‘Do you have love where you come from?’ This one reminded me of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Seven episode Conversations with Dead People, in which a malevolent force came to the characters in the night in the guise of their dear departed for its own nefarious purposes. Here, a malevolent force comes to the characters in the night in the guise of their… well, you get the idea.

It’s a sensible move to give us some insight into the inner lives of the ensemble, and I enjoyed that this foregrounds Tanya’s repressed grief and anger at the death of her father. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is very good as the alien facsimile of Jasper; the wet blinking and his hungry stare belie his soothing words. The resolution depends as much on Tanya’s agency as Quill’s (predictably, Quill decides to drive a bus through the problem). Meanwhile, Ram and April, Charlie and Matteusz have angsty teenage conversations about love (actually shagging is probably the most unusual teenage behaviour Charlie’s demonstrated thus far) which unsubtly mirror the Lankin’s desire for its victims to reach back to touch it, to only connect.

YMMV on whether drawing inspiration from Buffy’s soapy final series is necessarily a good thing, and whether an episode quite this static and talky works quite this early in the run (it’d be like following Rose and The End of the World with Boom Town). I think it’s slow and a bit earnest, but there are some solid moments like the jump scare when Ram’s recently deceased date Rachel appears. Katherine Kelly continues to be the best thing about it.

Next Time: Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart