Review: His Dark Materials Episode 204, “Tower of the Angels”

“Tower of the Angels” gives us some quality action, some excellent fantasy nonsense with the subtle knife, and some so-so middle scenes.

In “Tower of the Angels,” Will and Lyra (specifically Will) finally get their hands on the subtle knife, the sharpest weapon known to man, angel or otherwise. Anyone familiar with Philip Pullman’s books has probably been looking forward to this for awhile.

The parts with the knife were the best bit of the episode. “Tower of the Angels” does a great job of introducing this key item, spending a lot of time in the titular tower teaching Will just what it is and how to use it. In fact, the script is so methodical about explaining everything — the one edge is sharper than anything else in existence, the other can cut clear through dimensional walls — that it could have come off as boring. But directors Jack Thorne and Namsi Khan crank up the atmosphere in these scenes, giving us stirring music over well-edited sequences where Will learns to cut through the fabric of reality itself, all of it tied together with some eye-catching special effects.

In short, the episode succeeds where it matters, namely in the sections with Lyra and Will heading into the Tower to get the knife. I also liked Will’s scrap with the dingus who has the knife before him, and was pleased to see that the show followed through on the bit from the books where he lobs off a couple of Will’s fingers, marking him as the bearer of the knife. The His Dark Materials novels were always a little weird in that, while you’re young adult books, they nonetheless have some challenging, icky-sticky material. I feared the show might wimp out and just give Will a scar or something. I’m happy to be wrong.

The only thing I didn’t like about the knife was the cheesy “in the beginning” explainer about it at the top of the episode. Later, Jopari (Andrew Scott) delivers some exposition about it to Lee, and that felt much more natural.

The bit where Pan cuddled up to Will while he was trying to use the knife was cute, too. The show has been hit and miss when it tries to sell how important dæmons are to people in this world, but as Lyra jaw dropped watching this interaction, I got it: this is something that doesn’t normally happen.

Also, good lord, how adorable was Pan? I don’t know what form he’s taking exactly but I want a plushie of it.

So the stuff in the Tower of the Angels was solid. The rest of the episode was just fine. I didn’t love how the episode cross-cut between Will and Lyra figuring a way into the Tower and Mary Malone meeting with Lord Boreal back in our world; it made it harder to pay attention to either story and I would have preferred they just play both of these stories straight, saving the focus for Will and Lyra.

Mary makes some progress following Lyra’s instructions and getting her computer to talk to Dust, although as I recall from the books, it only communicates with her through text, where here it talks. I didn’t like that; it feels like they think we’re too dumb to read. But I did enjoy the Dust telling Mary that they were Angels, which is good and trippy, and that they intervened in human evolution for “vengeance.” Now that’s foreboding.

And then we have Lee Scoresby finally finding Stanislaus Grumman, aka Jopari, aka Andrew Scott from Fleabag. These scenes are…fine at best. Scott brings some gravitas to pretty much anything he’s in, and I liked him talking about the family he left behind in another world; it’s not too hard to connect the dots and link him up with Will.

But I just don’t think Lin-Manuel Miranda works as Lee. For example, there’s this bit where Lee is unconvinced of Jopari’s shamanistic powers so Jopari gives him something that belonged to Lee’s mother. It’s supposed to be a powerful moment, but Miranda tosses it off like it means nothing. (It’s not all his fault; while the scenes in the Tower of the Angels are dripping with atmosphere, there’s none here; we could have used some swelling music and some close-ups.) He just doesn’t sell me on this guy.

The episode ends with the witches wrecking some Magesterium ships as they enter the gate, which looks quite cool but strikes me as an odd place to finish; I think the show thinks we’re more invested in the witches’ story than we are. They tend to talk in fantasy cliches when they meet up and I’m always waiting for their scenes to end so we can get back to Will, Lyra, Mary or Mrs. Coulter. Still, this was pretty solid stuff.

Episode Grade: B

His Dark Bullet Points

• That weird back-handed compliment Lord Boreal: “I’ve always admired women with a good work ethic.” Mary’s face is like, “The f**k did he just say to me?”
• I like the running theme of Will being right on the edge of being able to see the Spectres. It’s tense. They make their strongest showing this episode, draining the guy who stole the knife before it found Will.

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