User Reviews

I think this show is gonna be one of my best shows or even the best that I'm currently watching. Interesting mixture of Drama, sci-fi, mystery, adventure and the new world of Daemon it's very interesting and reminds me of Counterpart and Carnival row.

In this episode, we got the tense relationship between Ms. Coulter and Lyra shown beautifully. I had the same feeling on anxiousness that I had when I was reading the book and I loved it.

The first substantial change the show made over the books was traveling to different worlds this early. I think this has reason and potential, especially since the world that we've seen is the current state of the world, largely different to the world as it was when Pullman was writing the books. This change worries me a bit since I hope they won't lose the grip on that side of the story, but since everything else has been absolutely up to par so far, I trust the change will be for the better.

I hope the series continues in the same manner as in these first two episodes, since this is some of the best TV fantasy I've ever seen.

In this episode we see the shocking relationship between Mrs Coulter and Laiyra Belaque and this episode continues the amazing journey. In this episode as we find out more and more about the oblation board and the mysterious concepts of what looks to be experiments going on when the kids go north

If you're wondering what "oblation" means after watching His Dark Materials Season 1 Episode 2, you're not alone. This phenomenal new series on HBO and BBC used the term a lot in the second episode, so it might have confused you a bit. In fact, "oblation" is a breakout Google search term for Americans as they're watching the latest episode.

Oblation refers to a sacrifice or offering to a god. (A similar-sounding word, ablation, is a medical term meaning a type of surgical removal. Cardiac ablation, for example, means destroying tissue in the heart that's creating incorrect electrical signals that lead to abnormal heart rhythm.) But in His Dark Materials, it's made clear that the word they are referring to is oblation with an o, not ablation.

Technically, according to Merriam-Webster, oblation means: "the act of making a religious offering" (such as offering eucharistic elements to God) or "something offered in worship or devotion: a holy gift offered usually at an altar or shrine."

We learn later on in the episode that Mrs. Coulter is part of the General Oblation Board (and may actually be the head of said board.) Lyra learns this from the journalist (Adele Starminster) who visits Mrs. Coulter's cocktail party. She takes time to clue Lyra in about what's going on, much to her own detriment.

In fact, Adele explains to Lyra that the General Oblation Board is nicknamed the Gobblers. In other words, the very group rumored to have kidnapped the children is the same name used to refer to the General Oblation Board.

We find out in this episode that Mrs. Coulter is, indeed, in charge of the group that's kidnapping the children and has a plan for them that hasn't quite been revealed. This plan is apparently hatched by the General Oblation Board, at least according to the clues we've been given so far.

So if "oblation" refers to a sacrifice to a god or a religious offering, then the General Oblation Board must be focused on religious offerings or sacrifices in general. And these children might be that sacrifice.

Lyra learned in Episode 1 that children aren't affected by dust. Perhaps that ties into the GOB's desire to kidnap these children. Mrs. Coulter's daemon certainly seemed angry when Lyra was talking about dust, so perhaps they need the children for some purpose that they don't want "dust" interfering with.

All we know for certain is that "oblation" refers to some kind of a sacrifice or offering to a deity. Either the Board is named satirically, or they intend to sacrifice these children for some greater purpose that is yet to be revealed.

His Dark Materials is the new fantasy epic that very well could be HBO's new Game of Thrones. It's based on the trilogy by Philip Pullman, also called His Dark Materials. The series is being co-developed by BBC and HBO International.

The first season is based on the first novel, called Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass in the United States.) It takes place on a parallel Earth and follows the story of Lyra, an orphan girl. Her uncle Lord Asriel is at odds with Magisterium, and she's caught in the middle.

I have to say I was almost bored at points during this episode, it is very slow moving. I also fear that if you have not read the books then you wouldn't have a clue what is happening!

I am also unsure about travelling between worlds so quickly. What I love about the books is how Northern Lights focuses solely on Lyra's world and then expands so rapidly in the next book and of course the third into multiple universes.

I thought the relationship between Mrs. Coulter and Lyra was good. However I do still prefer Nicole Kidman's portrayal in the film. I'm hoping things will speed up and get more exciting now she has escaped.

Nevertheless I have still given the episode 8 as I want to really like it and think that there is still so much potential. Hopefully we are still just getting used to the new actors.

