His Dark Materials: The Botanic Gardens

And we’re done. All things considered, this was a decent ending to a fairly by-the-numbers adaptation of one of my favourite book trilogies, but at every turn it seemed to lack the vision of Pullman’s work. The show hit all the major plot-points, had a solid cast who knew what they were doing, featured relatively good visual design (costumes, set design, cinematography, etc) and seemed to understand the underlying themes – but there was simply no X-factor to the proceedings; no passion, no conviction.

In a way, this is because so much of the His Dark Materials trilogy is unfilmable. Not only is it well-nigh impossible to demonstrate the profound bond between a daemon and a human being without the insight that text can provide, but because ultimately the trilogy in its entirety is a theological mystery that contains an alternative spiritual worldview to Christianity and is solved through careful thought, research and discovery by its myriad of characters.

That naturally doesn’t translate well to a visual medium, best seen in the fact that the story’s emotional climax isn’t a no-holds-barred CGI battle between two massive opposing forces, but the sexual awakening of two preadolescents.

Because of that, this episode in particular feels more like an epilogue than a culmination of all the plot-threads that the show has been weaving for the past three seasons, the physical battle having already been won in the previous episode. It’s an unconventional ending to a deeply unconventional story, one that’s broken plenty of the rules of narrative structure along the way (there, we don’t even get a clear answer regarding who won the battle between Asriel and Metatron’s forces – only that the Magisterium’s power in Lyra’s world was weakened long after the fact).

This “wind-down” episode encompasses the last seven book chapters, yet given the stakes of the story as-written thus far, it’s tasked with the need to reestablish the central narrative issue: Dust is flowing out of the world and somehow our main characters must find a way to stop it.

His Dark Materials: The Clouded Mountain

It’s the penultimate episode, and unsurprisingly it has the sacrifice of Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter (along with their daemons) as its centrepiece, though it also tries to dramatize some of the Final Battle that the entire show has been leading up to, with mixed results.

The problem is that in the books, Pullman himself had zero interest in exploring the physical outcome of this war. Lyra and Will ran across the battlefield in search of their daemons, and that’s all we ever see of it. The focus is instead on the defeat of Metatron and the (deliberately) anticlimactic death of the Authority.

But that doesn’t fly in a visual adaptation, especially since we’ve spent the better part of this season watching the multitude of soldiers in Asriel’s camp preparing for battle. The audience expects to see them actually fight.  

So with the Clouded Mountain approaching in the sky above Asriel’s encampment, his forces get ready for the inevitable conflict. There’s lots of hustling and bustling, witches hover in the sky above, Ogunwe hugs his daughters (aww), and Xaphania lays out the stakes, which are glaringly obvious for anyone that’s been paying the slightest bit of attention thus far: “The Clouded Mountain draws closer.  The way forward now depends on Lyra. If Eve survives the Fall once more, all worlds will be liberated. But if Metatron can control the children or their daemons, the future is his forever.”

Thanks for that.

His Dark Materials: The Abyss

    We’re on the homestretch now.

With this episode, many of screenwriter Jack Thorne’s choices in adapting Pullman’s work have become clearer, particularly in the cause/effect nature of his original story additions. I’m speaking specifically of what exactly happened to Alarbus, the intercision device, and Metatron reaching down from the sky with a beam of heavenly light to detonate the bomb.

As Mrs Coulter very helpfully spells out for us, Metatron was responsible for the bomb going off, and did so in retaliation for Asriel’s “war crimes.” It’s a continuation of the scene between Ogunwe and Ruta of a few episodes ago, in which they pondered whether the angels would continue to stand with Asriel if they found out what he’d done to Alarbus.

Their question isn’t exactly answered here (since the angels on Asriel’s side still aren’t aware of what went on behind closed doors) but that basic idea is still carried into this episode, with Mrs Coulter drawing that correlation between Asriel’s treatment of Alarbus and Metatron’s decision to make bomb go kablooey.

