Answers galore as the kids discover who the mysterious woman is and just what’s going on at Camp Nightmare.

Starting in 1968 with the answer literally blasting into Fort Nightmare, this episode doesn’t stop. It cleverly repeats the flashback/present combo forms of the last episode and uses that to give us the answers we’ve been waiting for. The short version? Like the man said, ‘Aliens.’ The longer version? Human nature.

In a series of flashbacks we see Dr Avi Pamani (guest star Sendhil Ramamurthy on typically good form) lead a team into the fort to understand the living ship that crashed into it. After last episode’s found-footage detour the show shifts gear again into something akin to early Michael Crichton. The aesthetic especially is pure Andromeda Strain as Pamani, a crisis intervention specialist, his numerically named team and his daughter Ramona research the ship. This extended sequence gives us answers galore and recontextualises everything we’ve seen up to now. The ship is the fronds and black motes we’ve seen, able to take over people and copy them, storing the original in a pod to draw from its memories. There’s a fascinating difference hinted at here between how the ship is perceived and what it actually is. It’s a danger, certainly, but it might not be a threat.

Doctor Pamani changes that. Ben Epstein’s script shows us his gradual descent into existential terror and paranoia, leading to an attempt to kill the ship, and from there to everything we’ve seen unfold. It’s a great, condensed piece of storytelling and it explains everything while giving the show room to move in the final episode. Perhaps it always was a threat but as we hit the end of this episode, it doesn’t look that way. The mysterious woman is revealed as an adult Ramona who has spent her life standing guard on her father’s failure, fighting a one-woman war for the planet she may not have to have fought at all. Familial obligation, trapping her just like Anthony, Jen, CJ,  Frankie, Alex, Trey and the twins in different ways. It’s a great thematic conclusion for the show and finally puts everyone and everything on the same page. One none of them want to be on. The downside is it’s all mechanical plot work where characters’ jobs are to react to something on screen. It’s fun for sure, but this is a big cast and the strain of giving them all something to do shows here.

Verdict: Despite that, this is a brilliant piece of scene setting for the finale, this continues the show’s strong closing act. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart