Agreed. Such a shame. I know Class had its issues as a Doctor Who spinoff, but it deserved so much better than it got. There were excellent ideas aplenty, there was a strong young cast led with real charisma by the outstanding Katherine Kelly and there was such heart to it all. It deserved the opportunity to show more diversity and develop its core themes/unveil the overriding plot through a second season at the very least.
Things I didn’t like:
The Shadowkin: They should have been much more abstract and unknowable to feel like a real extradimensional threat. In the end, they were just very generic warlike aliens.
Coal Hill Academy: I love that it’s set in Coal Hill School, but I really don’t like the fact that the school bears no resemblance to what we see on screen in DW series 8. I’m happy enough for the Sixth Form to be in a new build, but even occasional glimpses of the Coal Hill School that had featured on the main show so recently would have helped visually ground Class in the establishd DW universe. It would have been an easy way to visually link the shows together that could have transcended Capaldi’s Ep 1 cameo. A missed opportunity.
Ep 2 - The Coach With the Dragon Tattoo: An episode that made the same mistake of Day One in Torchwood by trying way too hard to be adult and edgy but not having a sufficiently worthwhile plot to make it feel deserved. Plus, the dragons were so cheesy and so very tonally different from the gore that they caused. It’s not awful but I don’t think it matches the heights of other episodes from the series. I do agree with @shauny, though, that it does the character stuff well and works hard to develop Ram further.
The things I do like are much more numerous.
For now, I’ll comment on:
Ep 1 - For Tonight We Might Die: Yes, despite the Shadowkin, I actually thought this was a very solid opener. The principal cast were introduced well, especially given the number of characters that needed to be established quickly. The key story beats were set up and ready to recur throughout the season. All that and we got a cameo from the Doctor himself!
Ep 3 - Nightvisiting: As I said in an earlier post, I really enjoyed this episode. The trope may be well worn, but the creature was really nicely realised and quite disturbing. The scenes at night, with tendrils across the city, were quite eerie. Following on from the focus on Ram just the episode before, we get to learn much more about Tanya. Yup, this was great fun. This was the episode where I knew I’d be strapped in for the rest of the season.
That’s it from me for now, but there was much better still to come!