His Dark Materials Episodes 06 and 07: The Daemon Cages & The Fight To The Death

Good news everyone, my brain co-operated enough to let me put out this combined post earlier than planned!

Episode 06 Review

As I speculated based on the trailers ages ago, the show’s depiction of Bolvanger leans a lot darker than the outwardly-fluffy-actually-horrifying version in the book. I’ve already hashed out my feelings on it based on what we’ve seen before, and in the main event I ended up feeling that the super creepy, dystopian vision presented here is a lot of fun even if it’s a bit over the top.

I actually don’t have much else to say about this episode review-wise; apart from a few changes I’ll talk about in the analysis, it’s pretty close to the source material and does a good job of adapting it, infusing Lyra’s time in Bolvanger with a constant aura of dread that I quite enjoyed. Some great performances out of Dafne Keene and Ruth Wilson as well. The Bolvanger jaunt was always one of my favourite parts of Northern Lights due to how unexpected it is, so I’m happy that the series really went for it in terms of doing something interesting with the idea.

Episode 07 Review

Now this episode I do have more to talk about: despite some very entertaining scenes, it’s definitely the weakest one yet, mostly due to pacing issues. I’ve always identified the Iofur/Iorek battle as a prime candidate for the cutting room floor given how much of an odd tangent it is, coming after the Bolvanger business is wrapped up but before the actual end of the story. We get a version of it here, but it’s an extremely rushed and perfunctory version; and worse than that, they didn’t show the jaw-ripping! What even is a polar bear showdown if one of them isn’t getting their jaw ripped off?

(On the other hand, I like how Iorek’s victory was changed from “Ah ha, I was in fact trolling you into thinking I was injured” to “Oh noes gotta protecc Lyra”, continuing the show’s admirable process of fleshing out how and why Lyra’s various allies become so loyal to her).

Even worse in terms of stuff getting rushed is Will’s side of the plot: I joked about episode five being The Subtle Knife: Episode One, but it turns out I was premature, as we straight-up see the start of that book here. It ends up feeling ridiculously rushed; Will accidentally killing a dude and realizing he needs to go on the run is over and done with in less than a minute. The decision to pull Will’s storyline into the first season has yielded some positive stuff that I’ll talk about in the final series review, but in this case it seems to have backfired.

As to why everything covered in this episode is sped through so quickly, the series seems to be making room for a big battle between the Magisterium and (I’m guessing) witches for the climax, which could be exciting. I’m overall very positive on the series as whole, so I hope it sticks the landing.

Speaking of which, I checked into various HDM fandom circles and was kind of surprised to see that the mood on the show has soured a lot. I think this might partially be down to the expectation of perfection that people tend to approach adaptations of beloved stories with, where “it’s not perfect” feels like only a tiny step up from “it’s total garbage”. A lot of the criticisms I’m seeing thrown at the show in its second half are valid—I’ve echoed most of them myself—but I don’t think they’re anywhere close to being as ruinous as some are stating. And some of the complaints, like characters being signficantly different from their book counterparts, aren’t problems at all as far as I’m concerned.

Episode 06 Analysis

In the book, the Bolvanger kids whose daemons were severed are kind of brushed under the carpet (I think it’s implied that the scientists just let them loose to wander until they die of cold), whereas here the topic is dealt with much more concretely and, uh, yikes. It’s actually pretty grim, the suggestion being that the spiritual damage done to them and their daemons is irreversible and that they’ll probably be rejected by society and even their own parents (maybe they’ll form a commonwealth of some sort…).

There’s a glimmer of hope in that the Gyptians intend to take in the ones who aren’t welcomed anywhere else, but even still, the culimination of the Bolvanger plotline is far more downbeat than it was in the book.

Shout out to Nurse McCreepy, the Creepy Nurse, who was just cast in that Amazon Lord of The Rings series. She was very creepy.

I don’t think they made a big deal about this before now, but Will’s dad is played by Andrew Scott, best known as Gay Irish Moriarty from Sherlock. He’s presumably going to be in the next season a lot more.

Episode 07 Analysis

I might not have liked how they handled it, but at least the scenes in Iofur’s palace look gorgeous.

In terms of the adaptation from page to screen, unfortunately Serafina Pekkala has turned out to be the weakest element in the whole series. She hasn’t actually spoken to Lyra yet, and apart from killing a bunch of dudes in the Bolvanger fight (which was admittedly pretty cool) she mostly exists to deliver expositional dialogue, which is something the series struggles with in general.

The depiction of the friendship between Lyra and Roger is super adorable. Shame about, uh, you know. Next episode.