Fitz and Enoch do their best to earn the money they need to get Fitz back in hibernation where he should be, but an unexpected visit from some old friends and some new enemies complicates matters.

Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to build on the incremental reveals from last week with regards to the Sarge and his motley crew and exactly what on earth it is that they have planned? Yeah, well tough, because this episode spends nearly its entirety in space, following up on what everyone we care about out there is up to.

For Fitz and Enoch, this means falling victim yet again to the fact that they aren’t exactly the two most cunning operators, moving in a space full of people who are themselves extremely cunning indeed. This leaves them high and dry on the planet Kitson (which seems as the title suggests to be basically the deep space equivalent of Las Vegas) and confronted with only two options for making some money to get themselves going again – the casinos or the brothels. No prizes for guessing which one they pick.

Meanwhile, back with the SHIELD deep space mission, Gemma has just plunged the ship into the middle of nowhere pursuing her hunch about her beau. That the rest of the crew are understandably pissed off at her about this rapidly becomes the least of their problems as the show throws us another curveball, albeit at least this time it’s one that gets explained (vaguely) by the end of the episode – see, writers of the Earth-bound stuff? This is how you do suspense – you introduce new elements and then you gradually explain them rather than just careering off on another tangent.

At any rate, what we end up with as the episode progresses is a sort of SHIELD-flavoured sci-fi version of any number of Las Vegas Road Trip type movies or TV shows, wherein someone gets inevitably utterly hammered, someone tries to cheat at cards, and lots of trouble ensues for everyone. It’s actually not bad in and of itself – the performances are fun, and the circumstances in which our gang find themselves, while recognisable and trope-y are still well-executed. It just grinds a little that we are now three whole episodes into a truncated thirteen episode run and we are none the wiser about what the hell is going on with what appears to be the show’s ‘A’ plot this time out.

Verdict: In itself, an entertaining hour of TV. As part of this season as a whole, does nothing to advance the ‘A’ plot of the show, and not all that much to advance this part either. 7/10

Greg D. Smith