For Tonight We Might Die stars Greg Austin as Charlie, Fady Elsayed as Ram,
Sophie Hopkins as April, Vivian Oparah as Tanya, and Katherine Kelly as Mrs.
Quill with Peter Capaldi as the Doctor.
It was written by Patrick Ness and directed by Ed Bazalgette with
Patrick Ness, Steven Moffat, and Brian Minchin as Executive Producer. It was originally broadcast on 22 October
2016 on BBC Three.
When announced Doctor Who
spinoff “Class” was received with fan backlash for being something that nobody
really wanted in the first place, but was something that we were stuck with
anyway because the BBC didn’t want to give us a season of Doctor Who during
2017. Now that the first few episodes
have actually aired we can begin forming opinions on the series and what it’s
actually meant to be. 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? The mysterious neighbor of The Sarah Jane Adventures? 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 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 it doesn’t go over well. The decision was made to work with what is a
subpar introduction done entirely in stereotypical clichés 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 either bland or trying to be punchy dialogue that made me cringe when I heard 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 be exclusively punchy one-liners that don't actually say anything (Tanya brings up sexism and racism but doesn't actually say anything of note). 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. He gets his leg chopped off and gets some developmeent 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 the characterization is this weird hybrid of the Series 8 and
Series 9 performance. It would be better
if the episode skipped over the sixty seconds or so dedicated to reminding us
of the Clara Oswald, especially if a reference to Ian or Barbara
would make it feel a bit more legitimate and actually tied into the setting better.
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
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