We’ve reached an episode in which the structuring makes a lot of sense to me, with each plot-thread focusing on mother and daughter separately trying to negotiate a hostile environment with their charm, wits and ability to convincingly lie. Each one is motivated by love, and each one’s course of action leads them to a betrayal caused by that love.
In Lyra’s case, it’s having to leave Pan behind in order to reach the Land of the Dead. In Mrs Coulter’s case, it’s realizing she’s delivered the means to her daughter’s destruction to those willing to use it. The scenes from each storyline flow in and out of each other nicely, and the restructuring of the books chapters works extremely well.
The material is taken from two-and-a-half chapters that centre on Lyra (“The Suburbs of the Dead”, “Lyra and Her Death” and “The Harpies” – though they’ve obviously held back on the harpies for now) and one revolving around on Mrs Coulter (“Mrs Coulter in Geneva”). Neither one feels rushed or truncated, and I suspect Jack Thorne may have gotten his inspiration from the quote at the beginning of Mrs Coulter’s chapter: “As is the mother, so is her daughter” – Ezekial.
A lot of this covers my least favourite part of the book: Will and Lyra traversing the realm of the dead in search of Roger and John Parry, for little other reason than the children want to talk to their departed loved ones and make amends. My dislike for these chapters simply comes down to how depressing and grim they are, with harrowing implications regarding the nature of death and the afterlife.
In Pullman’s hands, the world of the dead is a barren wasteland. There’s some stunted foliage and wildlife (including a deformed toad that leads to a brief but weird spiel about euthanasia) as well as shantytowns with rudimentary electricity, but it’s essentially a post-apocalyptic nightmare stretching to the horizon in every direction. And it’s massive, beyond your ability to conceive; the holding pen of every single sentient being that has died. The mind boggles.
In the show, this is reimagined as a series of industrial warehouses where the souls of the dead amble along like zombies, a half-hearted bureaucracy where even those with some degree of authority have no real idea what’s going on. There’s a sickly yellow tint to everything, and everything looks both sterile and run-down.
As ever, the limits of the budget play a role in how things are depicted. Obviously the sheer size of this place couldn’t be portrayed on-screen for any length of time, so the buildings and the heavy mist of the lake do their part in making the place seem claustrophobic and contained, while still suggesting great space that exists just out of sight.
A foreman notices that Lyra and Will aren’t dead, sending the two of them to a holding area with a scrap of paper that means nothing, and then to a waiting room where they’re expected to wait until they die. On asking for information, they learn about their Death – interestingly enough, from an old woman who appears to be called Marisa. Marisa, as in Lyra’s mother Marisa? I’m not saying that she’s an older version of Mrs Coulter, only that they’ve deliberately chosen a name for this old woman that echoes that of Lyra’s mother (unless it was Larissa, or Clarissa).
In any case, they learn about their Deaths: the being that comes into the world with you, follows you around, and then ushers you out again. It’s all very peaceful and helpful, and it’s the only thing that will get the children to the boatman that will take them to the Land of the Dead. Lyra recognizes this imagery from her dream, and so attempts to contact her Death.
To be frank, this part was pretty weird in the book as well. There, it takes place in a ramshackle shantytown, where those who have accidentally ended up in this purgatory-like place while still living are merely whiling away the time as their Deaths linger about outside, and an old woman in bed with her Death – a rather macabre visual – informs Lyra about what she must do. In both cases, it’s Lyra getting angry that calls her Death to her: in the book, it’s because Chevalier Tialys (exercised from the show completely) threatens her, in the show, it’s because neither Will nor Pan seem to understand why she wants to see Roger so badly. Another difference that that Lyra’s book!Death manifests in male form, whereas show!Death is a young woman with a beatific expression on her face.
A Death seems to be a bit like a guardian angel, yet Pullman is staunchly against that type of thinking, and no matter how benevolent they may appear, they’re still ushering each individual into a massive prison where they’ll remain for all eternity. Are they invention of the Authority to calm and control people? Or a part of scientific evolution, or a theological theory? The concept just don’t seem to fit into his worldview, which means they inevitably come across as a plot convenience instead.
It's all rather odd, not to mention surprisingly easy, compounding to the problem is that Lyra’s motivations have always felt weak to me. Clearly Pullman needs to get her to the Land of the Dead in order for his plot to fall into place, but Lyra taking such massive steps to simply say sorry to Roger ring false.
As is pointed out many times, everyone has someone they lost to death and wish they could speak to again. Why is Lyra so special? Why is the bond between Lyra and Roger so much stronger than every other person that’s ever loved another? It’s not a question that’s answered in any satisfactorily way, and here Lyra tells her Death: “I don’t want to be exceptional, I just want to be good. I just want to help someone. And Roger needs me.” It makes sense to her, it’s certainly in keeping with her stubborn nature, she’s a child that’s in possession (or near possession) of two extraordinarily powerful tools that will allow her to do pretty much whatever she wants, but I just don’t feel the impetus behind her determination in the way I should.
Especially when we get to the ferry scene. I’m willing to go with the flow when it comes to the fact that Pan cannot get on the boat to enter the Land of the Dead (it’s not explained as anything other than “a rule”, but it makes a deep kind of theological sense when you take into account that we’ve regularly seen daemons dissolve into the air when a human from Lyra’s world dies) but this entire sequence involves Lyra choosing Roger over Pan – who is a part of who she is.
We’re essentially watching a child rip out an intrinsic part of herself and cast it aside for the sake of someone else, and I’m not sure they’ve laid the groundwork to make that decision plausible – though for what it’s worth, I felt the same way reading the book.
Pullman’s prose goes for maximum poignancy: “what animal he was now, Will could hardly tell. He seemed to be so young, a cub, a puppy, something helpless and beaten, a creature so sunk in misery that it was more misery than creature,” and can tell us just how horrific this situation is: “she looked back again at the foul and dismal shore, so bleak and blasted with disease and poison, and thought of her dear Pan waiting there alone, her heart’s companion, watching her disappear into the mist, and she fell into a storm of weeping,” but we don’t really get this level of pathos in the show.
Which isn’t surprising, as this show has always failed at giving any real bite to scenes of emotional drama, I said as much when Lyra and Pan faced the threat of intercision back in season one. It’s not Dafne Keene’s fault, who gives it her all as she emotes against a CGI ferret on what would have been an empty bench, but the whole thing lacks any true pain or conflict. Instead, Pan comes across as petulant (“you’re choosing Roger over me”) and Lyra’s thought-process makes no real sense. Is this half-baked plan to make amends with a dead boy really worth abandoning Pan?
Again, it’s what the story requires, but I just don’t feel it on an emotional level, especially since a visual medium has naturally struggled with capturing the inexorable bond between human and daemon.
(And I’ve always wondered why Will doesn’t just use the knife to cut a way to a nicer world so they don’t have to leave Pan in such a horrible place, but those are logistics we’re clearly not meant to be pondering).
But there is one tiny detail that I did appreciate, which definitely improves on the source material. When trying to justify her decision to leave Pan, she crucially tells him: “I can’t betray Roger.” Now, hold that thought, because I’m coming back to it in a second.
At this point in the book, Pullman’s adage to “tell the reader only what they need to know” is beginning to fray a little. We’re carried by the depth of emotion and the dizzying array of ideas and the sharpness of the prose that Pullman is delivering on practically every page, but at the same time, you can also see some “cheating” in the way the story is unfolding. For instance, though it’s been established that the Spectres will devour the soul of any adult they come into contact with, this makes it very difficult for Mary Malone and Father Gomez to complete their arcs. So how does Pullman solve this conundrum? Well, he just casually states that they leave the pair of them alone for some reason.
Then there’s the issue of the Gallivespians. In the book, Lady Salmakia and Chevalier Tialys accompany Will and Lyra on their journey into the Land of the Dead, the alethiometer having told Lyra not to ditch them, as: “your lives depend on them.” Now, as anyone watching the show may have already deduced, this is not true, as their clean excision from this plotline makes abundantly clear.
In the book they provide some support and encouragement, and Tialys makes Lyra angry enough for her to see her Death, but nothing that feels absolutely essentially to the progression of the story. As the show clearly demonstrates, they are non-essential. One gets the sense that Pullman simply liked the characters, or couldn’t think of anything for them to do, and so justified their presence through the alethiometer and a couple of negligent scenes.
Unfortunately, this ends up having an adverse effect on the rest of the book. If these fairly substantial characters were ultimately meaningless, then what else falls apart on closer inspection?
Jumping ahead a little, in hindsight it also seems obvious that Father Gomez’s entire purpose is to provide some degree of suspense long after the main conflict of the story has been resolved. With Lord Asriel’s battle against the Authority and the Clouded Mountain happening almost entirely off-page, Gomez is one final physical threat that can be dealt with by another dangling thread by the name of Balthamos. The children never even realize either one is in the vicinity, so I can’t help but wonder: is any of this as carefully plotted as we’d like to think?
Which brings me back to Lyra’s line: “I can’t betray Roger.” Book readers will recall that at this point, The Amber Spyglass tries to frame this moment as the culmination of the prophecy made all the way back in the first book: that Lyra won’t be betrayed, but will herself be the betrayer. To quote: “And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a great betrayal and it would hurt her terribly, was fulfilled.”
Except that most readers would have logically assumed that the betrayal was Lyra unwittingly leading Roger to his death after they escaped Bolvangar and found “refuge” with her father. It was very heavily hinted at this being the case in the text of Northern Lights, and returning to this prophecy midway through The Amber Spyglass is confusing to say the least. I was left wondering if perhaps Pullman did intend for Roger’s doom to be Lyra’s original betrayal, only to see an opportunity to reintroduce the concept in the final book (heck, even the line that states this was the true meaning of the prophecy feels rather tacked-on).
So what I appreciate about Lyra’s: “I can’t betray Roger” line in the show is that it accounts for both readings of the prophecy. She doesn’t want to commit the same betrayal that she did back in season one, even if it means betraying Pan in the here and now. Nicely done, Jack Thorne.
***
So while all this is going on, what’s Mrs Coulter up to? After landing at the College of St Jerome in Geneva (a facility which is remarkably deserted) she makes herself known and learns that her old ally Father MacPhail is now Father President. Things have changed in her absence, but she doesn’t let that slow her down for long.
Plenty of fraught discussions take place regarding the nature of Eve and how it relates to Lyra, and Mrs Coulter demonstrates that she knows her doctrine. If Lyra is Eve, then it means that a serpent is out there somewhere, one that will inevitably tempt her into committing sin. Mrs Coulter’s plan was to keep her safe from that, trapped in an endless prepubescent sleep, though the Magisterium wants to eliminate any risk by simply assassinating them.
Mrs Coulter brags that she was the one responsible for breaking the subtle knife, and drops the bombshell that Lord Asriel is no longer interested in it – that he’s gone ahead and murdered an angel. Reeling with all this new information, Father MacPhail is clearly on the back foot, and as fun as it is to watch manipulators work their angles and steamroll over protestations, I’m not entirely sure that Mrs Coulter has the right handle on this situation. MacPhail is nervous and unsure, which means she probably would have been better off playing the part of the conciliator and comforter. Otherwise, he’s going to fall back on brute force to reassure himself of his own mastery of the situation (which is exactly what he does).
Fortunately, she finds an unexpected ally in Lord Roke, who smuggled himself aboard the Intention Craft when she escaped. He informs her that there’s a particular room that Father Gomez is particularly interested in. Under the guise of looking for a chapel, Mrs Coulter bulldozes her way through the halls until she gets to this – unguarded, unlocked – room.
It’s where Doctor Cooper is building the bomb that can detonate across worlds to destroy its intended victim, something that Mrs Coulter quickly figures out before reinforcements arrive (I loved Ruth Wilson’s little “ooh!” when the men forcibly grab her).
At this point I kick myself, as I’ve noticed the medallion Mrs Coulter has been wearing around her neck in the previous two episodes, having totally forgotten it’s actually a LOCKET in which she’s been keeping a lock of her daughter’s hair. (Though annoyingly, they drop the line that conveys how Father MacPhail knew that said hair was kept there – every time she spoke of Lyra, her hand went to her locket).
With Lyra’s hair, they can assassinate her from afar, something Doctor Cooper carefully explains to Father MacPhail so that Lord Roke can overhear it on behalf of Mrs Coulter and retrieve the hair. “You came here to protect her, and instead you gave them the fuse to a bomb.” Mrs Coulter promptly burns it, but of course Father MacPhail held some back just in case.
And at this point, the show finds that oft-reached-for sense of genuine suspense and emotion. Knowing that Asriel won’t intervene on behalf of her daughter, Mrs Coulter decides to take them out however way she can – to get the Intention Craft and (I’m guessing) use it as some sort of weapon against them.
But of course, all those men intervene and she’s out of options. Father President has all the cards, she’s just a fallen, hysterical woman that no one will take seriously – not when she points out his hypocrisy, not when she confesses to the murder of Cardinal Sturrock, not when she tries to physically attack him. For now at least, it’s over.
***
And lastly, Mary Malone finally, FINALLY sees her first mulefa. By this point in the book, she’s already spent four chapters among them, so I was beside myself with anticipation at finally seeing one of Pullman’s most unique creations.
And... they’ve got it all wrong. Where are the seed-pod wheels? Where’s the diamond-shaped skeleton? With only four episodes left, how are they going to do justice to this entire subplot and its links to Dust, not to mention the tualapi and the oil and the spyglass? I have a sinking feeling about this...
Miscellaneous Observations:
A nice touch was that Lyra was called by her many names throughout this episode: Lyra Belacqua by Father MacPhail, Lyra Silvertongue by her Death, and a “liar” by the foreman standing on the platform – that last one may well figure into the next episode as well.
It probably would have been too confusing (and expensive) to feature them, but it’s a shame only humans were seen traversing the Land of the Dead. A couple of mulefa or Gallivespians or polar bears would have logically also been present in this place.
I really enjoyed the scene in which Mrs Coulter almost-but-not-really tries to seduce Father MacPhail. She knows this approach won’t work in the slightest; that he’d be repulsed or appalled at any sexual overtures, but that subtext is still there as she very deliberately kisses his ring while commending his self-control (and of course, throws in mention of Cardinal Sturrock for good measure. I have to admit to having absolutely no memory of this character, but the context makes it pretty clear that Mrs Coulter killed him to advance MacPhail’s career).
Another interesting detail was that Mrs Coulter’s clothes are returned to her by her mother, a character that isn’t mentioned at all in the book (it’s hard to imagine Marisa Coulter even having a mother, much less being a child) and who has remained unseen in the show. Aside from a sardonic comment from Marisa, we learn no more about her – only that Gomez describes her as “how we found you” (presumably the location of the cottage?) and that Mrs Coulter replies: “of course she was.”
I’m glad we’re getting through my least-favourite part of the book. I find it very grim and depressing (which is perhaps a testament to Pullman’s skill in describing the place) but also a tad ironic. Despite Pullman’s distaste for organized religion, what comes next reads very much like the Harrowing of Hell. For all my endless nitpicking and complaining, I definitely enjoyed this episode more than what’s preceded it, and I appreciated a lot of the changes that were made.
And now we’re officially halfway through!
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