‘How many knobs does he have?’ The cheapie episode sees the Class-mates detained after hours by Quill, only for them to be hit by a meteor shower and the classroom to be ejected into space. Trapped together with no means of escape, uncomfortable truths and darkest fears bubble to the surface.

It was an ambitious idea to do a one-room story with only the regulars. Sometimes, these can be standout episodes. This isn’t. It’s fine, but these characters aren’t really interesting or deep enough for their fears to be especially compelling: Charlie is a bit claustrophobic but rejects the notion of being a pampered prince; Ram is worried April doesn’t feel the same about him as he feels about her; Tanya feels like she’s the baby of the group; Matteusz sometimes recoils from the alien inside his boyfriend. The one person that might have made this really intriguing is Quill, but, as the teasing cliffhanger suggests, she’s been off having her own adventures.

What remains is admirable in its intent, but these characters, at least in only their sixth episode, lack the hinterland to make it workable. Like much of Class, this feels like it’s trying to bypass the heavy lifting and jump straight to the kind of thing an established show might do in its third series. These people are all too fresh, their adventures all too recent in the audience’s memory, for them to have enough wool on their backs to carry it off.

Next Time: The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did