Catherine and Bill meet. Emily makes a choice. Bill makes a mistake and Emily and Sasha take off. Literally.

Go Team Science! This is an episode which closes a lot of loops, in some cases literally. The first of which is Bill and Catherine finally meeting and instantly combining their virology and physics skills to work out what’s going on. It’s a tough ask for the show, especially as a lot of audience members probably figured it out almost a season ago but here it is:

The aliens aren’t aliens. They’re us, from the future. They have genetic abnormalities which can only come from interbreeding and Sasha and Emily are the literal progenitors of their race. They hate Bill with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns because he tried to kill Emily.

There is, as the saying goes, a lot to unpack there, not the least of which is the bleakest genre TV of the 21st century to date ticking the ‘incest’ box. It strays perilously close, as this show always has, to performatively grim but even here it just barely manages to avoid it. It does that because of Gabriel Byrne’s Bill and the clear horror he feels at what it seems like he has no choice but to do, and also because of the gradual persistent humanizing of the invaders. The stone eyed rage filled terminators of previous episodes are still absolutely there but Reuben admitting he likes ‘their music’ is just the latest in a long line of quiet little grace notes, not the least of which is the relationship between Isla and Bill.

It would be easy to praise Gabriel Byrne here because, well, he’s Gabriel Byrne and bad work is something he doesn’t know how to do but a lot of the heavy lifting is done by Aimee-Ffion Edwards. Isla is furious and very confused as to whether that’s what she should be now she’s met the devil and he seems like a vaguely crumpled and sort of decent Irish chap. That embodiment of ambiguity is everywhere with Bill unsure whether to use his virus, Isla unsure of what to do with Bill and Emily changing sides, voluntarily being infected and then immediately starting to die. Pregnant with Sasha’s child and with the future it threatens she’s dragged to an alien ship by Sasha and her mum Sarah (Natasha Little), who is promptly murdered by the worst boyfriend in the world. The ship takes off, Emily is healed and she and Sasha see a nightmarish vision of the future of the race they’re going to create. Unless Sasha kills her…

And that’s even before we get to the time travel. This is the definition of heavy stuff and like so much of the rest of the show it’s going to turn a lot of folks off. But if you’ve stuck around this far you’re going to find the answers’ arrival as much as their content rewarding. The answers are here but the consequences are still unfolding and they look fascinating. They’re going to have to be too, considering the show has sacrificed a vast amount of its cast, including the entire Gresham family, especially the criminally under-used Little as well as  Bayo Gbadamosi’s Kariem for those answers.

Verdict: Very good, again, but good whether the series lands or crashes is coming right down to the wire. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart