Paul and Agent Salazar head to Dartmouth – but is neXt still one step ahead of them?

After being quite unpredictable for a lot of its first two episodes, this third episode of the AI series feels a little too by the numbers. Salazar’s husband and son head off in a non-computer assisted car to get away from danger, and the AI puts out an Amber Alert, so that suddenly the whole world is turned against them. Cue desperate attempts by the FBI’s tame hacker to find a way of switching off the alert at just the moment that Ty and Ethan are about to be separated by an angry (low budget) mob.

Salazar and Paul arrive at the computer complex where they believe the AI has moved itself to, to find a Stephen Hawking-esque figure in charge, who’s in a computerised wheelchair. Well, let’s guess what’s going to happen here when we know that the AI can infiltrate any system? Oh, and there are creepy robots, looking like Meccano set kits, wandering around the complex… I wonder if Salazar is going to be attacked by them. (Spoilers – she is.)

Tim Hunter does a good job directing the various sequences, and it’s perhaps a shame that there wasn’t another flashforward to Salazar under interrogation to remind us that they’re not going to get away all the time. And to be fair, the last few minutes of the episode – where neXt (we presume) arranges a jailbreak – do raise some intriguing questions for the future…

Verdict: A too predictable episode compensated for by the final few minutes. 7/10

Paul Simpson