The world is starting to end, hospitals are flooded with patients and there’s under a week left before Hapna begins killing everyone on Earth. Eleina identifies the mysterious pill Chris found at Skinner’s house, and it leads the team deep into the world of high end health care. The whole while, Soryu is tracking them down.

Three episodes to go after this and the desperation is starting to creep in. The team’s methodical approach to detection begins to pay off and the breakthrough leads to one of the show’s best episodes in terms of both character and plot.

Leland and Axel both get a lot to do this episode and it’s all interesting. Axel’s abilities are, it’s hinted, possibly superhuman in nature as the team discover he was part of a clinical trial for a Hapna variant. A trial he was the only survivor of. That leads him back to the doctor who ran the tests, and the terrifying final moment of Soryu causing a car accident and walking towards Axel’s car with death in his eyes.

Meanwhile Leland gets to put some family business to bed in an episode that mirrors ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’. Where Eleina is an escapee from a cult, Axel is the illegitimate heir to an extraordinarily large fortune and this episode gives him the opportunity to use that for good at last. It’s essayed in, but him making his peace with his past, and his turbulent relationship with his sister, is a welcome note of humanity. It’s also got an inescapable sense of that moment in the original Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica miniseries where Starbuck says ‘it’s the end of the world, Lee. Time to confess our sins.’ Leland makes his peace because it’s the only choice he has.

Finally in plot terms the team finally have a solid lead on Skinner, thanks to Eleina’s hacking and Leland’s connections. That lead takes Eleina to Pakistan, where Popcorn Wizard operates. Whether this is going to be a meet cute or a hacker war is unclear, but as the episode closes Eleina and Axel are both heading into dangerous waters, and the sense of menace is tangible.

Verdict: Three episodes. Six days to the end of the world. One hell of a cliffhanger. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart