Hired to find a UFOlogist who disappeared on government land, Colter finds himself in all the way over his head and in need of assistance. Family assistance.

This is the sort of big swing I love seeing a show do. ‘Ontological Shock’ is an absolutely standard issue Tracker episode. It’s got a great guest cast, with Steven Culp as Scott Palmer, the victim, and Brooke Nevin as his daughter. Matt Passmore steals the show too as ‘Government Official’, the jovial golf-shirted sociopath at the core of the story and he gets a really interesting collision with Russell. Because the fun Shaw sibling is back, everybody! When Colter is yanked off the board, Russell swaggers back onto it with the exact crumpled charm Jensen Ackles excels at. The core of this episode is basically the Shaw boys doing their best buddy cop routine in the middle of a pleasingly burly X-Files episode.

Because, this is a story about aliens. Maybe. Scott stumbles onto a signal that, we find out, may be from a Non Human Intelligence. Passmore’s increasingly unsettling jovial spook may straight up kill someone to cover up whatever’s going on. The entire finale unfolds as the Shaw boys infiltrate a UAP landing site, something Russell may have done more than once. In the episode’s best scene, Russell reminds Colter of the time their dad took them to see ‘the lights in the sky’ and makes it clear he has Seen Things. It’s a big choice but Ackles is good enough to make it land and the script’s cheerfully pragmatic approach to the weirdness really pays off. Something ODD definitely happens, but it happens just to the left of the Shaw boys.

This isn’t the increasingly tiresome ‘Scully you just missed it!’ card the X-Files played into the dirt either. It’s a statement of the clear pragmatism that defines Colter in particular. He has a job. He does the job. It doesn’t matter what else is going on as long as he helps people. It’s not a perfect philosophy, and Reenie basically sending an Uber to rescue them is perhaps a little bit of a stretch, but it’s done with so much confidence you just get carried along. Special note too to the reveal that Bobby is a UFOlogist. Eric Graise nails that monologue perfectly. Also every UFOlogist he mentions is real and the Kumburgaz video, that he references in passing, is real. Massive respect to Graise and the writers for that.

There are problems. The offhand staged suicide of a female academic gets hand waved away. Colter, Russell and Palmer both infiltrate and escape from a government black site with… absolutely no consequences beyond a hurried (if plausible) handwave from Russell. But there’s also a surprisingly fun, and clear-eyed descent into a very different genre and another subtle course correction for the show. The government are aware of the Shaw family. Russell has ‘seen some stuff’. Dory’s mysterious box of Dad’s stuff is mentioned. There’s a clear implication that the ‘family business’ is going to become more important and I’m looking forward to that.

Verdict: Tracker Season 2 is making some big choices and it’s landing more of them than it’s missing. That’s really good to see, and fun to watch. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart