Meanwhile, not in detention…

Miss Quill locks the students in detention and then goes to see Ms. Ames in the school hall. The goal is to remove the arn, but Dorothea Ames warns Quill that the process may kill her. Quill replies with her best “give me liberty or give me death,” and they begin as a man named Ballon arrives. They are miniaturized and transported inside a mysterious device that Ames pulls from her satchel.

In a moment, the trio materializes inside an alien forest. Ames tells Quill to remember her earliest childhood memory while Ballon goes hunting. Ballon returns with a dead animal that he claims is an arn, lured by the bait of Quill’s memories. Extracts from the young arn corpse will help extract the creature from Quill’s head.

Ames adjusts the device again, explaining that it is a metaphysical engine capable of transferring individuals into a thought or belief. In this case, the forest is the idea of heaven for the arn. The trio warps out again as Ames explains that the Governors study the tears in spacetime at Coal Hill. She also reveals that Ballon is a Lorr shapeshifter (who posed as a Zygon before being frozen in one form and apprehended for murder) and Quill’s surgeon. They arrive in the Lorr version of hell and encounter the Lorr devil, from which they must extract blood to free his hands. Ballon overcomes his fear and completes his task with Quill’s help.

The next step in the fetch quest is finding the brain of a Quill so that Ballon can learn anatomy. They travel to Quill heaven – which Miss Quill says shouldn’t exist – to witness the Quill goddess’s birth. Once they find it, Miss Quill attacks the goddess in fury over her people’s genocide. Before the goddess can speak to Quill, Ballon decapitates it to rid Miss Quill of her fear.

The arn begins to pain Miss Quill, indicating that she believes that the surgery will work. The trio returns to Coal Hill and Ballon completes the surgery, having bonded with Quill over their shared sense of exile. The surgery results in an extreme disfigurement to Quill’s face, Ballon uses the flesh of the Lorr devil to heal her, leaving a scar behind. Quill sees this as a mark of honor for a soldier, then celebrates victory by having sex with Ballon.

When the couple rouses from their recreation, they explore the school in search of Ames. They eventually find her standing in a vast desert and she tells them that Coal Hill was an illusion. They are actually standing in the Cabinet of Souls and she is a hologram being projected from the outside world. The Governors only left enough energy for one of them to return to Earth and Ames suggests a fight to the death after giving Quill her trademark gun and Ballon the news of his niece – the only other living member of his species – living on Earth.

Oh, and time flows differently inside the Cabinet, so the time to decide is now.

They decide to fight and Ballon overcomes Quill before taking up the gun. Quill demands that he shoot her with honor, but Ames has left one last surprise: The gun is coded to shoot the person holding it. In the end, Quill buries Ballon’s body in the sand and gazes upon the souls of the Rhodians as they materialize around her. She tells them that she wishes that they were dead.

Quill returns to the real Coal Hill and discovers that several months have passed for her despite being gone for only 45 minutes in real-time. She tells her students about the arn and collapses, revealing that she is now several months pregnant.

It’s a shame that this much mythology comes so late in the game for Class, particularly since the concepts of the Governors and the afterlives visited in the metaphysical engine are so rich. I’m intrigued by the Quill and Rhodian people from before the show, and equally intrigued by the relationship between UNIT and the Governors. Sadly, with one hour left in the series, I feel that we’ll get none of it.

One fun thing was studying the metaphysical engine’s interior. It is obviously a redress of the Twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS console room with greeble-covered partitions to make the scenes more claustrophobic. In fact, the whole production seemed to be right out of the classic Doctor Who alien planet playbook. It’s easier to save money that way.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Class: The Lost

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Confessions, frustrations, and an uncertain future.

As four objects fall through space toward a rift, Miss Quill tosses the Coal Hill defenders into detention. She claims to have other things to do as she locks the door. Once she leaves, April unlocks the door just in time for one of the asteroid pieces to slam into the classroom. The event knocks the classroom out of sync with time and space, effectively trapping the students in detention.

Charlie realizes that Miss Quill isn’t to blame. After all, if she murdered him, the arn in her head would kill her. They note that they’re all getting more aggressive, that Charlie is experiencing extreme claustrophobia and paranoia, and that the meteor is lodged in the wall. It may also be radioactive. Matteusz grabs the meteor and tries to toss it outside of the classroom, but he’s immediately entranced, recalling the day that he came out to his grandmother. He also reveals that he’s afraid of Charlie.

