WiC Watches: His Dark Materials
By Dan Selcke
Image: His Dark Materials/HBO
Episode 6: “The Daemon-Cages”
For the first time, an episode of His Dark Materials actually cuts away material from the books rather than adds on unneeded scenes. I suppose Lyra’s time at Bolvangar was interesting and action-packed enough to be adapted more or less as is.
This was the best episode of the show so far. I still don’t see why they need to be a full hour long, but we got a complete tale here. Lyra sees the daemon cages, organizes the kids from the inside, blows up the intercision machine, has a reckoning with Mrs. Coulter, and Iorek Byrnison kills some guys. Everything moved along, and the prison break scene was a lot fun.
But…I feel like this show kind of has an upper limit on how good it can be. Once again, I don’t feel like it’s selling the most intriguing ideas. Lyra’s close encounter with the intercision machine is terrifying — the scientists at Bolvargar are forcibly shoving a young child into a box while telling themselves it’s for the good of humanity; it’s pretty impossible for that not to be chilling. But I don’t think the show has driven home how much daemons mean to the children, and what an unforgivably violative act it is to separate them.
“A life without Pan would not be a better life,” Lyra tells Mrs. Coulter after she’s rescued from the procedure. She can say that, but why do the relationships between daemons and people feel so lukewarm? Why don’t Lyra and Pan leap into each other’s arms the moment they’re set free? Why isn’t a bigger deal made when the one scientist man-handles Pan, breaking a sacred taboo? Some of it comes down to the producers not focusing on the right things, and some of it comes down to the acting of the kids on the show, who just…aren’t that good.
The actors who most effectively underlined the unnatural quality of humans without daemon were the ones playing the nurses. These are adults who have had their dæmons cut away. One nurse stares blankly into space as the scientists perform the severing operation on a young girl. Later, a nurse absentmindedly intones the name of her almost-forgotten daemon, smiling blankly, as Lyra scurries by.
Photo: Morfydd Clark in His Dark Materials.. Courtesy of Alex Bailey/HBO
That’s creepy. That’s what I’m talking about. And that’s just not what I’m getting from the kids, including Dafne Keen. It’s not their fault; they’re learning and they’re doing their best. But at this point it’s pretty clear to me that the show can only be so good going on like this. I don’t see it ever becoming great.
I got a similar feeling when Lyra tells Roger that she’s going to go do “what I’m best at: cause some chaos.” Well, that’s certainly a thing Lyra would say, and I loved the special effects as the intercision machine collapsed in on itself, but I just didn’t feel Lyra’s conviction the way I need to. The show isn’t connecting at an important level.
As always, there’s was lots to like about the episode. Ruth Wilson killed it during Mrs. Coulter’s scene with Lyra, giving us some insight into why the Magisterium is so obsessed with Dust. They think it the origin of sin, something that will prove very important thematically as the story continues. And I liked how Coulter and the scientists thought they were doing good work at Bolvangar; these aren’t cookie cutter villains, but people with misplaced convictions, which is far scarier.
My favorite scene was the last one, where cliff ghasts attacked our heroes in Lee Scoresby’s balloon. Director Euros Lyn created some effectively creepy moments as Lee and Iorek popped their heads out of the balloon only to just miss the ghasts creeping around it. And that cliffhanger, with Lyra falling out the basket, is a hell of a way to end the episode!
Two to go. Although I enjoyed the jail break sequence, you could tell they cut some potentially expensive stuff from the book, where the children make a run for it into the snowy north before meeting the Gyptians. I suspect they’re saving money so they can feature a bunch of CGI talking polar bears in the final two episodes, and I’m just fine with that.