I love the genre and it is all but fantasy, but that does not mean that writers don,t have to be realistic within that fantasy world. I have seen the stupidest and naivest journalist ever on screen. She is a disgrace for her occupation. First she reveals a secret at a party, uninvited, which is probably the most dangerous place to do so. When she gets escorted out you already know that she will end up dead. She steps in a car of someone who has a sliddering snake as a deamon. We all understand that the deamon reflects the person. They however, living in that world, don,t seem to come to the same conclusions. She should have declined or simply walk or run away. After that they would have eliminated her in a way that is acceptable for the story. But another error is that her deamon is even more stupid. It flaps around like nothing is going to happen, around the person that is as sliddering as his deamon snake. It eventually gets crushed and therefore also killing the journalist. The error here is that Lyra has a deamon that has hole conversations with her, warning her for this and that and giving her all sorts advice. That Journalist and her butterfly are dumb and dumber and she is definetely in the wrong occupation. Journalists, specially the ones that are that able to have investigated dangerous secrets, don,t let themselves get killed so easily and stupidly. A writer like Tolkien would have hated this and would have rewritten it. He would have liked the idea of deamons though.

The second episode of His Dark Materials is better than the first one, it feels like the series is slowly getting more in line with the book, but there are still tons of details that anoy me.

I'll start with mentioning that I liked the relationship of Lyra and Mrs Coulter in this episode, that for sure felt like it was straight from the books, even if breaking in to the study was lifted from the movie. Also Mrs. Coulter writing letters for the taken children and then throwing them in the fire was a scene I'd hoped to see in the first episode as she kidnaps Tony Makarios (who seems to have been written out of this series). Better late than never I suppose.

A few things I've noticed so far in both episodes that I'm indifferent to, but that I've noticed is changed from the books. First is the mention of armoured bears (Pansarbjörnar). I can't remember if Lyra has any notion of the bears in the book before she meets Iorek, but she for sure dosn't know them by the norse name, as someone (can't remember who) who was in the retiring room with Asriel mentioned them and their king Iofur Raknison who wanted nothing as much as a daemon, which Lyra at the time don't understand as she don't know what Pansarbjörnar is, but it eventually becomes clear to her. The reason I thought of it for this episode is because Lyra sees the skull of a bear and immediatly assumes it's from an armored bear. Thats when I realized that Iofur wasn't mentioned in the first episode and for a second I thought they moved the scene to now, and that Mrs. Coulter would tell her, but that didn't happen either. I can't see when she'll find this out from here on, which means she'll eventually meet Iofur without this knowledge, but that situation was the same in the movie, so I'm sure it'll be fine.

The second thing is Roger being an orphan. It's to my knowledge never stated that Roger's parents was alive in the book, but it was never stated that he was an orphan either, and Mrs. Lonsdale (who aslo was written out of the series), tells Lyra that she is second cousin to Rogers father, and that they are part of the Parslov family, who are employed by Jordan college, so it's not like he has no close framily to look after him. In this series it seems like Lyra almost only had Roger as a friend and they only connected because they were both orphans who lived in the same place, but in the book she had all sorts of friends (and frienemies) all over Oxford.

The third thing is Mrs. Coulter telling Lyra who her father is. I like that the Gyptians tell her in the books and give her the full story, but I don't mind Mrs. Coulter telling her either. I am however a bit annoyned that she wouldn't tell her about her mother as truths were being spilled anyway, and I'm annoyed with how Lyra can't call Asriel father in this episode. In the book she does get a bit annoyed with him, but more than anything she is proud and happy to be his daughter and immediatly takes to this new identity of having a famous father.

Another thing that is slightly higher on my annoyance list, but that I guess dosn't matter at the end of the day, is John Faa's Daemon, who in the book is a Crow. Lyra even remarks on how like the Headmasters Raven she is, but, unless England has very different crows from Sweden, I'd say that what he has in this series is a Magpie.

