Naomi continues to be guided by Dee as he tries to help her learn how to control her powers. Zumbardo seeks help from an old friend. Naomi clashes with her parents for the first time ever.

Naomi hasn’t exactly wowed me with its first couple of episodes, but whereas a lot of the same issues persist in this third instalment, there are at least the glimmers of some interesting plot developments moving forward, although even these get somewhat mired in the show’s execution.

Naomi is continuing to train with Dee to develop control over her rapidly manifesting abilities. Of course, this means that he’s going to start her off very small and try to teach her the value of patience and control, that she can’t run before she can walk etc. Guess where that ends up leading? Mmmhmm.

Meanwhile we see Zumbardo reach out to an old (former?) friend to try to get some assistance with his plans, which seem to be something about returning to their home planet, with Naomi/the weird disk think being the key to it all. There’s hints in their conversations of past alliances, some sort of revolution or possibly coup attempt. It’s all frustrating because not only is it another example of the show telling rather than showing, but it also tells very little, leaving far more questions than answers.

Back with Naomi, we get another round of the ‘Scooby Gang’ as she and her friends first contrive a way to steal the disk back from Zumbardo and then sneak off on a college open day to use their lab to analyse the thing. This goes about as well as you might expect it to but what really annoys is the extremely contrived way in which all the gang gets to be there, and the forced bit of exposition around one in particular. But then that’s par for the course for a show which keeps telling us how wonderful our main protagonist is without ever actually bothering to show us. Even when she’s introduced to someone else with powers, it’s just so they can tell us some more about how powerful/important she is.

But Naomi’s escapades do lead to conflict with her parents for the first time ever, and that leads to one of the most interesting developments in the show so far. I’ve had a theory at the back of my mind that these two weren’t quite what they appeared and this episode certainly nudges me a bit further in that direction, and opens up some potentially intriguing possibilities.

Mostly though, it’s just another run of poorly written dialogue, unclear threads and general boredom. I hope that it picks up soon, but that hope does not spring eternal.

Verdict: Occasional flashes of a more interesting plot developing can’t mask the overall boredom. 5/10

Greg D. Smith