For Tonight We Might Die by: Patrick Ness directed by: Ed Bazalgette: Just a Pilot

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