The crew of the Nightflyer are hunting down Thale with a view to violence after the discovery of a severely burned Murphy. As Dr D’Branin and Dr Matheson try to preserve the life of the L-1 for their own respective reasons, strange happenings in the rest of the ship continue to occur. Could it be that Thale is not the source of the Nightflyer’s woes?

Picking up immediately where it left off in the premiere, this episode at least starts to give us a bit more depth, if not originality, to the story the show is trying to tell.

Thale is still running from the crew, who are all set on doing away with him, convinced that he personally attacked Murphy and caused his horrific injuries. Matheson and D’Branin both want him kept alive – she because of her personal protectiveness towards the troubled young psychic and he because he sees Thale as the only meaningful chance that they have of making contact with the Volcryn. What anyone wants is sort of irrelevant though, because Thale’s powers make him a difficult person to apprehend, no matter how much you outnumber him or how many guns you bring with you, as the crew is forced to learn the hard way.

In an attempt to prove Thale’s innocence, D’Branin puts Murphy in the memory player suite that we saw him using to enjoy some time with his departed daughter in the premiere. Unfortunately what he sees there is both helpful and not so much. By that point he needs to rely on the graces of the captain.

Elsewhere while that’s going on, two of the crew decide to take things into their own hands. With Thale hanging out in one of the biodomes talking to one of the few people on board this ship who a) seems interesting and b) seems able to converse with him as an actual human adult rather than either a monster or a particularly recalcitrant child, they figure that a person can’t get near him but maybe a robot can. To that end they decide to get one of the techs to equip a robotic spider drone with some lasers and if you can’t honestly see what direction that idea might take having seen episode 1 and literally any other similarly themed entry in this genre in the last few decades then I guess good for you, you may get a sense of genuine surprise here.

And there’s also Lommie, freaking out quite a bit after seeing… whatever it was that she saw the last time she hooked up to the ship’s computer. Between visions which don’t make much sense to the audience yet as they lack context and an attempt at some serious self-mutilation, it’s clear that the computer specialist is not having the best of times, mentally speaking.

I’ll give it this – this episode has a few interesting strands in among the daft predictableness. D’Branin’s wife’s oddness from the previous episode gets an explanation here which – while not exactly an original idea – is nevertheless disturbing in its implications. There’s also a sense that certain characters know more than they’re letting on about exactly what’s going on aboard the ship, which has interesting implications of its own.

Verdict: It’s still mostly coasting around the ‘average seen-it-all-before’ level of things, but a couple of decent performances and the odd interesting implication at least have my interest piqued. 6/10

Greg D. Smith