'His Dark Materials' Episode 6 sees Lyra side against Mrs Coulter as the children being experimented on in Bolvangar are freed
At the end of last week's episode 'The Lost Boy', Lyra (Dafne Keen) found herself at the infamous Station in Bolvangar where Mrs. Coulter's General Oblation Board experiments on children. Her spirit is subdued but not broken and she is exhilarated when she spies her friend Roger Parslow (Lewin Lloyd) among the imprisoned children, who she has come all the way North to find.
After Lyra enters the Station's dining hall, one of the children is called away. We follow the child through the dark, steel-reinforced corridor to the experimentation room before the metal door shut behind her.
Then we hear a chilling scream. It is the worst sound we have heard in the series, full of anguish and pain. It belies the words of the young doctor that Lyra meets when she is being examined.
"This is a philosophical establishment, not a child chop house," he says when Lyra questions him about children dying after they sever their daemons. We get a bit more information about the experiments.
Turns out, Dust settles on humans after they reach puberty and a "little snip" before they reach maturity means no more "sin" or sinning among adults. Their experiments are geared to making the "little snip" safe and the dead and dying children are collateral damage to "refine" the procedure.
It is impossible not to draw parallels with Nazi doctors who performed experiments on Jewish children in the name of science. The Gyptian children are also seen as expendable by the Magisterium.
Lyra and Roger create a distraction with a snowball fight and see first hand the results of the procedure. They see the daemons locked up in cages, severed from their humans, while the children lie in a state of shell-shocked pain in a locked room.
When Lyra and Roger rejoin the other children, they tell them what fate awaits them. But Lyra also tells the children that help was on the way and to get to the nearest exit the next time they heard the fire alarm.
For the first time in the series, Dust is equated to the "change" during puberty and the confusing questions around attraction and sexuality that begin at that age. Lyra, close to the cusp, is dragged to the experimentation room when Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson) arrives and wants to watch a live operation conducted just for her.
Lyra is shut inside the machine, despite struggling. When the ugly guillotine-like blade is about to descend, she screams for Mrs. Coulter, who enters the observation chamber just in time to see Lyra and hear her cry out "Mother!"
Within minutes, Lyra and Pan are safe in Mrs. Coulter's room. Since she now knows Lyra's importance, Mrs. Coulter tells Lyra to "pick a side". Lyra says she sides with her because she "saved" her.
Mrs. Coulter then asks for the alethiometer, pushing her advantage. Lyra hands her the box soldered shut with the spy fly inside. Mrs. Coulter in her excitement, crouches over it, trying to pry it open. The spy fly, released, hits her face with tremendous force, giving Lyra the chance to escape.
She shuts the door and manages to lock Mrs. Coulter in her room before setting off the fire alarm. As the children run out, the Tartars guarding the place are taken down by Iorek, the Gyptians, and, in one breathtaking scene, by Serafina Pekala (Ruta Gedmintas), who makes short work of a group of Tartars about to capture Lyra.
Roger rescues the severed children and their daemons, while Lyra "fritzes" the terrible severing machine that results in the room exploding. In all the mayhem, Mrs. Coulter escapes with her daemon monkey through the air vents and watches the children escape with teary eyes.
By the time they are done, the Station is history and the children are saved. Mission accomplished, Lyra takes off with Iorek, Lee Scoresby and Roger to find Lord Asriel.
But when they are ambushed by cliff-ghasts (think flying monkeys), Lyra falls out of the hot air balloon, much to the horror of Lee, Iorek and Roger. The cliffhanger sets the stage for the events of the next episode where Lyra will face Iofur, Iorek's rival in Svalbard.
The episode is action-packed and the scenes of the imprisoned children at the Station evoke true horror. The scenes between the doctors at the facility show the banality of evil as one doctor, who is attacked by Ma Costa (Anne Marie-Duff), says he is "just following orders".
His words are no excuse for the look of blank misery on the faces of the children whose daemons have already been severed. The only drawbacks of this episode are the sporadic appearance of the daemons and how the witches attacking Bolvangar in the books are reduced to just Serafina Pekkala attacking sans her "sister-witches". But since these are deficits of the budget rather than acting or storytelling, the audience will probably be able to forgive these lapses.
'His Dark Materials' airs every Monday at 9 p.m. on HBO.
