Review of 'His Dark Materials' 1.5

His Dark Materials 1.5 on HBO earlier tonight upped the evil of the villains, making them, well, the equivalent of Nazis.

They're doing some kind of experiments on the kids they've kidnapped. Billy was separated from his daemon, and he dies. Lyra is kidnapped, and ends up in some kind of research facility with a nurse speaking in a Germanic or Scandinavian accent. The episode ends with Lyra realizing that Billy was wearing the same kind of smock that the nurse is now asking Lyra to wear.

Lyra will get out of this alive, with her daemon, for sure. But I'm wondering why it was so easy to kidnap her? Yeah, the kidnappers killed some of the guards. But what was the bear doing? Sleeping? I guess bears are sound sleepers in His Dark Materials, too.

But lots of other players were asleep on the job, too. Where were Lee, Farder Coram, John Faa, etc? All asleep, too? I'm just saying that Lyra, especially with her truth-telling device, which might've spoken up about the danger to Lyra, i.e., given her some indication of the impending peril, was too easy to kidnap (again, I haven't read the novels, so I have no idea if that's better explained in the printed pages).

I liked the introduction of the young man whose life, we're told, will be crucially intertwined with Lyra's. It's clear now that, with all the assets that Lyra has on her side, she's still in grave danger. More than clear: Lyra's now in the villains' custody. But the one thing we don't yet know is exactly where and how Mrs. Coulter fits into to all of this. Is that facility that does the experiments under her supervision? Will she be ok with those kinds of experiments — which killed Billy, since they didn't get it "right" — being done on Lyra, who may be her daughter? Are the experiments all being done on Coulter's behalf? And about whoever is directing them, why, for what ends?

Looking forward to some answers in the concluding three episodes of this first season of this excellent new series.