His Dark Materials Episode 02: The Idea of North

After a first episode that stuck mostly to the source material, it’s time to get a little wild in an exciting but uneven follow-up.

Episode Review

One of my worries going into this series is that it would end up spinning too many plates for people unfamiliar with the books to keep track of. The show’s creators have apparently decided to take this as a challenge.

To wit, we’re getting a completely original sub-plot that wasn’t present in the books (more on that in the analysis), which is expanding on some minor plot points. I’m both very curious to see where this is going, and slightly apprehensive about the amount of time it’s going to take up from polar bea—I mean, other important aspects of the story going forward. In the source material, we were firmly focused on Lyra and her exciting child-friendly adventures, so it’s a bit discordant to be watching this cold-blooded Magisterium agent and his dimension-hopping spy shenanigans this early into the story.

Speaking of Lyra though, the show has now remedied one of my major problems with the movie by giving her time with Mrs. Coulter in London its due. However, despite having a full hour to play with, I felt the show still ran into some pacing issues; Mrs. Coulter’s turn towards outright villainy happens a bit too early, leaving Lyra’s investigations spinning their wheels for a bit in the back half. I also didn’t like the fact that the ultimate revelation about Mrs. Coulter’s role in the Gobbler conspiracy is delivered to Lyra via a third party, rather than being something she discovers on her own.

In fact, Lyra kind of gets short-changed in her own story here, spending most of the episode alone and ploughing through rote story exposition. Dafne Keene, who I liked quite a bit in the first episode, seems to struggle with this drier material where she’s talking to a CGI creation that wasn’t physically in the room with her (the old adage about child actors having trouble with CG characters seems to hold true here). Although on the other hand, she’s handling Lyra’s character progression wonderfully; by the end of the episode, some of her childish demeanour has noticeably worn off, as you’d expect given the circumstances.

On the topic of performances: Ruth Wilson is turning into the undisputed MVP of the show. Her portrayal of Mrs. Coulter is just seething with barely-contained malevolance, and has already upstaged Nicole Kidman’s turn as the character. This episode really drives home the fact that even if she wasn’t involved in very evil deeds, she’d still have been an awful, abusive person.

So on the whole, slightly weaker than last week’s debut, but still an exciting and very interesting take on the source material. I’m hoping that the show can keep those plates in the air, and avoid drowning out the core of the story, as we speed north.

Analysis

Alright, let’s get this out of the way first: Lord Boreal traipses through a window between worlds…and straight into our world.

We’re in the second episode. That is fucking wild.

This isn’t actually a total diversion from the books; we learn in The Subtle Knife that Lord Boreal has been crossing between worlds for quite some time, and functionally speaking we’re really just seeing that play out. But even still, the show is going much further than I thought it would. A more cynical viewer might propose that scenes set in normal-ass London are an excellent way to save some money, but hopefully there’s going to be some pay-off to justify this turn of events.

(By the way, kudos to the trailers for keeping this part of the show completely under wraps).

We finally get a look at the text engraved into the Alethiometer: “Kuhnrath” and then what I’m assuming is meant to be a date. Apparently this is a reference to real-life alchemical practices, and I think possibly to something in the The Secret Commonwealth, which I’m only halfway through.

Lyra sees Mrs. Coulter’s daemon, seperated from her. In the books, this happens several times but it’s left ambiguous as to whether they were really seperated or whether she was just mistaken (this is another one of Mrs. Coulter’s unexplained abilties). The show here is being far more up-front about it for some reason.

This is one instance where I feel like the writers are trying to bite off more than they can chew: I’m sure 99% of viewers not familiar with the source material had no idea what the fuck was going on here.

As expected, the revelation that Lord Asriel is Lyra’s father comes at a much more dramatic moment, during the big dust-up between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter. In the book, this information is just sort of dropped in Lyra’s lap during an expositional conversation with no fanfare, so I’m not surprised that both the movie and the show have opted for a more emotionally-charged reveal. Now, how will they handle the other big parentage reveal?

(Incidentally, this whole confrontation was dynamite: really great acting from Ruth Wilson and Dafne Keene, and I was on the edge of my seat, even knowing what was going to happen. The series so far has nailed every one of the big pivotal moments).

To my surprise, we get a recreation of the bit where Mrs. Coulter visits the kidnapped children and gets them to write letters to their parents (which she then burns, because she’s evil). Which is all good fun, and it gives Ruth Wilson a chance to really chew the scenery, but the scene doesn’t really make sense here.

In the book, this is how the Oblation Board gets the children to begin with: they spend the entire journey north thinking they’ve been recruited for some grand project and that their parents know exactly where they are. Here, they’ve all been kidnapped by a creepy dude with a scary fox daemon, so Mrs. Coulter’s “Aren’t we all just going to have a wonderful time in the north???” routine would fall totally flat. Worse, it appears to have somehow worked anyway…but then when the kids are being taken to their next destination it’s all creepy and sinister and they seem to know something bad is happening, as though this whole scene never happened.

One example where sticking to the source material might not have been the best move.

An early look at the creepy Stepford nurses from Bolvanger. They’re very creepy.

Get a load of this smooth motherfucker