That they invent an entirely new monster that is living shadows rather than just using the existing and from a very popular story new Who monster that is living shadows so this Who spinoff could feel vaguely connected to Doctor Who suggests a certain lack of familiarity with the parent show.
An alien pupil and their cranky guardian... I suppose that's technically a parallel. Though one to episodes shown decades before the target BBC3 audience were born.
OK Doctor, why not dump thesse aliens who need to hide from psycho killers on a nice empty tropical island rather than in a big juicy school target? Same mistake he made in Human Nature as well.
At least he's consistent...
Everyone in this talks like they know they're a character in a teen drama and are being all arch about it. It means that the supposed to be strange actual aliens don't seem that odd.
They'd only just started doing them (rather than just school discos, I think Saved by the Bell messed us up) when I finished 6th Form, so maybe I'm way out the loop, but do schools do Autumn proms? Isn't it an end of school thing, not a start of the year?
Pretty sure that they remain end of year things. But also equally likely that the odd sixth form college might try and do things like this to try and seem cool, so I don't find it too odd. Although it is odd.
In the u.s. we have a fall dance of homecoming centered around football and alumni visiting, so I didn't think anything of it. Unlike spring prom it's open to the whole school and it's less formal.
"You'd listen to me if I was some A hole telling you that you were fat on Instagram!" said no one ever. The "Do they do this at American proms?" is the one good line in the whole thing because it captures that slightly desperate aping what we've seen in films feel to the things.
(And this is before British proms got *really* ridiculous, my contemporaries who are parents had to hire sports cars for the kids to drive in looking like wannabe twats)
The Doctor showing up at the end would be a great surprise if he hadn't been given billing in the opening titles. Capaldi can make this dialogue work, and it's kind of nice he's the last Doctor I'm going to see on this marathon.
Have to say I really enjoyed Class. It was also well timed for my teen who had grown up on SJA
Though, like, these are sixth formers and he was the caretaker two years earlier, you'd think the kids would recognise him.
It's the sixth form, so not all the kids have necessarily fed through from the secondary school, and other kids from other schools might have joined? Also, they're too distracted by raging hormones? Failing that, probably another space-time crack or something...
Wild they put in a line explaining why the school looks different to when it was last in Who.
HAHA THEY LITERALLY SAY THIS IS LIKE BUFFY WHEN THE DOCTOR SAYS COAL HILL IS NOW ON A SF HELLMOUTH
Don’t worry they can just watch the original on BBC IPlay… oh bugger.
I think a reason why a lot of British attempts at SFTV have failed in the last few decades is because they commission writers who are either utterly disinterested/dismissive of the genre or have not kept up with the genre and so they try to reinvent the car and end up with a Cybertruck.
I always think back to ITV’s ‘Demons’ which should have been just Gene Hunt vs. Vampires and instead went ‘what if we did Buffy the Vampire Slayer but with Guy?’
And that’s not me saying ‘you have to be a nerd to write genre fiction’ because Ernest Cline is the other end of the spectrum, but no-one should be knocking on my door wanting a pitch for a medical drama, we shouldn’t be going to the Casualty writers ‘Can you make the next Blake’s 7?’