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

"I am NOT HAPPY about Will being left off the publicity photo for the series. He should have had equal billing with Lyra."

Sorry but I disagree. I enjoyed Will's storyline in the last episode and I am coming around to the fact that they've introduced him so soon but IMO Lyra is the star player at the beginning and Northern Lights is HER story so it's right that it should be her in the publicity for season 1. For season 2 assuming there will be an even stronger focus on Will then yes he should feature equally.

Loved Will and his mother. How brilliantly uneasy and claustrophobic.

But it was really really weird that they live in this gorgeous well kept golden-hued mid century flat full of windows. Will’s desperation in the books is supposed to be reflected by their low income and dingy surroundings.

Ps, I get why they did that to Billy, but do not get why Ma Costa took him to a bunker instead of near a fire.

Mmm ...

That’s true Dust, but I wonder ...

Just think how mired in class assumptions MN is - and take that as a microcosm of the HDM audience. Given that they’ve (quite, quite fabulously) cast two not-white people in the roles - perhaps they’ve deliberately countered any possible audience resistance by making them very visibly, culturally middle class - even if they may not be rich in terms of actual cash. Not ‘poor’ / ‘street’ / ‘urban’ or any other shitty stereotype. If that was their thinking - it was pretty damn smart.

(For avoidance of doubt this is something I feel qualified to pontificate upon on many different levels.)

The fact that they’ve used Billy rather than Tony Makarios and got rid of the villagers is helping to downplay lyras’s bravery too.

She did somethzing none of the adults were willing to do. Even the gyptians were reluctant to go near him initially. That didn’t really come across at all.

Exactly

I imagined Will’s home to be a pokey Victorian mid terrace.

Also, the bolvanger institute isn’t how I imagined at all. I’m my mind it was very clinical, clean and very white. They made it very grubby and tatty looking.

I imagined Will’s house to be small and dark too. I was also confused by it being immaculately tidy and spotless, especially when we see Will cooking dinner so it looked like housework was falling to him.

The mum’s repetitive actions looked akin to OCD so perhaps she is obsessively tidy, but we didn’t see her doing anything domestic.

Wills house is described in quite some detail when he fights the intruders. I saw it as a smallish terrace. Either 60s or Victorian. Steep stairs and a small landing. Isn't that how it happens? A stair fall?

Yes, it’s different to how it’s described in the book. But I think what they’ve chosen for HDM is good - for the reason I gave above.

Just caught up as couldn't watch it last night.

I am very annoyed about Will being introduced at this point - possibly because I did a quick re-read prior to the TV series starting - but also because it detracts from Lyra's story.

And I am 100% with al lthe posters who thought Will's home was wrong - it so came over as a small, dark, damp 2 up 2 down in the books.

I imagined Will's house as something more blandly suburban, but I think his background is being presented well as something visual rather than his own reflections.

It's a shame that "Ratter"/ the dried fish wasn't shown as in the book. It was a tear jerker anyway, especially watching it first time with two DSs snuggled up to me wondering why I was dripping tears all over Pantalaimon showed the fear well.

Lyra showed the change to being "Lizzie" well, slowing her personality down.

Radio Times article about the dæmon issue.

It points out that when Ma Costa cries ‘where’s his dæmon?’ you can’t see hers.

www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-12-02/his-dark-materials-daemon-problem/

NobleGiraffe That's a good article, and had me wondering if they had actually shown Ma Costa's Daemon. If they have I can't remember it.

Yes, good article. (Thanks!)

Actually raises an additional question which I hadn’t considered before - if the daemons are their humans’ souls then the humans themselves should always seem a little incomplete - the interaction with their daemons should be a constant flow of interaction, not just the odd aside.

Thinking about this, and how each should be integral to the other - it’s beginning to feel to me as if the spiritual life of each daemon is important in itself; separately.

Ok - now I’m feeling the second Book of Dust a whole lot more ...

I've had the impression from various gyptian scenes that a lot of gyptian dæmons are birds (not all like Farder Coram's, but his did get extra detail in the book comparing her finery to his age, and showing the kind of man he was in his youth). There were large birds soaring when Lyra and Ma Costa were alone in the open and Lyra was told about her background. Tony's is a hawk. It is a shame that Ma Costa isn't seen with an explicit dæmon, and you would think that dæmons would tend to draw near at times of grief.

