His Dark Materials: The Scholar

Watching these episodes while concurrently reading the novel is an interesting exercise in how stories get adapted for television, as the chronology of the chapters is very scrambled at this stage. In the book, Will and Lyra’s attempt to steal back the alethiometer happens right on the back of their successful retrieval of the subtle knife, while Lee Scoresby finding John Parry (which occurred in the last episode, cut amidst scenes of the Tower of Angels) comes directly afterwards.

Meanwhile, all of Mary Malone’s material in this episode happens long after the chapter in which Will and Lyra confront Mrs Coulter and Lord Boreal at the latter’s house, but (as with Lee Scoresby in the last episode) has been pushed forward and interspersed with the Will/Lyra adventure.

And two chapters worth of witch-related material has yet to appear, as by this point in the book, they have long since entered the world of Cittàgazze, witnessed the Spectres attacking a convoy, gathered information about this specific threat, seen Ruta Skadi go off with a group of angels, and rescued Will and Lyra from the feral children. Next episode, maybe?

I can understand why these changes have been made, and it’s a good idea to scatter scenes of the supporting cast throughout the “A-plot” of Lyra and Will, but it also means I have to keep skipping back and forth while reading!

The bulk of this episode very much focused on Mrs Coulter, and this was certainly a master class in acting from Ruth Wilson. Having to convey barely-concealed contempt for Lord Boreal (while not being so obvious about it that he’ll notice), process this world’s relative levels of freedom and respect for womankind, stare at Lyra through a monitor with a blend of hunger and desperate hope, and even express a profound distaste for jeans – it all made for a sublime performance.

From her thoughtful gaze at a woman half-ignoring her baby to concentrate on a laptop, to her visible appreciation of a world that Boreal dismisses as “a culture of consumerism, not faith,” to her surprise that woman could run research departments and the sense that Mary Malone (like Lee Scoresby) has managed to unsettle her, there was a depth and subtly of characterization that this show often fails with.

(Though I guess I have to put up a half-hearted protest at Mrs Coulter’s embittered reaction to the sexism in her own world, since… so what? I don’t doubt that it’s true, but it has nothing to do with her motivations or the themes of the trilogy as a whole. Sometimes women are terrible not because the patriarchy crushed their spirit, but because they’re just terrible people – as Mrs Coulter is. Plus, Lyra is eventually going to return to, and live out her life, in this supposedly-terrible world, so maybe don’t be too hard on it if you don’t want your ending to be more depressing than it already is?)

But favourite moment would have to be her delivery of the line: “you failed to tell me they had a knife that could cut between worldSSSSSS.” My writing of the dialogue doesn’t do the performance justice, but her emphasis on the “s” not only conveys her frustration at how things panned out, but also the abject absurdity of the situation. I mean, a knife that can cut between worlds? Who saw that coming?

And she does it with visible tears in her eyes. *chef’s kiss*

As for Boreal… wow, dude was thirsty. Showing off his collection, bragging about how he had achieved his wealth (in the book it’s spycraft; here it’s selling trinkets from his own world), trying to impress her at every opportunity… maybe tone it down a little? Seriously though, that was hilarious, and it’s a great set-up for his eventual fate. The final scene between them, in which Mrs Coulter realizes that she still needs his resources, and the way her entire voice and body language changed as she coaxed him into her latest scheme… have I mentioned that Ruth Wilson is fabulous?

***

Regarding Will and Lyra there’s not much to say; I was very much looking forward to this particular set-piece and I think they did it justice (though I wish we could have seen Will effortlessly slicing through the iron bars of the fence with the knife). The two of them making a plan was cute: from the chalk drawing on the table, to experimenting with the spatial relationship between the two worlds, to the tag-team approach of the house, and Mrs Coulter’s daemon as the spanner in the works – the whole sequence was a gift.

And naturally they spice things up a bit with more action and confrontations; in the book the whole undertaking is pretty straightforward and the children have the upperhand from start to finish (with the tabby cat that follows Will into Cittàgazze having a crucial role), but here Mrs Coulter and Boreal put up a reasonably good fight.  Naturally the best scene is between mother and daughter, in which Lyra insists that she’s nothing like Mrs Coulter – before proceeding to act exactly like her by having Pan attack the golden monkey, just as Mrs Coulter did to her back in her apartment.

So no complaints here, which makes for a nice change!

***

Meanwhile, Mary is having a really weird week. Mrs Coulter is her third bizarre guest in what I think is as many days, though I’m glad the writers found a way to bring these two women face-to-face (as with Lee Scoresby, they never meet in the books).

In many ways they’re both mother-figures to Lyra (kinda bummed she didn’t mention her in her list of people she’d wish to be like when she’s older), but each with very different understandings of who Lyra is.

As it happens, Mary only appears in two (and a bit) chapters of The Subtle Knife, though I understand why they’ve spread out her scenes so as to better integrate her into the flows of the episodes. Yet once again, they’ve done so at the expense of any sense of danger and urgency. In the book, her discussions with the angels take place in a single scene, just after Lord Boreal has arrived to make a very dodgy-sounding offer to Mary and her colleague, after which she leaves the building in disgust and returns by night – being highly disturbed by the new levels of security that question her on her way to her laboratory.

Her discussions with the angels on the monitor are a single conversation, in which they spell out their nature (dark matter), their motivation (vengeance) and her purpose (to play the serpent), after which they give her directions to the window in Oxford, and tell her to destroy the equipment before she goes. She’s also instructed to prepare for a long journey, and she has the presence of mind to rig up a fake ID to get herself through the security measures at the window, pulling off a magnificent bluff by claiming she’s actually her colleague in order to pass more easily (here the guard just mistakes her for Mrs Coulter. I hate it when they take these moments of foresight and cunning from female characters, even at this level of detail).

