot of editing in episode three even revealed which of Charlie and Matteusz is the top and the bottom. It’s 2016, guys!
There remain questions, setting things up surely for a second series. But what does seem clear is that the first headline commission from BBC Three online (the corporation’s attempt at doing a Netflix show) was broadly successful. The claim that this was either a homage to, or a rip-off of, Buffy does hold water – but I believe the world is better off for having a British attempt at Buffy. Class was, overall, very classy – once the Doctor moved aside.
