Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 07:34:40 PM

Login with username, password and session length

His Dark Materials (BBC)

Started by kalowski, July 20, 2019, 09:35:24 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

wooders1978

Quote from: studpuppet on November 26, 2019, 12:24:21 PM

*It also saves on the CGI bill, as does hiding a polar bear around a corner apparently.

Yep, did they really think we wouldn't cop that? I know it's a kids show but give em some credit

Shoulders?-Stomach!

The show has put Coulter's personality and motivations more to the fore than I expected, as in the book she is largely aloof, conceited, cold and sadistic, but not this stroppy little ragepot.

touchingcloth

Quote from: studpuppet on November 26, 2019, 12:24:21 PM
Not necessarily daemon-free though. They're supposed to be an extension the person themselves, so some would have smaller animals or even insects that would reflect their personalities. Nefarious types with something to hide might well keep theirs under their clothes to conceal their thoughts?* I was wondering though, whether it was a form of 'nominative' determinism, as all the Magisterium guards had guard dogs as their daemons.

*It also saves on the CGI bill, as does hiding a polar bear around a corner apparently.

It is nominative determinism, or vocational determinism. Or racial determinism. The books talk about how it's common for servants and housekeepers to have appropriately loyal dogs as daemons, ne'er do wells to have daemons, Gyptians to have birds as they're more practical for life aboard a boat.


touchingcloth

Ha, yes, hence "common to have".

mjwilson

Quote from: touchingcloth on November 24, 2019, 09:12:35 PM
I enjoyed it, but not so much the bear. Iorek works well in the books, but I just don't think it's possible to have an onscreen talking polar bear that isn't really distracting and shit.

I don't think the bear looked any sillier than the seagull.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: studpuppet on November 26, 2019, 12:24:21 PM
Not necessarily daemon-free though. They're supposed to be an extension the person themselves, so some would have smaller animals or even insects that would reflect their personalities. Nefarious types with something to hide might well keep theirs under their clothes to conceal their thoughts?* I was wondering though, whether it was a form of 'nominative' determinism, as all the Magisterium guards had guard dogs as their daemons.

*It also saves on the CGI bill, as does hiding a polar bear around a corner apparently.

No, but it's a bit distracting that the named characters have their daemons wandering around freely while everyone else hides theirs away, and I can understand why people unfamiliar with the books are then confused by the whole issue of daemons.

It's also worth pointing out that in the second, very good, part of the sequel trilogy there's a lot of focus on how people's daemons are visible and seen as a part of them, that it's very strange for people's daemons not to be seen.

The lack of them here is clearly just a CGI budget thing and as I said, how hard would it be and how much would it cost just to have a few tame animals on hand to hang around in crowd scenes, other than the odd dog which is all we've got so far?

As for the, um, anthropomorphic determinism thing, a settled daemon does reflect its human's personality, but while I don't remember in detail how much Pullman talks about this in the books I do know that there's a lot of discussion of how symbols on the alethiometer can have different meanings and interpretations and indeed this matter of what's going on under the surface is a big theme in the books, so don't judge a person by their daemon I guess.

There are loads of "what would your daemon be?" quizzes online. The New Statesman has one, bizarrely. Told me I'd have a scarlet macaw.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on November 26, 2019, 04:59:27 PM
The show has put Coulter's personality and motivations more to the fore than I expected, as in the book she is largely aloof, conceited, cold and sadistic, but not this stroppy little ragepot.

Was she this much of a "MWAHAHAHA I AM EVIL" card-carrying villain in the book? I forget.

Still watching this for some reason.

Dex Sawash


Someone please do a very detailed "what is your daemon" quiz where the result is always twat or wanker

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Blue Jam on November 27, 2019, 12:21:32 PM


Still watching this for some reason.

I'm afriad that fucking monkey will come for me if I stop

kalowski

Quote from: Blue Jam on November 27, 2019, 12:21:32 PM
Was she this much of a "MWAHAHAHA I AM EVIL" card-carrying villain in the book? I forget.

Still watching this for some reason.
She's a lot sexier than I ever imagined when reading the book.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

She was prim and tightly self controlled, enigmatic in the book rather than this shade throwing pout per second sasspot.

Thursday

Quote from: kalowski on November 27, 2019, 09:50:58 PM
She's a lot sexier than I ever imagined when reading the book.

I dunno, she was definitely sexy in the books though, Lyra was very much bewitched and charmed by her.

Johnny Yesno

I thought episode 4 was the best yet, in part because the flow of the story wasn't upset by scenes of Boreal travelling between worlds. I really think the decision to include this was a mistake.

Another criticism I would level is regarding the offer of a baptism made by Mrs Coulter to Iofur Raknison (voiced by Peter Serafinapekkalawitch, I noticed). I thought at the time that it didn't sit right but it was only discussing it with a work colleague, who remembers the books better than I do, that I realised why that was.

She pointed out that in the book, Iofur wanted a daemon so badly that he carried a doll around, and that it was this desire that Mrs Coulter exploited to get his help. This is a much grander idea with deeper allegorical power akin to the characters in The Wizard of Oz seeking a brain/heart/courage. Iofur is motivated by more than mere greed, and becoming an official member of the gang seems trivial by comparison. It also raises the disturbing question about how Mrs Coulter is able to make such an offer.

