An Hour of Who a Day: July 31: "The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo" (Class)

July 31: "The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo" (Class)

I'm not quite sure what to make of this episode. It's ostensibly about a killer tattoo (well, sort of), but the story seems far more interested in examining the human cost of the events last episode, particularly with regards to Ram. That's an admirable goal, but it does mean that this is shaping up to be a rather different show from what the first episode seemed to indicate.

Let's be clear: Ram's storyline is very well done. It's good that we get an episode that isn't shy about dealing with the fallout from the previous week, and Fady Elsayed is more than up to the task of portraying Ram as someone who's hurt and confused and can't even take solace in football anymore, thanks to his new prosthetic leg that the Doctor gave him. You really get a sense of the anguish Ram is going through, with his girlfriend dead and him unable to tell anyone about it, other than some weird kids he was only thrust together with because of the circumstances. The only one he kind of opens up to is Tanya, and we do get the sense that their relationship is stronger than we might have otherwise guessed -- Ram might ostensibly be using her for tutoring help, but there seems to be a stronger connection beyond that between the two of them.

The other nice thing that this episode does is actually examine what it would mean for these kids to be watching over the "bunghole of time" (as Tanya calls it). "Even if something does come through, what are we supposed to do about it?" Tanya wonders. "We're not superheroes." But this is where the episode goes slightly awry -- because something has come through, and they don't really have any idea what to do about it.

That something is not actually the dragon tattoo that keeps moving around on Ram's coach Dawson's skin (which brings to mind the tattoo-like thing on Me in series 9's "Face the Raven"), but rather that dragon's mate, which kills people by skinning them alive and has Dawson reach into the corpse so that the mate can feed on the fresh blood. Dawson is OK with this because the dragon made him stronger and more powerful. What's notable about these scenes is how Class appears to be doubling down on the gore. Ram is once again splashed with blood, and he witnesses the dragon kill one of the cleaning staff, as well as the aftermath of its killing one of the assistant coaches. (Not that the others emerge unscathed, as they watch the dragon kill the headmaster, Mr Armitage -- which is actually pretty upsetting, given how much we'd seen of his character in Doctor Who, and how he seemed like a decent person.) Writer Patrick Ness seems to really want to confront Ram with this awfulness, to keep reminding him of what happened to Rachel, but he does it in a rather sensational manner. Which is fine, this is obviously trying to be a darker show, and it doesn't feel as pointless as it did in early Torchwood, but it is still noticeable. And the good thing that comes out of it is Ram confronting the dragon's mate: "So she's trapped. Maybe you'll never get her off his body. That's the new reality. What are you going to do about it? ... Maybe you'll never have her back the way you want. I'll never get Rachel back either. But at least you'll have her. Maybe you could find a way to make the new reality work." But that means that they all seem to be largely accepting of Dawson's ultimate fate. OK, fine, he was a murderer (or at least complicit), but it still doesn't sit right.

And this resolution is also where the episode falls down a bit. Because the episode has made a point of saying that this group doesn't really know how to stop anything that comes through the tear. (I'm gonna keep calling it the "tear", as I don't know that I can quite bring myself to keep using "bunghole of time" seriously.) And the ultimate resolution of that is to talk to the creatures that come through, reason with them. That's a laudable message, but I suspect it won't work that often. (It didn't really work with the Shadow Kin last time, for instance.) And so that means that they don't really have any more of a clue of how to handle things at the end of the episode than at the beginning. And that's really unsatisfying, particularly because the episode seems to believe that they do have a better handle on things. Maybe Miss Quill will be of more help next time (since here she gets her own subplot about being observed by a robot which has apparently been constructed by the Governors (aka the school board) which is clearly setting up something for later on in the series). But as of right now I don't really buy it.

So I dunno. If you were to judge this based purely on Ram's storyline, and on the growth he experiences, as he's finally able to (start to) confront his demons and his new reality and is even able to confide in his father Varun (Aaron Neil, doing an outstanding job), then this is a great success. If you judge this based on avoiding characterization clichés and making our heroes actually confront what it's like living in this sort of world, then this is a success. But if you were judging it based on the dragon/coach subplot, then it feels both a bit standard/unsurprising and a bit unresolved. So that's probably the definition of a guarded success, then.