Dr Who Spin Off: Class

The Doctor Who spin-off series: Class..

Doctor Who spin-offs:

Torchwood
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Class

The first series of the Doctor Who spin-off CLASS was shown on BBC Three between 22nd October 2016 and 3rd December 2016, and consisted of eight episodes.

Set in contemporary London, Class centres on four Coal Hill School students as they face their own fears and navigate a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow – and possibly the end of existence.

Coal Hill School has been a part of the Doctor Who universe since the very beginning, but that has come at a price. All the time travelling over the years has caused the very walls of space and time to become thin. There’s something pressing in on the other side, something waiting for its chance to kill everyone and everything, to bring us all into Shadow.

The Doctor Who, Class: Episode List

Episode 1 “For Tonight We Might Die” 22 October 2016

Alien refugees Miss Quill and Charlie are hiding out at Coal Hill Academy in disguise as a teacher and a pupil. As the Shadow Kin invade and kill pupils, Charlie is forced to reveal to April, Tanya, Ram and Matteusz that he and Quill are the last survivors of an alien war, he a prince, and she is his enslaved bodyguard. At the sixth form prom, the Shadow Kin come through the tear, killing Ram’s girlfriend Rachel and severing his leg. The Doctor, who rescued Charlie and Quill and had them hide in the school, arrives to defeat the Shadow Kin. He appoints Miss Quill and the pupils as protectors of the school, noting that it has become a beacon throughout space-time. April is left sharing a heart with the Shadow Kin king, Corakinus, and Ram has his leg replaced with a robotic one.

Episode 2 “The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo” 22 October 2016

Ram struggles to recover from the attack at the prom. Coach Dawson scolds him for poor performance in football and demotes him to the second string team. That week, Ram witnesses a creature attack both the assistant coach and a school cleaner, but struggles to find evidence of their deaths after the fact, leading him to question his sanity. Tanya, Charlie, and April investigate on his behalf, and learn that a dragon manifesting in different parts of the school is connected with Coach Dawson. They learn that the coach was bound to a female dragon who came through a rift in time, and became fused to his body as a tattoo; its mate roams the school, killing in order to feed her. Convinced by the sixth formers, the male dragon takes his mate along with the coach back through the tear in time. Ram later tells his father about the events thus far.

Episode 3 “Nightvisiting” 29 October 2016

On the second anniversary of her father’s death, Tanya is visited by an apparition of him, imploring her to take his hand and bond their souls across space and time. Throughout East London, alien vines emerging from the spacetime tear at Coal Hill are capturing Londoners with images of dead loved ones. Even Miss Quill is visited by an entity that claims to be her sister. Ram and April investigate together, and grow closer. Matteusz and Charlie take their relationship to the next level after Matteusz is kicked out of home by his homophobic parents. After interrogating her “sister,” and confirming that Earth has simply been invaded by a hungry alien creature called the Lan Kin, Quill severs the vine outside Tanya’s house using a stolen double decker bus, causing the Lan Kin to flee in pain.

Episode 4 “Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart” (Part 1) 5 November 2016

Following the events of the prom, April is struggling to control herself since she began sharing her heart with the king of the Shadow Kin, Corakinus; the king’s attempts to mitigate his impairment have backfired, giving he and April an even deeper psychic connection. Dorothea Ames introduces herself as the new headteacher of Coal Hill Academy following the death of Mr Armitage. She tells Miss Quill of how the Governors are interested in her and later introduces her to an alien carnivorous flower that has been replicating in worrying numbers. April’s father is released from prison and pays his family a visit. During a key confrontation, April’s parents discover the true nature of her problem as she uncontrollably attacks the both of them. Sensing that Corakinus has discovered her location, April leaps through a tear in space-time to take her heart back, with Ram closely following her.

Episode 5 “Brave-ish Heart” (Part 2) 12 November 2016

April and Ram arrive on the planet of the Shadow Kin, referred to as the Underneath, where she seeks out the king to claim her heart back. Meanwhile on Earth, carnivorous flower petals are continuously multiplying and are swamping streets and consuming humans. Dorothea Ames recruits Miss Quill to force Charlie into using the Cabinet of Souls (a weapon of mass destruction made up of the preserved souls of his species) in order to kill the petals, but he seems torn between sacrificing the souls of his people and letting humanity die instead. Channelling the king’s own power, April defeats him in combat and becomes king of the Shadow Kin. Returning to Earth, she dispatches her army to destroy the petals, sparing Charlie his decision. The imprisoned former king severs his connection with April, however, once again breaking her control over the Shadow Kin. Ames is pleased at having exploited the situation to learn more about Charlie and the Cabinet of Souls.

Episode 6 “Detained” 19 November 2016

Miss Quill places Charlie, April, Ram, Tanya and Matteusz in “detention” whilst she attends urgent matters. A meteor flies through a tear in space-time and displaces the classroom that the five of them are in to an unknown location described as being outside of both time and space. They are trapped; with nobody else aside from a small meteor. This meteor forces whoever is holding it to reveal ugly and personal truths. They soon learn that the meteor is the consciousness of a murderous prisoner; and the five pupils are currently in his augmented prison cell. Charlie soon realises that he is more guilty than the prisoner itself so is thus able to defeat him and return the group back to Coal Hill Academy in one piece. Miss Quill returns, having had quite a day whilst they were away – as apparent from the fact that she is now able to use a gun.

Episode 7 “The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did” 26 November 2016

Taking place concurrently to the events of the previous episode, Quill meets Ames after dropping Charlie in detention. Explaining that the Governors have decided to help Quill remove the Arn from her brain, Ames introduces a shapeshifting alien named Ballon (who has become frozen in his human form). The three of them are teleported to a metaphysical reality. Ames explains that as long as a place can be believed in, it exists and can be visited using this device. Over time, they find an Arn specimen to study, obtain the blood of the ‘Devil’ (to unfreeze Ballon so that he can perform surgery on Quill). They finally obtain the brain of a Quill goddess to study before returning to Coal Hill. Ballon performs the surgery and removes the Arn, freeing Quill but leaving her eye scarred. It’s soon revealed that the two of them are in fact in the Cabinet of Souls and Ames will only allow one of them to return to Earth. They end up fighting to the death, with Quill winning a bittersweet victory. Quill returns to the school at the time at which the previous episode ended. She faints and Charlie discovers that she is visibly pregnant.

Episode 8 “The Lost” 3 December 2016

Corakinus returns to Earth through minute tears in space-time and murders Ram’s father and Tanya’s mother. Following this, Tanya seeks the help of Quill and discovers her pregnancy. Charlie and Matteusz confront and threaten Ames into helping them. Corakinus returns and attempts to kill Tanya’s brothers; Quill steps in to save them, but not before Corakinus is able to tie his life to Charlie’s. Quill teaches Tanya how to fight in preparation for an inevitable war whilst both Ram and Tanya command Charlie to use the Cabinet of Souls in order to prevent any more people from dying. Corakinus threatens to kill Matteusz and tells April that he will leave Earth if she sacrifices herself; however, this is proven to be a lie. When the Shadow Kin invade Earth and take over the streets, Charlie is left with no choice but to use the Cabinet of Souls, which is expected will also kill April and himself. The Cabinet wipes out every last Shadow Kin. Charlie, saved by Quill, survives, while April awakens in the body of Corakinus. Elsewhere, Ames returns to the Governors where she is judged unfit to continue serving them or witness “the arrival” for having allowed the Cabinet to be used, and is murdered by a Weeping Angel.