His Dark Materials: No Way Out

Okay, so I have to correct two things from prior episode reviews. One is that Lord Asriel didn’t murder that angel after all, he apparently just sort of forcibly sent him back to the Authority’s throne room in order to deliver a message. The other is that the mulefa do utilize the oily seedpods to roll around on, even if the designers couldn’t find a way to replicate the diamond-shaped skeleton described in the book.

So that’s something of a relief, even though it’s unclear how exactly the mulefa are using the seedpods. You’d still need some sort of opposable claw to use as an axel, which doesn’t appear to be the case here – instead, they’re using seedpods as a form of roller skates. I’m not sure that looks better than what Pullman described in writing, but the episode I watched unfortunately didn’t come with any subtitles, which presumably would have helped explain the symbiotic relationship between the creatures, the pods, and the trees.

His Dark Materials: Lyra and Her Death

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.

His Dark Materials: The Intention Craft

Three episodes in and we’re nearly halfway through the book! Obviously this show plans on being extremely back-heavy, as this particular episode neatly covers only three chapters: one in which Will and Lyra plan their next move, one in which Iorek helps to reforge the subtle knife, and one in which Mrs Coulter is captured by Lord Asriel and promptly escapes onboard an intention craft.

Mary still hasn’t reached the mulefa yet (she’s already spent two chapters with them in the book) but it looks like we’re finally getting some forward momentum on that front, along with some extra bits and pieces courtesy of Jack Thorne.

His Dark Materials: The Break

Looking over this review, it strikes me that this entire deep-dive into the show is more of an excuse to ponder both the adaptation and the books upon which it’s based, particularly in regards to Pullman’s prose and intentions and writing style.

This suits me just fine, for – as has been frequently mentioned – the His Dark Materials trilogy was a formative part of my late childhood, to the point where I based at least half of my thesis on its philosophical/metaphysical underpinnings. Watching this show is as good an excuse as any to delve back into the aspects of the story that fascinated me as a child, not to mention my general interest in the adaptation process and the structure of stories.

Watching this episode, it became apparent to me that although this epic is far too dense and complex to be adapted coherently into a film (as the 2007 attempt demonstrated) it also desperately requires a film’s budget. Even today, with the ability to render realistic armoured bears and shape-shifting daemons, you can see certain limitations in the way the story is presented.

For example, it’s clear that the dragonflies of the Gallivespians have been omitted for budgetary reasons, likewise the appearance of the angels from barely-visible impressions in the air to actors in robes and gold/silver face-paint. Lord Asriel’s sprawling adamant fortress, made up of towers and battlements and fortifications, is now a standard army basecamp.

Even the little things, like the fact that Mrs Coulter’s hiding place has been transposed from a cave in the Himalayas to a cottage on the Welsh coast, all point to BBC accountants desperately trying to keep finances at a reasonable level. 

I understand, I do, but it’s a shame that something of such immense imagination and scope as Pullman’s vision has to be pared down in this way. And sometimes it leads to unfortunate plot-holes – in rereading The Amber Spyglass along with the progression of the episodes, I was reminded that Will instructs Balthamos to take the form of a daemon so that he can pass through Lyra’s world without attracting any attention. Recall that to those living in her world, a person without a daemon would be like wandering around without a head – a source of terror and disgust.

The show skips all that, to the point where Will can overcome Iorek sans a daemon in full view of an entire village without comment. It chips away at the integrity of the world-building, though I’ve no doubt that the decision was due to cost cutting.

His Dark Material: The Enchanted Sleeper

Yes, I’ve at last made time for the third and final season of His Dark Materials, adapted from the novel The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.

In all honesty, this book is not my favourite of the trilogy, and came as something of a disappointment after being utterly transported by Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife. As a thirteen-year-old, I had never read anything like them before. They were formative in teaching me that fantasy didn’t have to be set in Ye Old Medieval England. The metaphysical mysteries, such as the nature of Dust and the daemons, were captivating.

It is a rare thing to have been as swept up in a story and its implications as I was with those books, and they’re the type of story that fills any would-be writer with a kind of despair, as you know you’ll never write anything half as good. The way Pullman linked his own concepts (the daemons, the alethiometer) with the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, and with the universal human experience of gaining consciousness, growing up and becoming an adult was – and still is – awe-inspiring to me.

Yet here, that story gives way to a treatise on Pullman’s personal outlook on life – not one that I found offensive, but which wasn’t presented in the text in a way I found convincing. I wasn’t hugely moved by the love story between Lyra and Will (I remember thinking on my first read: “oh, we’re going there”) and that romantic attraction is what saved the entire multiverse didn’t mean much to my aromantic soul.

Generally speaking, stories in which a hero journeys down into the underworld don’t pique my interest (hot take: you’ve read one katabasis, you’ve read them all) and to this day I’m rather incredulous that the entirety of Lord Asriel’s physical assault on the Kingdom of Heaven happens off-page in favour of Mary Malone telling the protagonists about her sexual awakening. We get absolutely nothing on how the actual war panned out (yes, you could argue that an Anti-Climax Climax was the point, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing).

A lot of the material seemed completely superfluous (the Gallivespians, Lyra speaking with her Death), so many of the enticing philosophical questions that were raised didn’t feel like they were answered in any satisfying way (did we ever get a clear answer on what the Spectres were or why they attacked adults the way they did?) and a number of intriguing set-ups ended up going nowhere (it was repeatedly stated that Asriel couldn’t win the war without the help of the subtle knife, and Serafina is given fuck-all to do).

There was a chance that a television adaption could have alleviated some of these issues, but so far I’ve found this a rather toothless and over-explanatory take on the source material. Not bad by any means, but straightforward, workmanlike and diligent in ticking the boxes of Pullman’s story without exploring or deepening the text in any meaningful way. It could be a lot worse, but you only have to look at its (lack of) reception to realize it clearly hasn’t made that much of a splash.

Still, we’ve still got one more season to go, and having seen it through this far, I’ve no intentions of stopping now.

His Dark Materials: Æsahættr

 That was… not great. And yet, it’s pretty obvious that Covid-19 played its part in why this episode felt incredibly creaky and disjointed (though once again, the writers and directors decide against adding anything that could even remotely be construed as emotionally urgent – the only reasonably affecting thing was Lee Scoresby’s death, and that was entirely down to Lin Manual Miranda).

So I’m inclined to give them a bit of a pass, even though this episode was full of choppy editing and weird pacing. Some of the scenes even had characters standing awkwardly at the required three-feet distance when they should have logically moved closer to one another. Hey, it is what it is.

His Dark Materials: Malice

This was very much a penultimate episode, with almost all the characters making an appearance, and an underlying sense of things coming to a head. (Though it does make me wonder where the Asriel-centric episode would have been placed had it been completed in time).

Mary is exploring Cittàgazze, so is Mrs Coulter and Lord Boreal, Lee and John Parry have also crossed through the doorway into that world, and Lyra and Will are joined by Serafina and the other witches, who take them up into the hills (in the book it’s because that’s where the alethiometer is directing them. Here…I guess they’re just trying to reach higher ground?)

All the strands are coming together…

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!

His Dark Materials: Tower of the Angels

Argh, I’m running behind on these episodes…

If last week was about looking for things, this week was about finding them: Will and Lyra find the subtle knife (according to the book, it doesn’t have capitals), Lee Scoresby finds Stanislaus Grumman, a.k.a. Jopari, a.k.a. John Parry, Will’s father, and Mary Malone finds a way to communicate directly with the shadow particles...

His Dark Materials: The Cave

This episode, as well as the chapters they’re based on, are all about intel gathering. As Lyra goes to a natural history museum and a nearby college to learn more about this world’s understanding of Dust, Will contacts the family lawyer and learns that his paternal grandparents are living in Oxford.

There are some minor changes between this material and the book, but some of Jack Thorpe’s earlier creative decisions are beginning to pay off. Most of them involve Lord Boreal, who has emerged as an active cohort of Mrs Coulter, revealed last season as a man who had access to the windows across dimensions.

At the time it felt like padding, but now we can see how it fits into the wider narrative: Pullman doesn’t bother to explain any of Lord Boreal's movements or abilities in the book – he coincidentally spots Lyra at the museum and she vaguely recognizes him from the cocktail party way back in Northern Lights.

No spoilers, but his part to play is very minor and we get no understanding whatsoever as to how he managed to move from one world to the next. Here, we know that he’s also been using the window that Lyra and Will have accessed (and presumably, several more) making it far less of a coincidence that he would be at the right time and place to spot them emerging from the traffic island into the streets of Will’s Oxford.

He’s obviously able to recognize Lyra, but Thorpe has also written him as the man behind the pursuit of John Parry’s letters, giving the children a common enemy and providing linkage between their parallel quests. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but well played Jack Thorpe. It makes me wonder if some of his other additions (the witch politics, the Magisterium machinations) will have a greater narrative purpose than just filling in time.

His Dark Materials: The City of Magpies

We’re back with the second season of His Dark Materials, which (I’m safely assuming) covers the entirety of The Subtle Knife, the middle book of the trilogy. I’m hoping for an uptick in quality, if not simply because this is brand new material to be adapted, and the series no longer has to sit in the shadow of the 2007 film. (Not that the film was any good, but there was still a sense of contrast/compare at work).

I’ll start with an unpopular opinion: The Subtle Knife is actually my favourite book of the three, though I couldn’t really tell you why. There is some fair criticism that the narrative shifted from Lyra to Will Parry as the story’s protagonist, and I can fully understand why this would be so infuriating, especially after how vividly she was brought to life in Northern Lights.

And yet… I actually prefer the introspective Will to the more rambunctious Lyra, even if that’s purely down to who I relate to more. (That said, the problem of gender-perspective becomes even more egregious in The Amber Spyglass, in which Lyra spends the first few chapters as an unconscious damsel in distress).

The Subtle Knife also taught me that not every plot-point has to be explained, whether it’s John Parry inexplicably being in possession Lee Scoresby’s ring or the unexplained images on the upper right-hand corner of each page (they denote what world the action is currently taking place in, but the reader has to figure that out for themselves), and rendered so many extraordinary landscapes (the streets of Cittàgazze) and heart-stopping sequences (Will and Lyra using the knife to move between worlds in the attempt to steal back her alethiometer).

Reading it for the first time was like flying; I’ll never forget how utterly riveting and immersive it was. Even the tiniest of thought-provoking details, like Lyra entering the museum and seeing the sleigh that took her to Bolvangar or Will pondering the linked etymology between amber and electricity stayed with me for years.

Season two kicks off with a gathering of forces, setting up the three major strands of the episode: Lyra and Will meeting in Cittàgazze, Lee Scoresby accompanying Serafina to the witch enclave, and Mrs Coulter undergoing her usual machinations onboard a Magisterium vessel. So, let’s go through them in order:

His Dark Materials: Betrayal

Here we go, the final chapter of the first season, which not only completes the first book in the trilogy, but also manages half the first chapter of the second. And what do you know, the show finally finds its groove in its last moments.

What immediately caught my attention was the echo of the Master of Jordan College's words in the "previously on" segment, about how Lyra will suffer a betrayal but that she will be the betrayer. When I read this book for the first time at age thirteen, I assumed (as this show apparently does) that Lyra unwittingly taking Roger to his doom at Lord Asriel's hands was the betrayal the prophecy referred to.

Actually it isn't, as Pullman makes very clear in The Amber Spyglass when Lyra... okay, I won't give it away for those that don't know/have forgotten; suffice to say the betrayal is yet to come, and the eventual reveal never worked for me anyway, simply because I believed the betrayal had already taken place.

And don't say that "leading Roger to his death wasn't a betrayal because it wasn't Lyra's fault", because the real betrayal certainly takes liberties with the meaning of the word as well. But we'll get to that when it actually happens.

