Class – Series 1, Episode 6

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Detained

I like this last-supper-esque image. Kudos to the photographer. Also, this sounds like The Breakfast Club meets aliens. Thrown into detention, the gang find themselves trapped in a prison that forces them to confess their secrets. Will they escape before the alien power tears them apart forever?

[Anonymous @]

I enjoyed that….ff to the end…quick scene on the beach? Reminded me of an….egg 🙂

Combination of Midnight and Prisoner Zero -cracks or tears in time etc….

Also the feeling of House in The Doctor’s Wife?

Really sensitive peace, I thought.

[Anonymous @]

Ah yes absolutely Breakfast CLub!  spot on @craig

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

I quite liked this “set piece” episode. Because of the single location and relatively light special effects, it felt like this could have been presented as a one act stage play without a lot of changes.

The idea of being forced to tell the truth, and that causing conflict, is a good one, even though the actual secrets revealed were on the obvious side. What was touted as the biggest of the secrets, that Charlie harbours thoughts of revenge against the Shadow Kin, even if he wouldn’t act on them, isn’t much of a revelation, having seen him struggle with the decision of how to use the cabinet in the previous episode. It certainly seemed he was contemplating using it against the Shadow Kin then, under Quill’s prompting. And it’s not something reflects particularly badly on him, except by his own standards- it seems a natural enough response to his whole people being wiped out by the Shadow Kin that he should have thoughts / fantasies of revenge.

With them trapped outside space and time, it did occur to me that a certain Time Lord might have been handy at that point, but of course the narrative demanded that they find their own way out.

My take on Quill’s part in this is that it appeared that she was simply getting the crew out of the way while she nipped off to her de-arning appointment, rather than being more active than that. It seems doubtful she could have acted as she did, still with arn in place at that point, if she’d realised the danger to Charlie involved.

The arn seemed rather larger than I would have expected- not much space left in Quill’s skull with that in there :-). Of course that assumes the Quill is actually vaguely human-shaped if in her natural form, and that it was physically in her brain.

It will be interesting to see how Quill acts, with her free will restored. It does seem a little odd for the Governor’s to voluntarily create a loose cannon, but they appear to largely be happy to sit back and watch what goes on, so may not mind stirring the pot, if I’m permitted to mix metaphors :-). Or possibly, having a more capable Quill makes up for that in terms of getting the school “ready”.

[winston @winston]

I liked this episode quite a bit. Locking all the kids up in one room with an alien was a good way to show how each kid deals with stress and anger. It must have been a cheaper episode to produce since it was just the one set. I am not sure what the aliens motive was as I had a hard time understanding anything it said which is the same problem I had with the shadowkin. Oh well it is a good reason to rewatch.

[Mudlark @mudlark]

This was certainly interesting, and held my attention throughout.  In the opening moments I confess that my first thought was ‘What kind of school is it where sixth-formers can be put in detention?’ But then what do I know?  I’m a fossil, and my school may not have been typical, even back in the day.  I’m thankful to say that we were treated as responsible adults, even though we may not always have acted as such 🙂

It was effective, if a bit derivative – or so I thought.  Above all it reminded me of Huis Clos – the play by Jean-Paul Sartre, in which three people find that hell consists of them being shut up together in a room where they are eventually and in gradual stages reduced to confessing the wrongs that they did in life.  Hell is other people, in fact.

I noticed in particular what was written on the chalkboard  ‘Remember, it is you who put yourselves here’. *

@tardigrade

What Quill tossed to Charlie was the blood-smeared plastic bag containing the arn, so there is no reason to suppose that the arn itself was any larger than Quill first described it; approximately the size of two human thumbs.

@winston

I am not sure what the aliens motive was

The alien entity had been imprisoned outside of time and space along with three others, each under compulsion to confess their crimes.  He had overcome and effectively killed the other three, apparently because his guilt was greater, and after all this time he was probably not even sane, having forgotten everything except the need for confession and a desire for release in death.  Charlie, according to what he said, gave the prisoner that release because his own feelings of guilt were the greater.

 

*  I quote from memory, so the words may not be exact.

 

[tardigrade @tardigrade]

@mudlark What Quill tossed to Charlie was the blood-smeared plastic bag containing the arn, so there is no reason to suppose that the arn itself was any larger than Quill first described it; approximately the size of two human thumbs.

OK- got it- didn’t really see what was in the bag anyway, so like a goldfish in a bag of water I guess. It hadn’t occurred to me that Quill would have kept it alive- she doesn’t share the same qualms about revenge as Charlie.

[winston @winston]

@mudlark  Thank you for the answer , what would I do without all the people here?  I am going to watch again because I liked this episode quite a bit and now I understand it a little more. Thanks again.

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

Likewise, really enjoyed this episode, and even more so once it has been paired with the next one, Engine of Metaphysics.

Once we understand that the engine of metaphysics is, according to Ness, belief, then we can read Quill’s message on the chalk board “Remember, it is you who put yourselves here” (which @mudlark mentions above) in light of that.

The “secret” confessions are hard to hear, but they are only partial “truths”. In fact their power is that they reinforce the beliefs the Coal Hill Bung Hole Gang already have about themselves. Ram already believes that April doesn’t love him as much as he loves her. She tries to tell him at the end, that she is in the process of changing (which is really important for the narrative arc as a whole) and that what she said under the influence of the lava rock/ prisoner was just a moment in time, but he can’t hear it.

Just as Charlie finds that Mattheusz’ confession that he is frightened of Charlie is a confirmation of his own sense of loneliness and “alienness”, when Mattheusz tries to explain that his fear is just one facet of how he feels, again, something in process, not a fixed immutable truth.

So, growth (releasing oneself from prison) requires not listening to the voices in one’s head, whether that’s the lava rock/ alien, the Arn, or the Governors, which imprison one – as made literal in the episode by the prison-classroom (and also mirrored by Charlie’s control of Miss Quill via the Arn – her prison – and Charlie’s greatest ongoing sin). Instead, freedom, is embracing change, and understanding that relationships are a process, not a series of fixed edicts.

To live freely means, to create your reality by believing differently – to go forward.

Hats off to Ness for this double episode – which together (this one and Metaphysics) are a massive step-up in story-telling, in my view.

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