With the long gap until the next series films, there's been a drought of news in the world of Doctor Who. This changed today with the reveal of the cast of Class just before it went into production.
Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Vivian Oprah and Sophie Hopkins have been cast as Coal Hill sixth formers while Katherine Kelly has been cast as one of their teacher. A few of these names had already started to leak out in rumours but it was nice to have them confirmed. I can't say I've seen anything with these actors in before. The four 'sixth formers might look a little old for mid teens, but hopefully their acting talent will compensate for this.
According to the main article, one of the characters will be an alien who was hidden on Earth by a time traveler for their safety. Not only will this alien have to deal with school life but also with the aliens who have pursued them to Earth. It seems obvious that this 'time traveller' will be the Doctor, that is unless scriptwriter, Patrick Ness, decide to wrong foot us and have it be Missy instead. The Doctor would be the better choice. He is more likely to want to protect someone and it would be great to have Peter Capaldi guest star in one of the episodes.
Steven Moffat has described the show as being a 'British Buffy'. With a cast four students and a teacher it certainly fits the model of the first three series of Buffy which had Buffy, Xander, Willow, Cordelia and Giles. How the characters will be similar or different it is hard to say. Whether the teacher will be a mentor for fighting aliens or simply a guide imparting real life lessons it's hard to say. It will certainly be interesting to see the Buffy format updated to include modern teenage issues.
While the show's connection to Doctor Who still feels tenuous, I feel strangely optimistic about it. Patrick Ness' twitter feed shows that he is strongly opinionated on certain issues, which might make for a compelling show. Hopefully this will be a successful spin that stays around for a while.
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