Rowan desperately races to find an antidote to whatever killed his daughter, so that he can save Tessia, Roy and Tobis. D’Branin becomes increasingly detached from events in the real world as he chases down the ‘other’ Skye. Lommie decides to return to Greywing and confront Cynthia.

As it hurtles towards the finish line (with only two episodes remaining) Nightflyers suddenly seems to be pulling in a bit of focus on certain threads. It’s just a shame that at the same time it seems to be opening up others that it can’t possibly think it will solve in those remaining two instalments.

After the horror of watching their stillborn new infant dissolve into black mush before their eyes last episode, the show sticks us right back in the moment with Rowan and Tessia on opposite sides of a decontamination barrier, both working as best they can via remote link to synthesise an antidote to whatever that floaty black stuff is so that Tessia, as well as Roy and Tobis, also stuck in there with her, can be saved.

One slight factor holding that back is that some of the equipment that they need to do so is being used by D’Branin in his little science experiment in the memory suite, and despite witnessing first hand the horror of what has happened, he can’t quite bring himself to hand over that equipment and thereby stop his experiment. It’s a difficult moral conundrum the show places on the viewer here – on one hand D’Branin is being obviously selfish, on the other he’s lost his child and then his wife and it’s difficult to imagine anyone human not being at the very least tempted by the opportunity to talk to their dead daughter again and prioritising that over the suffering of others.

Mel is finally starting to notice that everyone around her is a little off these days. Going around questioning various members of the crew about things means that she finds out a lot of stuff this episode, but she doesn’t really get to do anything about any of it – the show basically uses her as an exposition device to catch the viewer up on events rather than giving her any agency of her own, which makes things a little dull.

Meanwhile Agatha and Thale are both increasingly suffering as the ship draws closer to the Volcryn. Turns out that Agatha is an L-3 (not as I previously stated an L-1) but as nobody had mentioned any sort of grading system for the psychics before this point I don’t feel too bad. At any rate that means she’s less powerful than Thale, although getting more powerful the closer they get to their quarry. This is problematic for a number of reasons.

And there’s poor Lommie, trying to fix the mistake she made with Cynthia, who is proving to be a fair bit more wily than any of the crew gave her credit for. Facing a powerful antagonist alone and unaided, Lommie will need to draw on all her strength just to survive, let alone win.

The show ends with yet another big twist reveal (it certainly doesn’t appear that either Martin or the showrunners subscribe to the ‘less is more’ school of drama) and once more it’s something that just feels like a good idea that’s going to be crowded out by all the other threads and subplots winding their way through everything. This show has a decent cast, clearly isn’t hurting for budget and is based on a book written by the same man who gave us perhaps the most popular and successful fantasy genre show of all time, yet somehow it doesn’t ever seem to know quite how to marshal all that resource to best effect.

Verdict: Frustrating again, as tighter focus in some areas is mitigated by more kitchen sink style writing elsewhere. Difficult to see how this get tied up satisfactorily in the next two episodes, but at least the bonkers meter has settled down to around a twelve. 6/10

Greg D. Smith