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Revision as of 20:54, 11 March 2021
For Tonight We Might Die was the first episode of Class. It was written by Patrick Ness, directed by Ed Bazalgette and featured Greg Austin as Charlie Smith, Fady Elsayed as Ram Singh, Sophie Hopkins as April MacLean, Vivian Oparah as Tanya Adeola, Jordan Renzo as Matteusz Andrzejewski, Katherine Kelly as Miss Quill and Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor.
It introduced the series' regular characters, and revealed that an excess in artron energy from nearby time travel has opened up a tear in space-time in Coal Hill Academy. April begins sharing her heart with Corakinus. Ram has one of his legs severed by Corakinus but is given a prosthetic by the Twelfth Doctor.
Uploaded online on BBC Three on 22 October 2016, along with The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo, For Tonight We Might Die was released exactly ten years after the airdate of Torchwood's first episodes, Everything Changes and Day One.
This episode was also screened at the Class World Premiere in Shoreditch, London on 20 October. [3]
Synopsis
"Everyone knows students at this school disappear; they all just pretend it isn't happening."
Strange things are going on at Coal Hill Academy. Shadows stalk the students, people go missing and the strange new teacher has something to do about it. Charlie, April, Ram and Tanya must team up to battle the Shadow Kin. If all goes well, prom won't be an utter disaster.
Plot
At night, in Coal Hill Academy, a student is chased down a corridor by an unseen creature, when he is suddenly pulled aside by a woman with blonde hair. While they are hiding, a shadow slides in underneath the door, and from the shadow emerges a tall molten-stone like monster. It cuts to a shot outside the room; a gunshot is heard and the young man screams. Elsewhere, a crack begins to open out of thin air, through which can be seen a very volcanic looking landscape and suddenly, a shadow flies out through the crack...
The following day, students around the school are talking about the student's disappearance, with one boy saying that "Everybody knows students at this school disappear - they all just pretend it isn't happening". In the entrance hall, April MacLean tries to convince Tanya Adeola to help her decorate for the Autumn Prom, but she declines on account of her strict mum. April ponders over asking new boy, Charlie, as her date. The new physics teacher, Miss Quill, argues with the head teacher, Mr Armitage over her new position but ultimately concedes. While everybody heads to class, Charlie notices a strange shadow on the ground. Students mumble about mundane topics throughout the class, while Miss Quill subsequently chastises them equally over some of their personality traits. After class, Charlie tells April that he plans on taking Matteusz as his prom date, slightly disappointing her.
At a football match, Ram Singh is about to score a goal when he notices a shadow move across the ground and take the form of another boy's shadow. As a result, he misses the goal. Tanya is walking home, contemplating whether to help April decorate for the prom; unbeknownst to her, a lone shadow is quickly following her. As she turns, she sees a shadow growing across the wall and she runs. The shadow, now grown to the size of a building, chases her into a shop. She dismisses the event as her being under too much pressure.
Charlie makes his way back home, where Quill is waiting for him. Tanya attempts to convince her mum to allow her to go to the school prom, but she immediately dismisses the thought. Miss Quill sits, eating a chocolate bar, while Charlie asks her if she had anything to do with the student's disappearance. It's revealed that she handed Kevin Williams a gun and told him to shoot the creature from the shadow, and it disintegrated him. She goes on to tell Charlie that while she is currently bound to "slavery", she will protect him but he should not question her.
Later that night, April is decorating for the prom alone, when the shadow seeps across the hall floor without her immediate notice. Then her own shadow moves, but she dismisses this too. Elsewhere, Tanya is talking to Ram on her laptop, when he notices a tall, darker shadow move across her room. She turns to look. April finishes her banner, when the shadow of a hand slides over her hand and pins it to the floor. In Tanya's room, the same creature comes out of the shadow and attacks her; she manages to fend it off with a lamp while Ram calls for help. The shadowy hand releases April, who turns to see Miss Quill standing above her; she says they are "in terrible danger". The two run through the school corridors when the monster appears, and Quill tries to get April to use the displacement gun, knowing it will kill her too. At the last moment, Charlie runs in and saves April from the beam facing in her direction, while the one facing the monster hits it and it falls, and the one in Tanya's room disappears.
