Catherine, Sophia and Mokrani’s team go looking for other survivors. Ash doubts Emily’s motives while Bill wrestles with his new reality. Jonathan learns the truth about Sacha and Chloe. Emily and Kariem search for answers. Sacha decides to follow Jonathan to England in hope of meeting his daughter. Catherine puts her theory to the test.

It’s traditional for a season finale to wrap up plots and set up new ones with a massive increase in scale and bombast. Typically, this show goes in the exact opposite direction. Its finale hinges on fur quiet moments and they all work.

The first is Bill letting Ash help him bury Helen. It’s not just the fact that the two Irishmen bond but how they bond; over the pragmatic compassion of death. I’m still deeply, profoundly annoyed at the choices made regarding Helen’s plot but this at least rings true and sets Bill on a very new path.

The second is Mokrani putting the dog tags of his fallen men in his tactical webbing. Adel Bencherif has been a quiet, vital part of this show and that’s never been more true than it is here. His quiet, clear terror in the final scene here is vital to it working. Pinned down, his last few men cut down around him and with no ammo, he still trusts Catherine enough to give her the time to make it work. And she does. Which means that now humanity has a weapon and perhaps there won’t be many more dog tags to collect.

The third moment comes at the end of this season’s Jonathan plot. Sacha, who for weeks has walked right up to being a really unfortunate cartoon villain gets (maybe) turned around here. The conversation with his mum is elegantly handled and his new motives seem sincere. The fact Jonathan is doubtful is clear. The fact he accepts them anyway is clearer and as the three fade down the road into the distance, there’s an odd sense of relief. They’re not safe. But they’re safer than they were.

The final moment comes in the final scene. Emily, determined to get to the bottom of why she can see, goes to an alien ship in the Thames. There, she enters it, finds a corridor full of racks of sleeping robots and… the babies from the maternity unit. Then, from a chair that looks suspiciously familiar to anyone who’s seen Alien, a hand reaches out for her.

A human hand.

One with an identical tattoo to her own.

Roll end credits.

Some people are going to find this maddening, and it’s understandable why. We leave the season with almost no idea of how the aliens got here, what they want, or indeed who they are. If anything we know even less than at the start of the season. The pace of the show is slow to deliberate, the characters all complex, difficult, flawed.

Verdict: I loved it. It’s flawed, like its characters, but its also a wilfully, deliberately brave refusal to play a cover version of Wells or of Wayne. Instead it’s a new tune played through familiar instruments. One that’s a little uncertain, makes some missteps but has so much potential and does so very much right. It’s also, in a year defined by cruelty as 2020 has been so far, an eight episode exploration of the power of humanity and compassion. I’m not sure we’ll get a second series, but if we do? I’ll be first in line. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart