Doctor Who Spinoff Class Compared To Buffy By Creator, Premiere Set For October

Doctor Who is about to get its first spinoff since Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures went [...]

Class Doctor Who
(Photo: Empire)

Doctor Who is about to get its first spinoff since Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures went off the air with Class, a new series set at Coal Hill Academy in London. Creator Patrick Ness has revealed some new details about the premise of Class, and it isn't an altogether unfamiliar one.

"Coal Hill has existed in Doctor Who since literally episode one," Ness tells Empire. "The Doctor's granddaughter went there. So we thought, 'All that time activity at the school, has that caused any problems?' Well, what do you know, it has!"

That sounds a bit like Torchwood, which had a team led by The Doctor's friend, Jack Harkness, containing all the strange happenings around Cardiff that were caused by The Doctor's activities in the area. However, that was a show about adults that dealt heavily with adult themes. Class focuses on teenagers, which is more reminiscent of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which focused on the students of a school situated on top of a mystical Hellmouth, which attracted a similar spate of weird and otherworldly problems.

"Adults watch that, because it's a great show, but the POV and the agency are all teenage, and that's what we want to do with Class," Ness explains. "It needs to be from the point of view of the sixth-formers – but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily a 'young show'."

However, there is a major difference between Class and Buffy as well, in that there is not a Slayer among the students of Coal Hill.

"We're not telling stories of the 'chosen ones'," Ness says. "It's happenstance that puts these people [at the center of things]. What if your timing is just weird and things happen to you? How do you deal with it? I'm interested in real consequences. The Doctor is always exciting, but he never stays. He goes off on the next adventure. What happens to real people?"

The Empire article also revealed that Class will debut on BBC Three and BBC One in October. The series has already been picked up by BBC America for syndication in North America.

Class stars Greg Austin, Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah as students at Coal Hill Academy, along with Katherine Kelly as a teacher at the school. Class is executive produced by Ness, Steven Moffat, and Brian Minchin. Production began on the Class's eight-episode first season in April 2016.

Doctor Who will return for its annual Christmas Special on Christmas Day, with Season 10 following in 2017.

0comments