The creature rises and April cries in pain. Quill scans her and the creature, the king of creatures called Shadow Kin, with the gun, and finds that it and April now share a heart, given that the Shadow Kin's original heart had been displaced in time and space. Charlie refuses to kill the Shadow Kin, as it would also mean killing April. The Shadow Kin retreats through a crack in thin air and it closes shut behind him. Quill makes a call to someone, telling them that they've got a problem.
Tanya and Ram have both filled their rooms with lights in a bid to keep the Shadow Kin from coming back. Back at the school, Quill is contempt in going after the Shadow Kin to kill it, but Charlie refuses. He goes on to explain to April that he and Quill are both from another planet, and that he was prince of his species, the Rhodians. Miss Quill was a member of the Quill, who were seen as terrorists (or "Freedom Fighters" as Quill puts it) on the planet, and when the war between them was over, Quill was bound to service to Charlie through the use of an alien parasite called an arn, explaining why she cannot use weapons. Charlie goes on to explain that while the Rhodians and Quill were fighting among themselves, the Shadow Kin came to the planet and slaughtered all the Rhodians, including Charlie's mother. Charlie and Quill fled to the city's vault, where Quill took the gun and Charlie took a peculiar looking box, right before the TARDIS materialised in the room. They were rescued by "a figure of legend, out of space and time itself", who dropped them on Earth, and told them to fit in and tell people they were from Sheffield. April again cries in agony as her heart is split between her on Earth and Corakinus on the other side of the universe. She hears its thoughts and tells Charlie that it wants something he has, and that it's coming for it tomorrow night. At their homes, Charlie glances at the cabinet he took from his planet's vault, while April lays staring into the starry sky, hand against her heart.
In the morning, April warns Tanya to be careful of her shadow at the prom, a message she later passes to Ram along with everything else April learned. April, Ram and Charlie prepare for the prom, while Tanya tells her mum that going helps her with a school assignment, so she would be allowed to go. Charlie, April and Matteusz make it to the prom, along with Ram and his girlfriend Rachel. During the party, April collapses and enters the Shadow Kin's mind again and learns that it's coming through the crack. Ram and Rachel step outside of the party, where the Shadow King murders Rachel in front of Ram. He demands to know where "the Prince" is, speaking through April at the same time. Ram fights the Shadow Kin while more start advancing for the other end of the corridor. Charlie takes the gun and attempts the hold them off. April and Tanya attempt to get everybody out while the teachers are outside with students vomiting or crying. April announces that everyone is in danger, but nobody acknowledges her. Suddenly, Charlie and Quill burst through the door, Charlie still shooting the approaching Shadow Kin outside, and everybody turns to face them. The Shadow Kin burst through the door and everybody runs.
Outside, Ram continues to fight the Shadow Kin's king, enraged at him for killing Rachel, when it gets the upper hand and severs the lower half of his leg. While he screams, the Shadow Kin make for the hall. Everybody flees the school in panic, while Charlie continues to hold off the Shadow Kin. The Shadow King comes into the room and destroys Charlie's gun. Just as it's about to kill all in the room, the Twelfth Doctor, the man who saved Charlie and Quill, strides into the room. He explains that he is here because Quill called him for help, and demands to know why the Shadow Kin are on Earth trying to kill Charlie and Quill, acknowledging that what they are doing isn't their regular M.O. The Shadow Kin demands the Cabinet of Souls, the item in Charlie's possession, which supposedly contains the soul of every dead Rhodian as a repository for a future paradise, or, as the Shadow Kin require it, a weapon. The Doctor does not wish for Charlie to use the cabinet to destroy the Shadow Kin as a method of avenging his people, describing it as "avenging genocide with genocide". Charlie then reveals that the cabinet is empty and that the legends built up about it were merely a myth.
The Shadow King, identified by the Doctor as Corakinus, threatens to conquer the Earth with his legion, when April suddenly stands up to him, holding a broken chair leg to her heart, saying that she will kill herself to stop the Shadow Kin. Charlie also offers himself to Corakinus so that he will spare humanity and April. Tanya attempts to disperse the Shadow Kin by turning on the hall lights, and when that doesn't work initially, the Doctor boosts the lights' voltage up with his sonic screwdriver, and the Shadow Kin disappear. Charlie and the others chase after them to get April's heart back, when April is grabbed by Corakinus. He gives the Doctor an ultimatum: kill them both, or let them live. Ram suddenly appears and hits Corakinus with a chair, pushing him back through the tear. The Doctor then closes the tear with his sonic screwdriver. Ram then collapses from blood loss and exhaustion.
The authorities are called to help with the damages. The gang and Miss Quill are gathered around the TARDIS. The Doctor emerges, wondering what to do with the group now. Charlie knows that the Doctor couldn't close the tear completely, to which the Doctor explains that with all the artron energy built up around the school during the years of his travelling, time itself has worn thin. He forewarns the students that that the school still acts as a beacon to all of space-time and that more will be coming. Miss Quill is thrown that the Doctor is not taking them with him, but he explains they would be no safer elsewhere. All of a sudden, the Doctor stops in his tracks and takes paces toward a large board, on which are the names "Pink R. D." & "Oswald C." (referring to Danny Pink and former companion Clara Oswald). The Doctor is sure that the students will be able to handle whatever comes through the tears. Ram emerges from the TARDIS, with an alien prosthetic leg. The Doctor leaves Quill on Earth to work with the gang as penance for the death of Kevin Williams, and assigns them the task of protecting the planet from whatever comes through the tears, much to Quill's chagrin. He then leaves in the TARDIS.
Ram and Tanya go home in grief and disbelief over what had happened that night. Charlie promises April that he will get her heart back, and she tells him that in the meantime, she will adjust, telling him of how her mum was paralysed in a car accident. Quill later asks Charlie how he isn't mad with grief over the death of his people like she is hers. He responds that there wouldn't be a point, being furious. She then asks that if the cabinet were full, whether he would let the Doctor's moral of "committing one genocide for another" stop him, as it wouldn't stop her. Charlie returns to his room and opens the Cabinet of Souls, revealing it is indeed full and Charlie stares into the box at the millions of Rhodian souls.
Cast
- Miss Quill - Katherine Kelly
- Charlie - Greg Austin
- Ram - Fady Elsayed
- April - Sophie Hopkins
- Tanya - Vivian Oparah
- The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
- Matteusz - Jordan Renzo
- Coach Dawson - Ben Peel
- Jackie - Shannon Murray
- Varun - Aaron Neil
- Vivian - Natasha Gordon
- Rachel - Anna Shaffer
- Corakinus - Paul Marc Davis
- Mr Armitage - Nigel Betts
- Miss Shah - Pooja Shah
- Kevin - Alex Leak
- Mrs Linderhof - Laura-June Hudson
- Counter Clerk - Satnam Bhogal
- Student 1 - Ellie James
- Student 2 - Moses Adejimi
- Student 3 - Assay Hagos
- Student 4 - Shalisha James-Davis
Crew
| Executive Producers Brian Minchin, Steven Moffat and Patrick Ness |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
References
- 101 is a telephone number.
- Varum discusses the use of the word "literally".
- The Shoreditch Police Station is mentioned.
Coal Hill School
- Coal Hill is on Foreman Street in Shoreditch, London.
- Coal Hill holds an Autumn Prom on Friday 14 October in the main hall, from 6 PM to 8:30 PM. Tickets are sold every lunch time in Cafe Max.
- Coal Hill has a Chess Club, a Breakfast Club, Science Club and Sport Work Shops. It's holding a Level Two Careers Fair on 17 September. Coal Hill has a Student Ambassador programme.
- Coal Hill has UCAS posters hanging around.
Technology
- Charlie, Tanya and Ram have Android phones.
- In class, Miss Quill scrolls through online pictures of cats with sunglasses on her iPad.
- Tanya and Ram use laptops to Chat. Tanya's is a Samsung.
- Two girls take a selfie at the prom.
- April mentions Instagram.
- The Doctor says that fighting aliens is harder than a media studies exam, but easier than exams for most other subjects.
Food and beverages
- When Tanya enters the little shop in Hackney, a lot of wine gum, crisps, alcohol (wine, Stella Artois, Budweiser), Emerge, Volvic, Maltesers, chocolate bars, cola, cereals and crackers can be seen. An advertisement for products including Crunchie, Dairy Milk Caramel, Wispa, Double Decker, Twirl and Flake can also be seen.
- Charlie drinks a cup of tea.
- Mr Armitage says he's going to meet a friend for "granola and kale falafel".
Other
People
- Ram claims Charlie sounds like the Queen with the way he talks.
- Charlie and Miss Quill pretend to be from Sheffield.
- When April has a heart attack, Tanya asked if she's epileptic.
Species
- Charlie is a Rhodian and Miss Quill is a Quill, both from planet Rhodia. The two species were at war with each other.
- The Shadow Kin invaded Rhodia, and killed everyone but those two. They can turn into pure shadow.
- The Doctor replaces Ram's severed leg with a replacement he acquired from the Lothan, whom he describes as giant centipedes who are experts in prosthetic legs.
- The Shadow Kin's homeworld, the Underneath, appears.
- Maggot, a small insect, is used as an insult.
Businesses
- Ram and Rachel take an Uber to the prom.
- GameStore sells lottery games in the shop in Hackney.
- When Corakinus demands the Cabinet of Souls, the Doctor suggests getting a cabinet at IKEA.
- The fire engine is a Volvo.
- After prom, April has taken off her Eylure Party Bedazzle false eyelashes.
Organisations
- Around the missing poster for Kevin Williams on a Hackney community notice board are:
- A Your Hackney poster for an (anti-smoking) short film competition.
- An anti-abuse poster from Stonewall.
- A #filthyrich poster from Crimestoppers
- A Hackney Harvest poster
- A Change4Life "don't let drink sneak up on you" poster.
Sports
Mathematics
- Miss Quill marks down an equation for a Gibbs probability density of a classical Klein-Gordon field on the board. Tanya recognises this, but the rest of her class is lost.
Popular culture
- Tanya jokes that they'd already lost the Bechdel test when April only talks about Charlie.
- Idris Elba is mentioned.
- Tanya wonders whether Corakinus is referring to the singer, Prince, when he asks "Where is the Prince?".
- Among items in Tanya's room are three Sailor Moon posters above her bed, and on her shelves: a Care Bear stuffed animal, a teddy bear, and the board games Don't Panic, Battleship, Mr. POP!, Explosive, The Magic Professor, and MB's Ker-Plunk.
- Miss Quill calls Charlie "Prince Valiant".
- She calls April a "ludicrous Care Bear".
- The group mentions a Hellmouth, "that town in Once Upon a Time", and The Vampire Diaries, as being similar in concept to the tears in space and time they are faced with.
- When April says Charlie knows nothing of pop culture, she suggests he's either alien or Amish.
- Miss Quill comments that the UK only exports Downton Abbey.
Music
- The song "Sweet Lovin'" by "Sigala feat. Bryn Christopher" is playing at the prom.
- The song "Turn the Music Louder (Rumble)" by "KDA feat. Tinie Tempah & Katy B" is playing at the prom.
- The song "Fester Skank" by "Lethal Bizzle feat. Diztortion" is playing at the prom.
- The song "Do It Again" by "Röyksopp and Robyn" is playing at the prom.
Story notes
- A working title for this episode was The Prom.[4]
- This is the third guest appearance by the Doctor in a Doctor Who television spin-off. The Sarah Jane Adventures previously featured appearances by the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor in the stories The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and Death of the Doctor respectively. While the Tenth Doctor's hand was a recurring feature in the first series of Torchwood, the Doctor himself ultimately did not appear.