Speaking of daemons we are moving in to the "really annoys me" territory, and that is how far away daemons are constantly moving from their humans. They even bring it up in this episode how daemons can't be too far away and how Mrs. Coulter is unnaturaly far from her monkey. In the book it's mentioned that deamons can't go further than a few yards, and in the second book, Lee Scoresby is seriously impressed with Gruman's daemon traveling 40 feet from him, claiming he has never seen such a great distance except with witches (who can sent their daemons several miles away). But in this episode daemons are all over the place, or not visable at all, which probably means they are far off, seeing how many people have cats and dogs or birds that can't exactly be stuffed in an insde pocket. I guess budget reasons are behind not everyone having a visable daemon at all times, but if you can't commit to this huge distingushing feature of this fantasy world, then maybe you shouldn't have made the series in the first place. Also I acknowlegde that the series might not have been very clear on what daemons are. I see many comments along the lines of "I don't understand the animals", "what's with the pets", "the animals don't do anything, they don't affect the story", and "the animals are just ripped from Harry Potter". First of all, Northern Lights was released before Harry Potter, and I really don't see what you mean by that comment. I'ts not like everyone in Harry Potter carries a sentient talking owl with them 24/7. To everyone who just don't understand the daemons or think that they don't do anything: they're not supposed to do anything. A daemon is a part of a humans soul, it's basically what we would call the little voice inside our heads, but externalized. People in Lyras world don't really have that voice and they don't really talk to themselves inside their heads, they talk to their daemons instead and get responses as we would from our subconsious. So complaining that the daemons don't do anything is like saying that the voice inside your head don't do anything.

The thing that annoy me the most about this episode is how Lyra time and time again brings up Roger. I know she want to find him, but in the book she was so enchanted by Mrs. Coulter and her lifestyle and her knowledge of things that interested Lyra, and the promise of going to the north (which was also written out, whcih was a bit of a miss, since they spent a decent amount of time in the first episode setting up Lyra's desire to go north), that Lyra totaly forgets that she was supposed to look for Roger, untill she escapes that is. The fact that she keeps bringing up Roger all the time shows that she isn't totlay captivated by Mrs. Coulter the same way she was in the books.

Last, but certainly not least, is Boreal traveling between the worlds. I don't wanna pass judgment on this untill I've seen where it's going, but I do think that showing this will ruin both what was the first discovery of such a window that we read in the book, and it definatly ruins the surprise of finding Boreal in the other (our) world (if including him this much this early hadn't already done that). Also I'm not sure I like that they set our world in modern times, I'd much rather they'd kept it the 90's as Pullman envisioned it as he was writing it in the 90's, but ultimately I don't know how much of a difference it'll make. The strangest thing about Boreals arc here is his search for Gruman. I can not for the life of me figure out why he wants to find him or how he knows about Gruman studying other worlds or why he would so instantly think that he might be in the other world. Like I said, I'll wait and see where it goes before I say yay or nay. But speaking of Gruman, something that really should have been in my indifferent section, but I'll put it here, and that is that Gruman is in this episode mentioned to have been a scholar of Jordan collage, but in the book he was affiliated mostly with the Acadamy in Berlin, and had no connections to Jordan other than that some of the scholar there knew him or had heard of him through shared fields of study.

Episode 2 finally gives us something with the discovery that the other world is our own which I needed because I almost gave up halfway through. But the characters are still pretty bland/confusing, with Lyra being one note about her friend and Coulter/ Dr Carne being mysteriously evil. Also Asriel is her father...which means absolutely nothing since we barely know anything about Asriel, their relationship or how she struggled growing up without parents. Im hoping by the end of the season, the plot reveals will make up for these flaws but I wouldnt blame anyone for bailing. There is plenty of great TV in 2019

Mrs Coulter shows her true nature to Lyra as she lives in her house in London. It is by way of her daemon attacking Lyra's.

In fact in this episode you see how vulnerable a person can be due to the vulnerability or flimsiness of their daemon.

As the Gyptians search for their missing children, Mrs Coulter reveals her hand in their fate.

In the first episode Lord Asriel talked about his theory of dust and multiverses. This episode shows Boreal crossing the different worlds as he visits the Oxford of our world.

I reckon that as an eight part series. Writer Jack Thorne wants to create a flow between Pullman's novels or else the pace could become glacial.

The special effects are good, some of the sets are very good. It upped the pace from the first episode but it has not been mesmerizing so far.

Episode 2: Good acting from the cast (Dafne Keen's acting is convincing and she's already a good actress), filming, cinematography, setting, show of emotions and some colorful scenes. As far as the flow and vibe are concerned, there's nothing brilliant and impactful and the story just develops further.

Good acting from the cast (Dafne Keen's acting is convincing and she's already a good actress), filming, cinematography, setting, show of emotions and some colorful scenes. As far as the flow and vibe are concerned, there's nothing brilliant and impactful and the story just develops further.

Good acting from the cast (Dafne Keen's acting is convincing and she's already a good actress), filming, cinematography, setting, show of emotions and some colorful scenes. As far as the flow and vibe are concerned, there's nothing brilliant and impactful and the story just develops further.