Catherine makes a terrible choice, the war’s last (maybe) battle is fought and Bill takes a journey.

The endgame is here, at the top of the atmosphere and slowly tearing us apart. This episode does a lot in a short period of time and most of it’s done very well. For a start, there’s the frankly horrific move Catherine pulls with her current timeline’s Tom. By infecting his blood, and then handing him to the aliens, she’s effectively turned him into a plague blanket. A biological weapon with a pulse – Bill would be proud, or at least disgusted in a different way.

Not that he’d have time to be as this episode Adina, who has been largely side-lined for a while, makes her move. She’s been badly under served this season but this episode at least she gets some stuff to do, and the contrast between her triggering the second black hole and Martha choosing to believe her baby will live is marked. Ania Sowinski is great but, much like Pearl Chanda as Zoe, Bayo Gbadamosi as Kariem and Aaron Heffernan as Ash, she’s given very little to do here besides a nicely handled, confusing gun fight and in her case, a quick death. The plan has always been bigger than the planner with Adina but it would have helped the story to spend more time with her. Likewise Tom and Martha who are united just long enough for Tom, along with Kariem to guard Bill on his journey to the original timeline.

That being said the original timeline plot has a lot to enjoy this week. Catherine gets Richard the information they need: that the aliens are creating a second black hole to entangle with the first and destroy humanity in both universes. There’s a nicely handled, and terrifying, fight between humans and robots in the vents that gives Paul Gorostidi’s Nathan some much needed action and then it’s all hands to the pumps as Bill arrives to save the day. Hopefully. Perhaps.

Verdict: This is a solid, eventful episode with some decent action and a truly glorious one liner from Ash but it feels oddly empty, much as the last one did. The urgency is largely gone and the huge cast have collapsed down, pretty much, to Bill and Catherine. Hopefully everyone else will get some time to shine in the final episode too. 6/10

Alasdair Stuart