- "Thick as Thieves" by The Temper Trap plays extra-diagetically in the first scene after the titles. Later, "Black Treacle" by Arctic Monkeys is used.
Ratings
- BBC Three ratings: 0.94 million
- BBC One overnight: to be announced
- BBC America overnight: to be announced
Filming locations
- Pinewood Studios - filming for the gym hall, social/staircase area and Charlie's bedroom.
- Haydn Ellis Building, Cardiff University - exterior and some interior filming for Coal Hill Academy
- The Crescent, Conway Road, Pontcanna, Cardiff
Production errors
- The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to close the space-time tear, turning it off afterwards. However, when he catches Ram as he faints, the screwdriver is still lit up.
- When Kevin Williams is disintegrated by the displacement gun, the gun also disappears in a puff of smoke with him.
Continuity
- The Twelfth Doctor's second sonic screwdriver appears. (TV: Hell Bent, The Husbands of River Song, PROSE: Haunted)
- The Doctor notes that he previously served as caretaker at Coal Hill School. (TV: The Caretaker) It has previously been established that, while he has erased most of his memories of Clara, he still remembers at least basic information about their adventures together. (TV: Hell Bent)
- The Doctor again acknowledges that the Coal Hill School area has an excess of artron energy, (TV: The Caretaker) due to it having a long history of time travel. (TV: An Unearthly Child et al.)
- The Doctor says he has a soft spot for people who are the last of their species, referring to how he once thought he was the last of his. (TV: Rose - The Day of the Doctor)
- A list of the dead appears to have some names that the Doctor knew died or disappeared from the school. (PROSE: Time and Relative, TV: An Unearthly Child, Remembrance of the Daleks, Dark Water/Death in Heaven, Face the Raven)
- The list includes the names of both Danny Pink and Clara Oswald, the latter of whom the Doctor is drawn to despite his memory of her having been erased.
- As a later episode sets the events of Series 1 in 2016, Clara's name being included constitutes a continuity error as TV: In the Forest of the Night has dialogue establishing that episode as taking place in 2016. While Danny would have therefore died in 2016, assuming TV: Last Christmas takes place for Clara around 25 December 2016, her actual acknowledged year of death would have been at the earliest 2017.
- The Doctor says he loves darts. He had previously revealed he belonged to a darts team with the Brothers Grimm. (TV: Heaven Sent)
- The Shadow Kin calls the Doctor "the great destruction of the universe". The Doctor was since at least his seventh incarnation called "the Oncoming Storm", (PROSE: Love and War) as was the name "the Destroyer of Worlds". (AUDIO: Afterlife) In his eleventh incarnation, the Daleks called him "the Predator". (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
- The Doctor rhetorically asks "why avenge genocide with genocide?" Having seen Dalek Caan's extermination of the Human-Daleks, the Tenth Doctor previously refused to "cause another" genocide when confronting the last Dalek in existence. (TV: Evolution of the Daleks)
Home video releases
DVD releases
- For Tonight We Might Die was featured in the series one DVD boxset, which was released in the UK (Region 2) on 16th January 2017, followed by a Region 1 release on 11th July. The Region 1 release contained an additional blooper reel and various deleted scenes that were not present on the Region 2 release.
Region 2 cover
Blu-ray releases
to be added
Footnotes
- ↑ The poster at the start (in HD) quite clearly dates the prom to 14 October. Kevin Williams' missing poster confirms he was last seen on the 12th.
- ↑ In The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo, we see a plaque that tells us the Barbara Wright Building was completed in spring 2016. Additionally, Nightvisiting, set two years after Jasper Adeola's death, tells us he died in 2014. Finally, Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart confirms that Charlie and Miss Quill arrived on Earth in September 2016.
- ↑ 6 Things You Need to Know About Class. BBC. Retrieved on 22 October 2016.
- ↑ Radio Times staff (30 April 2016). Here's what the very first episode of Doctor Who spin-off Class is called. Radio Times. Retrieved on 22 October 2016.
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