His Dark Materials

[AllGoodDogs]

New BBC adaptation, looks so good, can't wait trailer here -

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10162256439035553&id=683285552&sfnsn=mo

Wildcat too.

Finally caught up and I loved it too. One thing that bothered me though was that Hester wasn't affected in the bar fight. If lees getting beaten up she should at least be feeling the effects somewhat?

I first read the books about the time that forums and fan fiction were getting popular and I remember taking hundreds of quizzes around the subject about 15 years ago. I'll have to try the BBC one. I always used to get pine marten but I was closer in age to Lyra then I suppose!

My daemon would be a Peacock Butterfly.. I really love that except.. the series has shown us how vulnerable butterflies are

I got red squirrel - love that!

I like Lin MM as Lee a lot more than I expected to - his connection with Lyra was just perfect and seemed to bring out a spark in Lyra that we hadn't seen yet, she was loads better in this episode - more Lyra-ish and less sulky and sullen.
Iorek is fantastic - if they'd messed him up I'd have really struggled but he's pretty much spot on.
I'm excited now for the rest - this was always going to be the make or break episode for me - Lee and Iorek are such important characters.
That episode was wonderful (apart from Kaisa - why isn't he a snow goose?!)

I am a silk moth.
worryingly.

I just started watching this over the weekend.
what age group is it intended for?

It's a children's book but as you can see it's very popular with adults too

thanks
indeed

Kaisa is a goose! Why on earth didn't they make him a goose?! Also weird how they split that scene up. In the books he meets Lyra first (he flys out of the sky while she's looking up at the Northern Lights) and then she gets Coram. I guess they wanted to include the bit with Lyra talking to Tony, but I am not really sure what that added to the episode.

Loved it overall and Iorek is perfection. Sam Elliot will always be my Lee Scoresby, but Lin did a good job with his own spin on it.

Still annoyed about the lack of dæmons in the background. They could just use live animals for those, surely?

But I am enjoying it on the whole!

When I say "live animals" I really meant real ones, as opposed to CGI.

I'm a hooded crow... close enough to a starling, I suppose.

What have they made Kaisa? (I haven't watched since the first ep; found it too 'prestige drama' and the child actors annoyingly stage-schooly). I love Kaisa in the books!

I got harvest mouse

Kaisa is now something like a smaller version of an Osprey?

He looked like a kind of goshawk or something - a small bird of prey, anyway. They could at least have made him an eagle or a proper sized osprey if they were going to change him from being a goose. He's supposed to be able to open locked cages by flapping his mighty wings! Plus, geese are well hard. It totally makes sense that a witch queen would have a big aggressive bird as her daemon.

Thanks both. That's disappointing!

dp called it a gyr (geir?) falcon when he saw it and he is usually good at identifying birds and most other wildlife.

I don't understand why they did it. This was one thing so easy to get right, just make it a snow goose. Did they think a snow goose wasn't cool enough for a witch like Serafina?

Gyrfalcons are lovely birds in their own right, but I agree, he's a snow goose so just keep him as a snow goose! Geese are terrifying and certainly cool/hard enough for Serafina. Maybe whoever designed the daemons just didn't make a snow goose that looked good enough, so they changed it to an 'easier' bird!

Yeah, presume it’s because birds of prey easier technically, perhaps because many have been trained etc, so easier to model with the software.

Sad though!

Makes no sense changing Serafina's dæmon, why would they do that? I also hope they don't replace Tony with Billy next week, I will be really annoyed.

The bar room brawl reminded me of some of the action in Once Upon a Time in the North so I assume was to provide some background to Lee and Hester's character. Really loved Lee and Hester in this.

Now, there’s a question. How are social relations between daemon animals and animal animals??

At the beginning of Lyra's Oxford a group of Starlings are attacking a witch's dæmon. I think there are comments somewhere in one of the books (possibly Lyra's Oxford again) that everyone can tell the difference between an animal and a dæmon and animals generally stay away from dæmons, they aren't viewed the same at all.

So weird ...

Thanks! Is Lyra’s Oxford truly worth reading? Very afraid of being disappointed. (Have read the core three + La Belle Sauvage and Secret Commonwealth.)

Interestingly DH thought that Iofur must be a daemon because he was talking. I guess strictly speaking animals wouldn't talk, whereas daemons do, except that bears must be in their own special category.

I think I read that the animators couldn't make a snow goose not look cartoonish when it talked. So they gave up and chose a bird of prey instead.

I can see how they look a bit cartoonish. But then again I thought Pan did too. (didn't look that closely at them as talking animals give me the heebie-jeebies).

I do like Lin as Lee, but he really should have had a huge curly moustache ;) I think the banter between him and Hester is like it is in the books, and they too are my favourite characters. Hester is lovely, but her ears are too short and not battered enough.

I’m a huge fan of Lin so he can do no wrong in my eyes

I found Hester a bit too animated, in the books she’s often described as lying very still with her ears back flat and her eyes closed, giving the impression that Lee is very non-threatening and laid back when actually they are both super alert under the surface.

I hope they don’t replace Tony Makarios with Billy Costa. I don’t see how the timeline would work, the children left London at the same time as the Gyptians. How could billy get to Bolvanger, experience what happens there, and escape when the gyptians haven’t even arrived yet?

OK I am just going with it and enjoying it quite a bit now.
But yes, why not a snow goose? I was thinking 'a witch doesn't have a PIGEON for a daemon!!' so I'm relieved to read it's a better bird but snow goose was so absolutely perfect (north/fairytale/hard edge) wtf did they change it?