Detained

"You shouldn't avenge genocide with genocide."

Writer: Patrick Ness
Format: TV
Broadcast: 19th November 2016
Series: Class 1.06

Featuring: April, Ram, Tanya, Charlie, Miss Quill

Synopsis

Thrown into detention, the gang find themselves trapped in a prison that forces them to confess their secrets. Will they escape before the alien power tears them apart forever?

Verdict

Detained was yet another incredible episode of Class and I must say that this spinoff series is seriously impressing me! I am already very hopeful of a second series as I am just loving what's going on. It goes some way in saying that of the six episodes broadcast thus far, I have given full marks to half of them. Now, I am also in the midst of blogging the Sarah Jane Adventures and to give some indication of just how good this particular spinoff is, it took until the midway point of the third series to get three perfect scores from the SJA, it took just six episodes with Class. Patrick Ness has been doing a stunning job in developing these characters after the Doctor left them to it in For Tonight We Might Die. This episode was extremely powerful and I just loved how the youth of the main cast were the only characters that featured for most of the story. Miss Quill giving the team detention was quite humorous in itself but what they all went through was certainly not what they expected! I feel like I've been a little harsh in not including Matteusz as part of my 'Featuring' in the story information but despite him playing pretty much an equal role to his other four counterparts, I still don't see him as a main character. That might be because he wouldn't be around if it wasn't for his relationship with Charlie but I actually thought he was very good here. The premise of the story was excellent and I like how the tares in time and space continue to be visible. Here we were in nowhere with the main characters isolated in a classroom with nothing but each other's company. They had been taken out of time completely which meant that they wouldn't age or go hungry. But given time, with the forces at work they might just end up destroying each other. And it nearly did get to that point which was quite a surprise. The meteor, or asteroid as Ram was keen to point out, turning out to be the basis of a prison of an intelligence was brilliant and I liked how the holder was forced to confess and couldn't help but tell the truth. That provided a lot of interesting dynamics and showed just how frail this little team were. Each character felt the effects of something one of the others said and the episode really was incredibly powerful emotionally which is something I always like. Charlie and Matteusz shared their true thoughts about one another, as did April and Ram which was quite sad for the latter as he had fallen for April and she just didn't quite feel the same way. Tanya's confession was quite a sad one but did make sense and after four turns had been used up holding the asteroid, Charlie's turn was the most powerful of the lot. He didn't need to be prompted to confess the truth, he spilled it out anyway. He was going to show them that he wasn't just a Prince and didn't ask the wrong questions. He challenged the intelligence to confess and the guilt inside of him eventually would murder the prisoner and send the classroom home. But then the unthinkable happened, as if it hadn't already. Miss Quill fired a gun and her hair was suspiciously longer. Then after preventing Charlie from becoming the new prisoner by shooting a gun, she handed him the creature from inside her head. She was a slave no more and I can't wait to see how that changes the dynamic of the series. But for now, another simply stunning episode!

Rating: 10/10