April knocks the meteor from his hand and it bounces against the open doorway. As it lands back in the classroom, the defenders realize that they are truly trapped.

As the team ponders their situation, Charlie and Matteusz discuss the revelations. To calm Charlie, Matteusz talks about a place called Narnia in a book that he read. In that book, Susan judged her friend based on a single bad thing that she said, and Matteusz questions whether or not Charlie complains about his friends. Meanwhile, the team grows more aggressive and Charlie more panicky. Tanya tries to learn more about the rock and picks it up, revealing that she feels like the team doesn’t really like her.

The meteor apparently makes people tell the truth, and the team is able to discover that the rock contains a prisoner and is dangerous to them. Ram knocks the meteor free and the team takes cover to discuss this new information.

Charlie tests the boundaries of the room and demonstrates that the room is the prison. Ram picks up the rock next and reveals that he loves April more than she could ever love him. As April struggles to deny the claim, Ram passes out. When he comes to, he reveals that the prisoner is a murderer and wants to kill them all. The prisoner is one of four and its consciousness is spilt among the pieces of the meteor.

April holds the rock next and confesses that Ram’s assertions are true. She doesn’t love him as much as he loves her. She also makes the prisoner disclose that the classroom is outside of space and time and that they are all trapped there until they kill each other, unable to age or die naturally.

Everyone continues to get more and more aggravated. Charlie picks up the rock, believing that it does not have the same effect since he hasn’t been feeling aggressive. When he engages with the prisoner, he realizes that he’s more guilty than the prisoner as he culturally believes that his desire to kill the Shadow Kin is the same as actually doing it. His reactor to the prison is due to feeling that it is for him, and his guilt actually kills the prisoner. The classroom returns to Coal Hill Academy.

But Charlie introduces one last complication. The prison requires a prisoner and his guilt draws him toward the prison cell. As the rock tries to welcome him, Miss Quill enters and shoots her gun at the rock. The rock is destroyed, but as the team leaves the classroom in frustration, Charlie and Matteusz stay to ask about Miss Quill’s newfound ability to use a gun.

She now has a scar over her eye and longer hair. She has had a stressful day and the arn has been exorcised from her head.

Miss Quill is now free.

The ending and its uncertain future for the team aside, this episode does double duty in exposing schisms in the team while also forcing them to confront their inner conflicts. Unfortunately, this feels like a step backward from the last adventure since the team ends the story fragmented once more.

The confessions are important, but it feels like these characters can never be happy or in a cohesive team. Are they destined to survive through constant sorrow?

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

UP NEXT – Class: The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Loads of character development in a two-hour adventure.

Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart

Far across the universe in the halls of the Shadow Palace on The Underneath, Corakinus receives word that his servants can make his heart whole again. Unfortunately, his attempts to sever the attachment to April only strengthen the connection. On the other end of that connection in Shoreditch, April gasps in pain before picking up the sword of the Shadow King.

The next day, a strange petal dances on the wind before landing on April’s window as she practices her violin. April breaks a string and cuts herself, but the power of the Shadow King allows her to heal quickly. She also shares some bad news with her mother Jackie: He father has recently been released and made contact with the family.

Ram is feeling better after connecting with April. Meanwhile, Charlie shares the truth about the Cabinet of Souls with Matteusz. Everyone heads to school where Miss Quill watches as Mr. Armitage‘s name is added to the memorial and meets Dorothy Ames, the new headteacher sent by the Governors.

Later in class, April challenges her teacher during a lesson about warfare and the Dunkirk evacuation. As she literally breaks into her locker later, it’s apparent that the Shadow King is bleeding into her psyche. After ignoring a call from her father, she asks Ram for help. While they chat in Ram’s car, several more petals fall on the city and April’s father Huw MacLean shows up. His appearance is a violation of a court order, but all he wants is the chance to apologize. When he presses the issue, April manifests as the Shadow King and scares him away.

They are confronted by Ms. Ames for their truancy and Ram is encouraged to take April home while the headteacher is bitten by a flower petal. As Ram and April talk in her bedroom, the Shadow Kin locate Earth and plot an attack. April and Ram turn from talking to romance, which has a similar effect on the Shadow King 9,000 years of space travel away. Unfortunately for him, the Shadow Kin are disgusted by the thought of intimacy during sex. Afterward, April and Ram are discovered by April’s mother.