NoSleep

Well, she must be a witch, as, we now know that witches can separate from their daemons.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: NoSleep on November 30, 2019, 01:23:41 PM
Well, she must be a witch, as, we now know that witches can separate from their daemons.

Being careful not to spoiler, that's one possible explanation given what we know so far in the book. But in this series, she can offer a baptism into the Magisterium because she works for the Magisterium. No mystery there.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what they mean by 'baptism'.

NoSleep

I've never read the books, so I'm just going by what has been seen by everyone in the TV series. Coulter's daemon can move a distance from her, and this week we discovered this is something witches can do. It's something they want us to assume is, at least, a possibility (we know little about witches aside from this).

Thursday

Suddenly I'm conscious of not wanting to be like one of those ASOIAF readers who couldn't help themselves hinting at where things were going to go, in the early seasons of Game of Thrones.

I'd had some assumed this would all be book readers in the thread, so it's a difficult balance so you do just want to compare it all the time rather than just take it for what it is.

NoSleep

That hasn't happened here, with regard to this point.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on November 30, 2019, 10:17:56 AM
Another criticism I would level is regarding the offer of a baptism made by Mrs Coulter to Iofur Raknison (voiced by Peter Serafinapekkalawitch, I noticed). I thought at the time that it didn't sit right but it was only discussing it with a work colleague, who remembers the books better than I do, that I realised why that was.

She pointed out that in the book, Iofur wanted a daemon so badly that he carried a doll around, and that it was this desire that Mrs Coulter exploited to get his help. This is a much grander idea with deeper allegorical power akin to the characters in The Wizard of Oz seeking a brain/heart/courage. Iofur is motivated by more than mere greed, and becoming an official member of the gang seems trivial by comparison. It also raises the disturbing question about how Mrs Coulter is able to make such an offer.

Good point and another one on the list of ways they've botched the daemon issue. I thought otherwise that the scene was an effectively atmospheric one (allowing for the heavyhanded way they have the bears hising behind scenery as much as possible), but "I want a baptism" is one of the lamer villain motivations I've heard.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: NoSleep on November 30, 2019, 07:28:06 PM
That hasn't happened here, with regard to this point.

That's good to know. Perhaps I should start using white text when making future comparisons to be on the safe side.

Piggyoioi

Havent read the books, but I like this. Cool world building, a little confusing times but it seems like it has depth. Thank god the child actress is decent, that would be a dealbreaker. Best thing on the BBC in a long while,

touchingcloth


Johnny Yesno


studpuppet


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Other than some more lazy babying with the exposition fed into peripheral characters dialogue, I thought that was a really good episode.

It really brought back the very first time I read the book, this is the point where it turned really exciting.

Some beautifully shot moments too, such as the mum running her fingers along the wood.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Maybe I've just got politics on the mind but wasn't there some rather pointed nod towards 'the many not the few' in the 'On Next Week's Episode' bit?

Ja'moke

Definitely the best episode so far and surprisingly dark for a tea-time family fantasy drama.

MiddleRabbit

I'm rapidly losing patience with it to be honest.  It looks nice, apart from the general lack of daemons which doesn't normally bother me too much, but tonight's episode, which had all the Gyptians immediately clocking the absence of Billy's daemon was ridiculous because we've barely seen most people's.

Half the time it focused on languid mood establishing shots of Will's mother that evidently they don't have the time for because the other half of the time the characters are laying out chunks of exposition.  The part where Iorek's telling Lyra that bears can't be tricked is as good an example of that as anything.  In the books, he shows her by getting her to try to feint and hit him, which she can't because a feint is a form of lying.  The books show us, the television series tells us all about it.  It's the first rule of writing fiction and this is practically a guidebook on how not to do it.

Finding Billy minus Ratter lost a lot of impact because he was just a zombie, rather than a frightened little kid frantically hoping that he could find his daemon. 

Farder Coram asking Lyra if she just wanted to investigate "...on a whim" when he knew she'd read the aleithiometer was similarly bollocks because he's already said - including in the recap - that Lyra and her aleithiometer are more useful than any soldier.  No, she wasn't going on a fucking whim, she was going because the aleithiometer had guided her towards it.  There isn't even internal logic within a character.

Other than that, the casting is fucking woeful.  Him out of Hamilton stinks as Lee Scoresby, James Cosmo as Farder Coram - apart from being having to churn out crap like I've just mentioned was dreadful with Serafina the witch, The bloke who plays John Faa isn't convincing in the slightest.  Whatshername who's Mrs Coulter's alright, but as she wasn't in it at all, it was a problem for me.

So no, I found it really irritating.  Probably I'm carrying too much baggage from really enjoying the books but I thought the film was better than this twaddle.  Appalling writing, shitty casting and cheap manipulation through mood setting and music.  As far as film making and, especially, story telling goes, it's a disaster.

touchingcloth

I'm half convinced about including Will at this early stage. He and his mum were well cast and it feels like it's a adding a point of interest for the TV audience. That said, Will's introduction in the book sticks with me all these years after I first read it. It's a shame that intro won't be realised on screen, and I hope the knife doesn't suffer a similar earlier unveiling.