class-1-7With the students in detention, Quill is free to take the head teacher up on her offer…

After last week’s claustrophobic bottle episode, this is the complete opposite, taking place at the same time but on a vastly different scale. It’s very much Katherine Kelly’s episode, and we see that there’s far more to Quill than we’ve glimpsed so far – and I suspect that many people will radically re-evaluate the character in the light of this. Sure, there are the expected snarky remarks, but you understand far more of what drives her as a person as a result of the many different experiences that she goes through.

The title may give some indication of where this episode heads – it’s a journey for Quill and those with her, and it takes her from Coal Hill to realms that she wouldn’t expect. She’s not alone – there’s some nice continuity touches involved with the people who accompany her – and Patrick Ness throws up some intriguing questions with the character of Ballon as well as yet more queries about the Governors which I hope don’t get fully resolved in episode 8! You might expect that because we saw Quill at the end of episode 6 having been through some changes that some of the tension would be lost from this (and I did wonder if at one stage the two episodes weren’t planned to be as separate as they now are), but that’s not the case – all we saw last week were some outward appearances different…

Verdict: Fine work from all involved in a very different episode of Class. 8/10

Paul Simpson