An episode of class which actually feels a bit more like and episode of Doctor Who than Class.

The two couples in the series: Charlie / Mateusz, and April / Ram are trying to have a bit of fun at a local bowling alley when Charlie upsets Ram and they all end up walking home. Somehow, on the way they find themselves in a kind of pocket world populated by green skinned aliens. Unlike most Class stories, this seems to be nothing to do with the "tears in reality" which seem to infest Coal Hill Academy, but instead some sort of reference to the history of the Shoreditch area where the school is located. Of course, nothing is ever simple, and they have to deal with not only finding a way home, but also surviving a kind of deadly maze.

This was easy enough to listen to but somehow lacked the edge of the TV episodes or even some of the earlier Class audios. The emphasis was clearly on the social dynamic between the couples, to the extent that for much of the story the two pairs are separated on two sides of a competition. To avoid the need to duplicate all the exposition, the point of view hops, skips, and jumps between the two sides, sometimes mid sentence but this can't disguise the fact that there is a lot of exposition in this story. To my mind the story also lacks jeopardy. Somehow it never really felt as if there was any danger of anything changing. This is a shame, as one of the things which I enjoyed about the Class TV series was that, like Torchwood in its turn, the writers were not afraid to make big changes which affect the nature of future episodes and this added a real feeling of risk and danger.

Ultimately, I don't think anyone in the Class world would notice if this story had never happened.

This was a decent opener for the third volume. It's a little slow to begin with, but the story is interesting, and it's nice to hear the Class gang bonding over a game of bowling.

I find the prospect of green aliens secretly living in Shoreditch and pitting humans against one another quite an interesting one too. It has Hunger Games vibes to it, but that works well for Doctor Who.