Part 6 The Abyss
This has been a season that feels very much like an artist's third album. The simpler stories of the first two seasons are unfurling into something more mature, something more interesting. The two year gap though has caused this to seem an initially slow affair but the reward comes in the latter half of the season and these final three episodes are the full flowering of this.
Spoilers after the break.
Mrs Coulter has been so
duplicitous up till now that you tend
not to believe a word she says so her seemingly heartfelt speech into his
episode about the bond between a mother and child may or may not be as sincere
as it seems. It’s the centrepiece of an absorbing episode which advances the
plot slowly but with increasing tension.
Spoilers after the, ahem, break...
A stronger finale can’t disguise the feeling that all of this second season has been something of a transit with characters wandering or being chased all over the place only for the crucial scenes to all turn up at once in part seven. There’s also a whiff of convenience in the storytelling with characters being dispatched exactly when they would seem to have no further part in the story. Nothing especially wrong in that, writers do it all the time, but it happens twice here in the space of a few minutes and try as it might the script can’t quite inspire the emotions we should feel. Compared with traumatic events of the last episode of the first season this feels slightly flat even if there are moments of brilliance marbled through. Considering the slow pace of some of the episodes that came before the production struggles to do justice to key events which are raced through with undue haste. A shame because there are scenes when you can almost see the actors willing there to be more to say but there’s not.
A slow episode that ends in a stormy manner `Malice` sees the story visibly marking time. While there isn’t a bad episode to be seen in this series this is a slightly less interesting one. That’s odd considering many of the principal characters are now closer together than ever yet frustratingly they just keep missing each other! So while Mrs Coulter and Boreal wander around Citagazze, Scoresby and Parry’s balloon flies overhead. Lyra, Will and Serafina are in the nearby jungle wandering around going somewhere while Will’s wound worsens. Mary Malone is also wandering around like a tourist. Her beatific reaction to the place is a nice contrast to Mrs Coulter’s aggressive response in one of the more gripping scenes as she faces down the fearsome Spectres with sheer force of will. Does she meet Mary? Course not!
The subtle knife is great idea because though it can suggest Lyra and Will can easily recover the alethiometer things don’t turn out quite as they expect. There’s the matter of Mrs Coulter being at Boreal’s mansion. This is another top notch Ruth Wilson dominated episode as Mrs C becomes uncomfortably accustomed to life in our Oxford discovering unpleasant truths and clothes as well! Her expression when looking at a pair of jeans or a coffee for the first time is mild disgust though her reaction to her host’s museum / lair is to not be as impressed as he expects.
So just what is inside that tower that we keep getting mysterious glimpses of? In this episode we find out it’s veteran actor Terence Stamp and a crazy boy in pyjamas who has taken the subtle knife from Tezza to protect himself from the Spectres. And he doesn’t want to give it up easily. Much of this episode dwells on somewhat familiar sorts of mystical objects and venerable teachers that abound in literary and visual fiction. So while Will and Lyra finally discover a way into the Tower of Angels, Scoresby tracks down John Parry or as he is currently calling himself Jopari which sounds like his Twitter name! Some of the intrigue is drawn away from these encounters by an introductory sequence which explains it all to us before the characters learn about it but really it should happen simultaneously. So as the kids gawp at the Subtle Knife we already know all about it . Incidentally Terence Stamp aka Giacomo Paradisi pitches this role just right. The actor can do these sort of roles, which amount to extended cameos, with authority and it works a treat.
A low key but frequently tense episode is packed with a certain amount of exposition that some may find drags but which does a good job in expanding the storyline and squaring some circles. With last week’s cliffhanger unresolved- just what did happen with that looming Spectre?- Will takes Lyra to his Oxford for an extended trip that sees them become more proactive trying to solve the mysteries. On the advice of the alethiometer Lyra finds a “scholar” courtesy of the picture on her office door.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT...
