A glitch in the water systems on the Atlas causes issues for the crew, the pressure amplified with the discovery of a betrayal that may doom them all. Back on Earth, as Matt tries to find a solution to the problem he manages to be introduced unexpectedly to Lex’s new friend, Isaac.

Feeling a lot more coherent than the previous episode, it’s nevertheless starting to feel less and less like an actual realistic mission to Mars and more like an episode of some wacky space-based sitcom with all the issues that keep popping up, both with the ship, and the crew.

The character who gets the ‘backstory focus’ this time is Kwesi, and it’s possibly emblematic of how poorly served the character has generally been that a) he had to wait a whole extra episode to get it and b) when it comes, it’s relatively lightweight. Basically, he was adopted in tragic circumstances, and he became closer to his adopted father through gardening, fuelling his love of plants, and to his mother through the faith he finally adopted. It’s a shame, because Ato Essandoh has a great screen presence, and so many interesting things could be done with the character, but it never stops feeling like the script sees him simply as a fifth wheel.

That’s it. No major revelations. The fact of his parents’ deaths and the circumstances around them are deftly shrugged over, as is the actual reason he eventually decided to adopt the same faith as his adoptive mother. Small boy, very sad, likes plants, done.

Mind, with the water system on the fritz, the crew do have their hands full. With a half hour delay between them sending a message to ground control and getting an answer, they’re all reliant mostly on each other, specifically on mission engineer Misha. But Misha has a secret he’s been keeping from everyone and when it finally gets revealed (aside from the fact that you’ll wonder how everyone else took so long to get there as it was so screamingly obvious) it causes whole new levels of tension as well as serious issues with the ambitious plan to fix the water issue.

Meanwhile on Earth Lex is getting closer to Isaac, and starting to take some risks. Her father is busily trying to solve the issue faced by the Atlas crew but when he gets himself in a bit of bother, he ends up unexpectedly being introduced to Isaac himself. It’s at this point that things go a bit weird again, where it’s impossible to tell what Matt is actually thinking or exactly how well that meeting is going. For his part, Isaac seems a solid, steady guy who genuinely likes Lex, but whether Matt will approve is unclear.

All told, while it’s better than the previous episode, it’s still posing a lot of the same questions, chief among them how on earth this crew got picked for the world’s first manned mission to Mars when they all have so much dysfunction collectively and individually. I’m not sure I’d trust them to drive down the road to pick up a kebab.

Verdict: It has (melo)drama but it can’t hide the fact that the character it’s trying to focus on holds no interest to the writers, in spite of the talent of the actor in question. It’s still not clear why this bunch of misfits have been entrusted with such an important mission. 6/10

Greg D. Smith