Wounded in a brutal fight, a warrior (Alix Lane), flees across a blasted landscape.

Opening with a one-part berserker/one part samurai fight wrongfoots you in the exact way the episode wants. That opening fight is brutal, graceful, untidy, frantic and finishes with one person (just) standing. Lane has fantastic physicality, as do the stunt team playing the villains and this is a wince-inducing moment of violence that took weeks to choreograph and is worth every second. Not just because it tells you how supernaturally tenacious the lead is but because it confuses you in the best of ways. The clothing is post-apocalyptic but a little crisp. The fighting style is something new, made from something old. The landscape the survivor picks their way across is desert, then forest, beach, then rocks. When you finally see the alien sky you already know this isn’t Earth and you already know the only thing that matters here is survival.

But this is a haunted story and it’ll haunt you in the best of ways. The figure that hunts the survivor is Herne the Hunter by way of the Skeksis, burnt onto the frame by its own ambiguity. Is that a helmet or a skull? Is that a human or an alien? There’s something of Doctor Faustus to the ending and it’s wrapped around a wickedly clever moment of uncertainty. There could absolutely be more story here. The fact there isn’t speaks to the tone so carefully built. Survival is everything, after all.

Verdict: Wickedly smart, hard-hitting SF. The best episode yet. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart