Mitsuki desperately tries to make contact with the Hoshi 12 before time runs out. The Maliks are suddenly of great interest to the military as well as other parties. Caspar takes an enormous risk.

I had half an idea at the end of the previous episode that perhaps all of our various disparate protagonists would end up connecting in the way that Trevante and Caspar did, but on the strength of this episode maybe that optimism was misplaced. I’m still not really sure what the point of Sam Neill’s character was all the way back in episode 1 though, so at this point it’s difficult to really have any sort of grasp at all on what the show’s trying to do.

In Japan, Mitsuki thinks that she might well have finally made contact with her beloved, somewhere out there in the void. Time is now ticking – the U.S. government and military clearly have a plan, and it isn’t one that necessarily involves bringing Hinata home. Where the show confuses me as a viewer is that it never really seems to settle properly on what the actual status of Hinata is. On one hand, it has characters making very clear and logical conclusions about her which seem to be true. On the other, it shows us other things which seem to contradict this, but ultimately it leaves us in the dark as much as Mitsuki herself. It’s arguable I suppose whether this is clever direction or just frustrating, but I’m going to have to say I’m leaning more towards the latter than the former at this stage.

The Maliks meanwhile have become very important to the military after Luke’s little artefact seems to provide them with some sort of clue as to how to combat the alien threat. This sees the whole family loaded up in a military convoy, but things don’t go entirely according to plan, as it’s not just the army that has an interest in the Maliks after all. Can Manny finally prove himself to be a better man than we have been led to expect? Will Aneesha ever manage to gain the sort of unconditional love for herself from her children that they harbour for their father? Time will tell.

And in London, Caspar follows through on his plans to use whatever connection he has with the aliens to fight back. This is another odd one – we know that Caspar has this connection, though how and why remain mysterious. Moreover, in spite of his determination on the subject, it never really seems clear why he has arrived at his particular chosen method of utilising this connection.

All in all, it’s an episode which at least concludes with some overarching forward motion on the whole invasion angle, but which asks more questions than it answers for this viewer. Perhaps I’m missing something deeper in the material, but I can’t help but feel that alien invasion drama which makes you work this hard to derive any sort of actual coherent meaning from it all is doing something fundamentally wrong.

Verdict: Cloudy motives and unclear narrative direction continue to undermine the actual human interest in the story. 6/10

Greg D. Smith