His Dark Materials Episode 05: The Lost Boy

Apologies for the short post this week, brain problems, let’s get into it.

Episode Review

So we’re just doing The Subtle Knife? Okay then, we’re doing The Subtle Knife in episode five of Northern Lights. I did not expect that.

This is exciting, but it also feels slightly awkward; as I said last time, the split focus between the more low-key material in our world and Lyra’s adventure isn’t meshing together entirely cleanly, and that is if anything even more pronounced here, as moving away from Lord Boreal’s viewpoint feels like we’re starting a completely different story in the middle of the season (which, functionally, we are).

We’re sufficiently far into the series now that I think I can say that this is going to be the primary flaw of the season; thankfully, it’s hardly an insurmountable one. Even if the two strands don’t fit together very well, individually they’re still strong on their own, and I have to wonder whether my complaints about this aspect of the show are coming from the fact that I’ve read the books; is it actually jarring to cut from Lyra riding a polar bear across the ice to a boy in Oxford dealing with much more mundane domestic concerns, or does it just feel like it is because I know that didn’t happen originally? I guess that’s the inherent problem with reviewing adaptations, and of course I can’t step outside of my own perspective and react to the series as someone who hadn’t read the books.

Regardless, while I said that the main Lyra plot is still going strong, there were a few problems I had with this episode, which you can read about in the analysis. These flaws are disappointing to see, but they’re still small compared to all of the things the series is doing right.

Analysis

It’s Will Parry! In the first season!

Sorry, I get excited about these things.

Amir Wilson seems to be embodying Will’s “brooding loner with a secret vulnerable interior” thing well. Based on this early look at the character, the show’s version of Will seems to be sticking closer to the book than Lyra (admittedly, Will is a much more straight forward character).

Our first look at a witch, in the form of Serafina Pekkala. She looks a lot like she’s described in the book, the witches being eternally youthful women who fly around wearing scraps of whispy gauze, but with a slight goth/punk look to fit in with the modern millenial vision of the witch aesthetic.

The series has been trying to elevate the past relationship beween Farder Coram and Serafina, which was a minor background detail in the book, into its own side-plot. I don’t think it’s working. They’re trying to elevate these characters from minor side character into main players, but they don’t actually have time to do that properly. Worse, it’s eating into Lyra’s story: this initial meeting between Serafina and Lyra is recast as a reunion between her and Coram. I always loved the bit where Lyra sees Serafina for the first time and she explains the existence of multiple worlds—it has this very magical, wondrous feeling, like a half-remembered childhood event that you’re not sure actually took place or not—so its appearance here as part of a weak sub-plot isn’t welcome.

I was iffy on Iorek last episode due to his voice, but it’s growing on me. And he continues to be a very fuzzy boi.

There’s an interesting change made to this scene, which I don’t think a lot of people noticed: when Lyra finds poor Billy Costa without his daemon, he seems to be counting out loud for no apparent reason. This is very similar to the obssesive counting that people under spectre attack do, which we see Will’s mother exhibit in this episode.

I’m really not sure what the deal is with this—possibly it’s just drawing an explicit link between daemon severance and the spectres attacking a person’s soul—but it’s a neat little subtle hint.

In an earlier post, I lamented the fact that daemons aren’t as present as in the book because it would impact a later scene; this is the part I was talking about. Seeing Billy without his daemon is meant to be a very shocking thing, but the sight of people with no visible daemons has become routine. This was probably an inescapable consequence of the special effects limitations, but it’s still mildly unfortunate.

(In having the daemons vanish from scene to scene, the series is unintentionally being faithful to the source material, as Phillip Pullman had a bad habit of forgetting about them for long stretches of time).

Speaking of Will’s mom, she seems to know something about where her husband has gone and why, based on some things she says here. I like this change; it ties Will’s side of the story into Lyra’s and makes his mom a bit more of an active presence in the plot rather than just being a sad person to be pitied.

On that note, I thought the portrayal of her mental illness was quite sensitively done (speaking as someone who has worked around people with mental illness, but never experienced one myself). It would have been easy to go over the top with it—even The Subtle Knife did sometimes—but they gave it a light touch as far as depicting what her “episodes” are like.

In a previous post I praised the series for not resorting to using visions to depict Lyra’s alethiometer reading, but here we get…a vision to depict her alethiomer reading. I’m not sure why, since the information she gets is still conveyed perfectly well through the dialogue. I can forgive this as long as it doesn’t become a regular thing, as admittedly the little flash-forward we get of the hut Billy is hiding in is quite spooky.

The series really goes hard on depicting how creepy and sinister Bolvanger is. The bit where Lyra is brought into an exam room and told to take her clothes off is positvely oozing menace and creepiness (as opposed to the book, where the nurse is vaguely friendly and the whole thing comes off like a routine doctor’s appointment), and the scientist making Pan transform by grabbing him was a really neat touch; it comes off as alarmingly forceful on its own, but if you’re aware from the books of how much of a taboo touching someone else’s daemon is, it’s makes the scientists attitude towards the children immediately apparent.

I do kind of wish we had gotten the book’s cheerful facade, which was fun in a dystopian sort of way, but on the other hand by this point we already know what happens at Bolvanger so I guess the facade is pretty pointless.