Charlie and Matteusz discuss the Cabinet of Souls and the prince reveals that the cabinet could transfer the souls into the bodies of another race. The cabinet is a powerful weapon capable of genocide. Miss Quill is angered by the discussion and storms away.

Later on, Tanya confronts Charlie about how he lords over the team. Matteusz chimes in occasionally while also being bitten by a flower petal. In fact, the petals are growing in number. Meanwhile, Miss Quill requests time off to deal with something at home, but Ms. Ames calls her into a meeting. The new headteacher also has a file with Charlie’s true identity on paper.

Jackie confronts the two teens about their relationship. Ram acts with respect toward her, but after he leaves, Jackie expresses her concerns about Ram and the parallels with April’s father. Ram calls Tanya and tells her that April is in trouble, which is a call that Huw overhears as he lurks nearby. On the ground is a squirrel, bloodied and killed by the flower petals.

Ms. Ames shows the petals to Miss Quill, remarking that there haven’t been many squirrels or birds around. One drop of blood causes the petals to multiply rapidly, and Ms. Ames asks Miss Quill to help solve the problem. She offers to remove the creature from Miss Quill’s head and free her from the contract.

April leaves the house to make up with Ram, but her departure is interrupted by Huw. After her parents argue, April is attacked by the Corakinus and the two personalities begin to merge. The Shadow King’s servant amplifies the effort but April resists as she attacks her father. Ram arrives just as April is about to execute her father with the Shadow King’s swords. April spares his life as she returns to lucidity. The rest of the team arrives just as April turns on her mother and heals her with the Shadow King’s power.

The act displaces enough energy to reveal Earth’s location to Corakinus, so April takes the initiative and slices open a rift. She dives inside, headed toward The Underneath, and Ram jumps in after her.

Brave-ish Heart

Ram races through The Underneath as a Shadow Kin chases him. He is saved by April and her scimitars, joining her as she makes her way to the Shadow Palace. She reveals that she cannot open a rift back home, so the two of them may be trapped there permanently. Back on Earth, Tanya reveals the truth of April’s condition to her parents, and they accompany Charlie to find help. Tanya finds Ram’s father and brings him into the team.

Meanwhile, Miss Quill and Ms. Ames continue their discussions. Ms. Ames asks for her thoughts on genocide, linking her plan back to Charlie and the Cabinet of Souls. They meet up with April’s parents and Charlie and Miss Quill confronts the prince over the cabinet. She’s angry that all of the people who slaughtered her people are still alive. Ms. Ames and the Governors want to use the cabinet’s power to destroy the petals.

April and Ram make their way through a cavern that reminds the Shadow Kin that they must defeat the universe or be crushed by it. They believe that they are a mistake of the universe and destined to live as shadows beneath everyone else unless they can overpower the universe. Ram discusses his Sikh heritage with April, proclaiming that doing good for the sake of doing so means getting closer to his god. They are interrupted by a telepathic link to Corakinus. He knows where they are.

Ram’s father and April’s parents argue about their children’s relationship while Tanya talks them down. As April gears up for war against the king and his army, Jackie’s heart glows. At the Quill/Smith home, Ms. Ames, Miss Quill, Charlie, and Matteusz debate the merits of using the cabinet to save the planet. Since only a Rhodian can operate the cabinet, Ms. Ames threatens Matteusz’s life to force Charlie into action. Tanya escorts everyone to the headteacher’s office as Matteusz sends her a text message. Apparently,  according to Ms. Ames, shadows can kill the petals. But bringing the Shadow Kin to Earth is a non-starter even though the petals are now consuming humans.

April engages Corakinus in a one-on-one battle where the victor becomes the new king. As they duel, the connection between Jackie and April intensifies. Using that connection, April opens a rift and she is joined by her father and Ram’s father. April finally defeats Corakinus. Huw talks her out of killing the king, and April declares that defeat is enough to depose Corakinus. The newly-crowned king has Corakinus locked away before she returns to Earth.

Under duress, Charlie decides to use the cabinet, but Matteusz is able to ambush Ms. Ames and throw her gun away. He stops short of committing genocide when April opens a rift and dispatches the Shadow Kin against the petals. Once the threat is obliterated, April orders the shadows to return home and destroy the path along the way.

