Team TARDIS find themselves on a spaceship under attack from a small but deadly lifeform…

Some good lines – and character development for Ryan – alongside Segun Akinola’s score and some of the space visuals help make this story flow, but this is definitely the weakest of the series to date. It feels a little bit too much compiled from lots of bits of earlier stories (including Chris Chibnall’s own 42), with Star Trek: The Next Generation getting a number of call-outs.

Jodie Whittaker and Bradley Walsh in particular rise above the material at times, with Walsh getting some nice putdowns, but I suspect that this is one of those stories that most fans will watch, because as fans we watch everything that’s broadcast under the banner, but not necessarily return to. There’s certainly none of the didactic element of Rosa (bar a lesson in how anti matter generation works) or the broad satire of Arachnids in the UK – it’s basically doing Alien on a PG basis (I really was expecting there to be a reference to Mother), with the solution hiding in plain sight all the time.

Verdict: With only 10 episodes in the season, it’s a shame to have one that’s so generic SF. 6/10

Paul Simpson