I still think Billy should have had the dried fish and repeated "Ratter" and that wouldn't have been logistically difficult.

Radio Times article about the dæmon issue.

The editor or producer's excuse just isn't good enough. 'The scene would drop' because they were switching from actors to daemons.

The daemons are part of the actor's characters! They should have halved the number of actors or characters in the scenes before ditching the daemons. And built almost every scene around including human-daemon interaction.

Compare it to the effort that they went to for the show Humans - the actors playing the synths were perfect. They needed the chief actors in this to develop a bond with their daemons.

The lack of dæmons is SO jarring. It's driving me potty. Otherwise I am mostly enjoying it, but it's a real shame that an integral part of Lyra's world is so absent. Even the Pan/Lyra relationship is not well fleshed out really and he isn't featured a great deal.

Hard though ...

I’d imagine if we stepped into Lyra’s world we might find it either frightening or, I dunno, dreamlike. Maybe nightmare-ish.

The problem is that they’ve tried to portray something unimaginable to us in a naturalistic way - when the fundamental fact is that a daemon inhabited world could never look or sound natural to us.

I’m almost grateful for the TV series relative ‘failure’ in this respect - because it’s made me think so much more about the world PP imagined. I am now certain that people in Lyra’s world would not seem normal to us - they would have a different nature. So, simply by beginning with the aim of portraying them ‘like us’ the series creators have de-natured the essence of the story.

It’s deep ...

I get what you're saying, but there are so many fantasy novels where you're asked to step into another world.

They didn't reduce the number of synths in Humans, or decide that really people would only get the Hobbits if they were human sized, or think that people couldn't understand why they were killing children in death games in Panem.

Adaptations have to take a bit of licence, but the human-daemon relationship is fundamental to the story they're telling. Pan and Lyra just sat next to each other when Mrs Coulter's daemon had attacked him. They should have been cuddling and soothing each other.

That isn't just 'the scene was too crowded'. It's a fundamental error.

And this is THEIR JOB to execute the story effectively on screen. Yes, they can make changes, but they're neglecting the narrative in the process.

Argh that article - if it couldn't be done well, what was the point in doing it, then?

Most of the scenes take place with the focus on a maximum of 4 characters, usually 2. That's not hard.

If the butt-ton of cash was the problem - ffs why not hold off till it wasn't? It'll only be a few years before the cost comes down!

So frustrating. Though I suspect whoever's in charge just didn't fully get the importance of the daemons and the talk of busy scenes and money is to try to cover that up.

I suppose if the daemons are CGI it's impossible for Lyra and Pan to cuddle each other in any kind of realistic way.

Perhaps a fully animated version of HDM is the best way to do it.

In general I’m loving it, but DH who hasn’t read the books is definitely funding daemons more confusing. When Lyra and Iorek stopped for a break in that last episode he immediately asked “where’s Pan?” As I’ve read the books I realised that I’d simply assumed Pan was inside Lyra’s coat as a mouse or something to keep warm, whereas for DH it still wasn’t clear.
I did think finding Billy was done well on the whole but it annoyed me how quickly both Lyra and Ma Costa jumped to “where’s his daemon?” - given how often the daemons are hidden in clothing there needed to be more of a realisation that Ratter really wasn’t there.

(I still cried when she sang to him and told him they’d be ok and he could go to Ratter though...)

I had always imagined Wills house as a bland suburb, somewhere like where the Dursleys lived but agree it makes sense that they are visually showing how solidly middle class his background is, explains the lack of interference by SS much better as well. I think when reading the book because Will couldn't remember his father his army adventures seemed like they could be made up by his Mum rather than reality.

Ma Costas dæmon has been shown once that I remember, when she was telling Lyra who her mother was next to the canal. But when Lee and Hester appeared it reminded ne that their relationship is the only one that is as fleshed out as Lyra and Pans (and then Malcolm and Asta in LBS).

CoffeeWithMyOxygen yes I agree that scene did seem a bit strange given the lack of screen time, but in the Secret Commonwealth it is explained a bit more about how you can sort of sense if someone doesn't have a daemon without immediately looking at them.