Inside his cell, Corakinus severs the link that his followers created. April’s powers are gone, but they still share the same heart. Fortunately, the actions she took with the powers remain, including her mother’s ability to walk again. Her family is healing, but she needs Huw to stay away until the MacLean women can forgive him.

Meanwhile, Ms. Ames reveals that the Governors foretold all of this. The offer for Miss Quill still stands.

This should have come a lot sooner in the series. There is so much character development in this pair of episodes and it is a shame that we had to trudge through two really thin and slow plots to finally reach it.

I love seeing the weight on Charlie’s shoulders as a deposed prince, the last of his people, and the pressure placed upon him by his former enemy now turned indentured servant and protector. Miss Quill is hungry for revenge for her people and she’s willing to make a deal with the devil to get it. These two living under the same roof is delicious tension, particularly as Matteusz tries to tread the thin line of armistice between them.

We got a glimpse of Tanya’s leadership last week, and this week brings it back as she wrangles the personal conflicts between April and Ram’s parents while trying to save her friend. April and Ram continue to develop their new relationship, and they both show intense boldness alongside brilliant empathy. April’s personality tempers her heart – a most appropriate weakness for her empathy – with her wisdom, making her my favorite character of the bunch.

I also love that she’s practicing “Night Visiting” on her violin. A follow-on from that previous story, it’s a song inspired by legends about the spirits of deceased loved ones. Those spirits would knock on their living relative’s windows at night and appear as either warnings of danger or as an escort to drag their living relatives to Hell. It seems to have stuck with April, especially since she’s a student of folk songs.

Finally, in a neat bit of trivia, Charlie’s last name is Smith. Presumably no relation to the other Smiths that we know, either Time Lord or journalist.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Class: Detained

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

When memories become weeds.

On the two-year anniversary night of Tanya’s father’s death, she is visited by something that resembles him. She doubts his appearance, believing that he is a hallucination, but the being has actual memories of their lives together. If she takes his hand, her grief will be gone forever.

A similar apparition visits Miss Quill, posing as her sister and promising that she can use a gun again if she accepts the bargain. Ram also gets a visitor in the form of Rachel while he video chats with April. Meanwhile, Charlie and Matteusz hook up after the former consoles the latter about his family’s homophobia.

Tanya returns to her room to talk with her “father” after checking in with her mother. She presumes that her mother is asleep but doesn’t notice that the woman is entangled in the alien vines. Both Tanya’s and Quill’s apparitions explain that they are the Lankin, an organism that feasts on a victim’s grief while killing them. They are all connected to the “great trunk” by vines running throughout the city and can presumably read their victims’ minds to emulate essential memories. The vines are also self-healing.

Ram and April rendezvous outside and try to work out this invasion. April reveals that her father attempted to kill himself by driving off a bridge when she was eight. Unfortunately, both she and her mother were in the car, resulting in her mother’s paralysis. April focuses on the things she loves to prevent the memory from controlling her life, and she uses this power to console Ram.

Ram and April follow the vines to Coal Hill and then follow the one into Tanya’s flat. Tanya struggles with the memory of her father since the Lankin only gets more aggressive about feeding on her grief. Ram and April arrive and warn her about the threat, but Tanya takes the Lankin’s hand. Unfortunately for the vine-creature, Tanya has more anger than grief toward her father’s memory. The anger poisons the creature but doesn’t weaken it enough.

Quill outright rejects her nightvisitor’s offer and eventually has Charlie and Matteusz stab the creature. They join up with the others to fight the threat. They finally defeat it after Quill steals a bus and rams it through the tentacles, forcing the broken links to retreat into the rift. Everyone seems fine afterward, and most of the victims have amnesia about the event.

The adventure ends as new bonds are forged within the team: Charlie offers space in his home for Matteusz while April and Ram continue to bond over their time together.

There’s not much to talk about here.

The episode tips its hand too way early by exposing that the ghosts of loved ones past are an alien tentacle invasion. While it does a good job of exploring the deeper hurt within the core team members, it spends a lot of time meandering through the 45-minute runtime before spending about five minutes actually fighting the threat.

The good side is that we see the team being proactive (in pieces, anyway), and admitting that they are gelling together after the threat is defeated. Hopefully it means that we’ll see them taking action more often in the remainder of the series run.

Rating: 2/5 – “Mm? What’s that, my boy?”

UP NEXT – Class: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart & Class: Brave-ish Heart

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.