His Dark Materials: The Fight to the Death

We're getting there, only one more to go!

The episodes in the latter half of this season have fallen pretty neatly into book chapters: the last dealt with Bolvangar, this is Svalbard, and clearly the finale will focus on Asriel (as that closing scene clearly depicted, but we'll get to that).

His Dark Materials: The Daemon-Cages

Whew. Okay, I screamed all my frustration into the void and posted it on the internet, so now it's time to get back to His Dark Materials, which so far has been a reasonably faithful but oddly bloodless adaptation that's squandering its premise and talent with very bland dialogue and set-pieces, as well as a lack of internal consistency (we'll get to that).

This is the Bolvangar episode, in which Lyra is taken captive by the Oblation Board and finds a way to stall for time in the knowledge that the gyptians and Iorek are on their way - making several horrific discoveries as she does so.

His Dark Materials: The Lost Boy

There are actually two lost boys in this episode, though the fact the episode title only references one is a pretty damning indicator of the fact that neither has anything to do with the other.

Yes, this is the episode in which Will Parry, the trilogy's deuteragonist, is properly introduced - a whole book before he's due to turn up if you're reading your way through this story.

And honestly, I can understand why this decision was made. Given that they're working with child actors, it makes sense to get them into the proceedings early before their growth spurts start, and it's clear the screenwriter is trying to build up dual journeys taken by the two children, journeys that will culminate with their meeting in Cittàgazze.

(Of course, by that logic Will should have appeared from the very first episode, but there simply isn't enough material for that to have happened. In The Subtle Knife, he's met Lyra by the middle of the first chapter).

His Dark Materials: Armour

I'm a week behind, with another episode having already aired, but - Lee Scoresby has arrived! Iorek Byrnison has arrived! Serafina Pekkala... has been mentioned! Let's face it, things don't get cracking until these three turn up.

It opens with Lee and his daemon Hester singing with each other on his balloon, and it's just magical. Right there they manage to capture the bond between human and daemon in a way that the previous episodes just couldn't.

And without missing a beat, they dive straight into the exposition, which lands with a heavy clunk. You know, I think this scene will pretty much sum up the show in its entirety: moments of true transcendence side-by-side with leaden info-dumps.

But Lin Manuel Miranda has spoken about what a big fan he is of Pullman's trilogy, and he certainly brings an energy and liveliness to the project that's been missing so far. A bar scene has him fighting with locals while Hester shouts out advice and instructions (which again, portrays the human/daemon bond better than anything we've seen so far) and his motivation grants him a little subplot in which he goes searching for Iorek's armour (even if it doesn't go anywhere).

Though they're characterizing him as a bit more of a con-artist this time around, even a pick-pocket. Eh, I suppose it's not that much of a stretch from what appears in the book.

His Dark Materials: The Spies

This was very much a transition episode, moving Lyra from Mrs Coulter's sphere of influence to the safety of the gyptians (with the promise of the north on the horizon), but it also made me realize something about my reading experience with Philip Pullman's trilogy, and why I'm not totally blown away by this adaptation.

So much of the joy of reading Northern Lights is in the way Pullman tells the story, his choice of prose and careful parsing of information, and those are things that any television adaptation cannot hope to capture. More than that, my enjoyment of the books is an intellectual joy rather than an emotional one.

I don't have a vested interest in Lyra or any of her relationships, rather it was always the slow uncovering of the theological mysteries Pullman had woven and the rich settings in which it all took place that engrossed me. I'm re-reading the books for the first time in years, and I just want to pore over all the strange little details and clever turns of phrase.

It was in this episode, when I saw the gyptian canal boats which were just your standard canal boats that I realized this just isn't going to capture that indefinable aesthetic Pullman crafts.

And that's okay. The books are unique in ways that are so difficult to describe (not helped by the fact they were incredibly formative texts for me) that I knew going in that I should just enjoy the ride.