As Max investigates the break in at his house, Isobel and Rosa try to reach Maria through her coma and Michael attempts to find a way to track down the missing Kyle. Alex goes down a rabbit hole with his new job.

After the dramatic ending of last time, things start out a little quieter in this instalment but escalate rapidly as mystery after mystery starts to slowly unfold.

First up, Maria is in a coma and Kyle is missing. Max discovered the unconscious Maria at his house which had clearly been broken into but of Kyle himself there is no sign. The question is, why is Maria in a coma, and can Isobel reach her through the mindscape to ask her exactly what happened before Max found her?

To compound the mysteries of the night, Max mentions seeing a flash out in the desert. Michael goes to investigate, finding an intriguing mystery around various power pylons – hordes of dead bats and at one site, the smashed remains of Kyle’s radio. Could this be a clue as to where the good Doctor Valenti has disappeared?

Alex has some success with the machine which he’s been tasked with studying at Deep Sky, but his success and the strange machine may or may not be linked to the sudden onset of kamikaze bats – does that mean they could also relate to the disappearance of Kyle?

Liz’s search for answers is hampered by bad equipment and a less-than-helpful Max – why is he suddenly more distant with her, having saved her life again for the umpteenth time? Every time this star-crossed pair of lovers seems like they might be about to get back on track, something goes wrong, but Max’s reticence may well be explained by the loss of the artefact buried in a hole by his house, which the intruders seem to have dug up.

Rosa is starting to struggle as her powers begin to manifest, going through the alien version of ‘puberty’ as her senses go beyond the normal human limits. Turning to Isobel for help, she ends up diving into Isobel’s own quest through Maria’s mind, and what the pair of them find is something that will upend everything.

As if that weren’t enough, Alex’s digging leads him on a path he could never have expected. Just exactly what has our mild-mannered but steely communications and decryption expert got himself into this time, and could it be even more dangerous than his on again-off again relationship with Michael?

The way in which all the seemingly disparate elements get threaded together is absolutely fantastic, and the acting from all concerned is top notch, managing to keep things interesting when the script gets a little hokey in places. It’s never less than compelling, and each answer just generates more questions before the characters (and the viewer) reach a sudden Eureka moment that changes everything.

Verdict: A lot going on and all of it well worth the price of admission. 9/10

Greg D. Smith