The remaining astronauts start to get some answers.

The Silent Sea may be a nuts and bolts space thriller, but when those nuts and bolts are expertly and lovingly crafted then no matter how derivative it may be, it is still absolutely worth your time.

I started out enjoying the show as cheesy space fun, but as the season enters its closing act, it has morphed into something that is edge-of-the-sofa exciting and has real heart. In episodes six and seven, the mystery of what was really going on at the Balhae Lunar base starts to unfold, and the narrative is given emotional weight, played out through Doctor Song (the excellent Bae Doona) pursuing her quest to discover how and why her sister died, and the shocking identity of the ‘bio-entity’ that has been lurking in the ventilation shafts. The story is deftly told and what could be a tedious info-dump becomes genuinely touching.

There are nods to Duncan Jones’s Moon, here, to add to the Alien and Abyss riffs that have framed the whole series, and you may not look at a cod-in-sauce boil-in-the-bag ready meal in quite the same way, ever again.

Verdict: The less The Silent Sea relies on special effects and the more it invests in its characters and performances, the better it becomes. I, for one, am really looking forward to the season finale. 9/10

Martin Jameson