It’s all so much more foreboding and suspenseful than what plays out here, in which Mary is casually having a chat with her sister when she should be evading the authorities. And they forgot the I Ching!

Ah well. She’s where she needs to be, and there are few things I’m looking forward to more than the sight of her interacting with the mulefa. Do you think we’ll see them this season?

***

And there’s a Magisterium scene. Hooray. Thankfully it’s not that long, and simply points out that rather than publicly deny the existence of the anomaly, they’ve decided to instead bank on people’s fear of the phenomena to draw them closer to the church, and that there’s plenty of in-fighting between them. Someone gets carted off, but I’ve no idea who and I don’t care anyway.

But we’re reminded that the witches have already gone through the rift into the world of Cittàgazze (please tell me we’re getting those chapters next week!) and that Fra Pavel still exists. It’s not his first appearance, but you’ll definitely want to keep your eye on him.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Have I mentioned the opening theme music is good? It’s good.

Mrs Coulter leaves her daemon behind when she goes to see Mary, an ability that is only very lightly hinted at in the book, but foreshadowed more heavily in season one, when Lyra sees the monkey wandering around Mrs Coulter’s apartment by itself. (Though by The Secret Commonwealth, separating from one’s daemon isn’t even that big a deal).

Angelica blaming Will and Lyra for what happened to Tulio makes no sense in this context. In the book, Angelica and her little brother witness Tulio run from the Tower and get attacked by Spectres, then look up to see Will and Lyra watching them from the balcony above. To blame them for his “death” under these circumstances is still an illogical conclusion to draw, but one in which you can at least connect the emotional dots. But here? Tulio’s siblings never see how he was attacked by the Spectres, and certainly never knew that Will and Lyra were in any way involved. Under these circumstances, they just came across Tulio in his undead state, like so many more of the adults that have perished in the city – so why blame Will and Lyra? And having threatened them with: “we will get you”…well, what are they waiting for? They’re right there.

Can Mrs Coulter drive a car? She asked for Boreal’s keys and got to the university all right, so I suppose so.

While reading the book concurrently, I realized that it’s actually better than I initially thought at justifying some of its contrivances. For example, the book clearly depicts John Parry as having a heart defect, which (in hindsight) sets up the fact that Will and Lyra will eventually have to return to their own worlds, being unable to survive for long in another.

Furthermore, on watching this episode I became confused as to how Boreal was moving between Lyra’s Oxford and Will’s Oxford, since the only window we know of in our world (the one that Will came through) led straight to Cittàgazze. This episode makes the rather dodgy assertion that he’s risking the Spectres to move between the two, with Cittàgazze as a type of crossroads, though this makes me wonder how Mary Malone (eventually) ends up in the world of the mulefa when she (like Will) went through the Oxford window that led to Cittàgazze.

But for the first time I noticed this explanation in the book, courtesy of Boreal:

“I know a dozen or so [windows between worlds] but the places they open into have shifted, and that must be due to what Asriel’s done. It seems that we can now pass directly from this world [Will’s Oxford] to our own, and probably to many others too. Previously, there was one world that acted as a sort of crossroads, and all the doorways opened into that. So you can imagine how surprised I was to see you, when I came through today, and how delighted that I could bring you here directly, without the risk of going through Cittagazze… the crossroads.”

The episode side-stepped this explanation, instead showing Boreal and Mrs Coulter passing through the danger of Cittàgazze to get to Will’s Oxford, but without it, I wonder how they’re going to get Mary Malone to the world of the mulefa. Time will tell I suppose…

Lastly, the expository conversation between Boreal and Mrs Coulter that closes the episode is (understandably) cut short, given that there’s so much more of it in the book. But it’s fascinating to see Mrs Coulter gradually drawing together the disparate (but obviously connected) clues between Dust and Spectres, children and adults, the alethiometer and the subtle knife, other worlds and Lyra’s true name, as well as Pullman providing context for what’s happening in Will’s world. As Boreal puts it:

“I heard recently about a profound disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field. The security serves are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what’s going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds. …there is some research being done into Dust. Oh yes, they know it here as well. There is a team in this very city working on it. And another thing: there was a man who disappeared ten or twelve years ago, in the north, and the security serves think he was in possession of some knowledge they badly need – specifically, the location of a doorway between the worlds… when this new disturbance began, they set out to look for this man.”

This is the reason why the search for Will’s father suddenly heated up, and it’s given me new appreciation for the books. Pullman doesn’t go into specifics, and he doesn’t divulge what he doesn’t need to, but there is a firm framework that’s been constructed around and behind the immediate story, that holds up better than I remembered. The show is adding a few more little details, such as a connection between Boreal and the authorities that are chasing Will, but it’s already all there in the book.

Two more things from the book I’m surprised didn’t make it to the screen: in the last episode, Lee Scoresby asks for John Parry’s word to keep Lyra safe, suggesting that he swear on whatever it was that made him reject the love of a witch. This is a good reminder of that particular plot-point, and its omission was odd considering how important it’s going to be later (if memory serves, the witch in question was in the first episode of this season, right?)

At this point the book also confirms that some adults (Coulter’s bodyguards, who don’t appear here) HAVE gone through the process of intercision and become mindless servants as a result; which certainly sheds more light on the staff at Bolvangar. Like I said, Pullman is more careful in providing answers than I had previously given him credit for.