Trivia / Class (2016)

• Actor-Shared Background: April's mother Jackie was paralyzed in a car crash, just like her actress, Shannon Murray.
• Bad Export for You: Some fans have partially blamed the series' failure on the decision by BBC America to hold on broadcasting it until Series 10 of Doctor Who began airing in the spring of 2017, rather than offering the same type of same-day broadcast offered the parent series, thereby reducing promotion of the series. The delay also allowed negative word of mouth to spread both from viewers in the UK and Canada, as well as from Americans who downloaded the series.
• Dawson Casting: Greg Austin, Sophie Hopkins, Fady Elsayed and Vivian Oparah are 24, 26, 23 and 19, respectively, with the former three playing 17-year-olds and the latter a 14-year-old. This is likely in part due to the sexual content that would have made casting age-accurate actors inadvisable. One character is also shown smoking cigarettes which, likewise, might have been prevented had an underage actor been cast.
• Development Gag: One early conception of Susan^note at the time, her name was planned to be Suzanne in Doctor Who was that she'd be an exiled alien princess. Class gives Charlie a similar background.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: April's mum, wheelchair-bound following a car crash, is played by wheelchair-using actress Shannon Murray. Weirdly subverted when April uses her Shadow Kin powers to heal her Mum's spine in "Co-Owner Of A Lonely Heart", although she doesn't immediately have the strength to walk. But then Jackie loses her abilities again as a side-effect of Charlie exterminating the Shadowkin.
• Executive Meddling: According to UK media reports in the summer of 2016, the producers were required to tone down the show's sexual content and violence before the BBC would allow the Doctor to appear. (Previously, the BBC had forbidden the Doctor from appearing in the adults-only Torchwood, so there was precedent.) It's unclear as to whether this only referred to the episode in which the Doctor made his cameo appearance, or the series in general.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The American Jordan Renzo played the Polish Matteusz Andrzejewski.
  • British Egyptian Muslim Fady El Sayed plays Ram Singh who is a British Indian Sikh of Punjabi ethnicity
• Follow-Up Failure: For reasons covered elsewhere, the series failed to click with UK audiences, generating poor streaming figures and later being "burned off" by BBC One in a late-night timeslot. This despite the fact that, Christmas specials notwithstanding, it was the only televised Who franchise production for more than a full calendar year. However, by that point Who itself had seen a significant slide in mainstream popularity in the Peter Capaldi seasons partially because he didn't appeal to younger audiences the way David Tennant and Matt Smith had, and that didn't bode well for a youthful spinoff.
• Invisible Advertising: Despite the show being a spin-off of the popular Doctor Who, it got little advertising and premiered with little fanfare. This, along the mixed reception, might be why it didn't last more than one season.
• Real Song Theme Tune: The show uses "Up All Night" by Alex Clare.
• Recycled Script: The appearance of Sophie Aldred as Ace in the Big Finish audios hearkens back to a plan to have her appear in The Sarah Jane Adventures before the untimely passing of Elisabeth Sladen put the kibosh on everything.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: The tie-in novels released two days before the third episode of the TV show, spoiling Matteusz being kicked out of his house and moving in with Charlie, Ram and April dating, and April's family history.
• Screwed by the Network: After underperforming as a BBC Three stream, BBC One eventually announced it would air the show in a late-night time slot on a weekday, burning off the episodes in four weeks flat. The ratings were about what one would expect (even the episode in which the Doctor appeared) - actually lower than the average for the time slot by a factor of several hundred thousand — leading fans to assume that a Series 2 renewal was unlikely (the cancellation of the series would indeed be confirmed in September 2017). The main reason given for the late scheduling was the violence and to a lesser degree sexual content, despite BBC One having no problem airing sexually explicit and violent shows earlier in the evening. It should also be noted that prior to Class debuting on BBC Three it was actually assumed that a BBC One broadcast would occur soon after, not several months later, and the series was also impacted by the decision from BBC America not to offer the same sort of same-day broadcast it afforded Doctor Who (contrast with the Canadian network Space that aired the episodes the same day they streamed in the UK). When Patrick Ness announced his departure from the series, he specifically criticized BBC One for how it had scheduled the show.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When Patrick Ness announced he was leaving the show, he shared some of the ideas he had for a second series: a Weeping Angel civil war (and their home planet), Quill having a dangerous son, and Charlie and Matteusz doing shirtless wood chopping. In May 2018 it was announced that the series would continue in new audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions; none of Ness' planned plotlines have been adapted, as their license only permits stories set during the television series. (Though it must be admitted the Angels and the shirtless wood-chopping probably wouldn't have the same appeal in audio anyway!)
  • Further details were revealed in a fifth anniversary retrospective article:
    • The main theme driving series 2 was going to be Deal with the Devil and exploring the ramifications of such choices.
    • The cliffhanger with April would have been resolved by making a deal with the Governors for something in order to get her body back.
    • There was a storyline where present Charlie met a future Charlie who’d essentially lost his soul to save Matteusz, with the dilemma of whether this future could be averted or if he should go with this future in order to save Matteusz.
    • YA author Kim Curran had pitched several ideas for an episode, the most favored being the Weeping Angels sending the main characters back to the 90s who then had to pin their hopes on a time capsule dug up 30 years later at Coal Hill to get them back to the present.
    • Another YA author, Juno Dawson, was developing a story about Tanya taking a day out to try being someone else, with the notion of also revealing her sexuality as pan or bi.
    • Derek Landy was also tapped for a story, which never made it beyond the vague notion of tackling the internet, fame, and fan entitlement over entertainment.
    • The Weeping Angel civil war was going to lean into Starfish Aliens as a completely alien conflict incomprehensible to humans with huge parts of it under The Unreveal.
• You Look Familiar:
  • The Chair of the Governors as seen in episode 8 is played by Cyril Nri, who played the Shopkeeper in The Sarah Jane Adventures. It is currently unknown if they are the same character.
  • Dorothea is played by Pooky Quesnel, who previously played the starship captain in the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas special, "A Christmas Carol".

---