Diagnosed with stress and various other atavus-related problems, Renee is made to check into a special centre to relax. Unfortunately she starts seeing atavus everywhere and starts to go mad. Then again, maybe there are atavus everywhere…

This episode is just hateful, really. Let's start at the beginning: Renee enters a room where there's an atavus threatening a baby which it is holding. What does our hero do? Blasts away, regardless of the child's safety. When the atavus then takes the kid's mother as a hostage, Renee's plan remains the same, and both atavus and mum fall from a window. Now, while I appreciate that Renee did try to pull the woman back up, had she not been firing randomly in the first place she wouldn't have had the problem. Therefore, while Street is sitting about saying 'It's not your fault', clearly it is, so I have no sympathy for what Ms Palmer is going through.

Then there's the main plot. Howlyn decides to make Renee go mad by turning up at the health place and essentially scaring her. The thing that would have been interesting is if Renee really wasn't seeing the atavus and this story was about her stress and recovery. By making it the most obvious outcome available, any punch the episode might have had is lost. Plus only Howlyn really gets involved once again; his other allies serve little function on the boat.

The resort manager and his wife are quite fun little characters but that doesn't make up for a very lazy storyline that has little to offer but the blindingly obvious.

*

Would you like to go to the Earth: Final Conflict Season Five guide, head back to the main TV reviews page, read older reviews in the Reviews Archive or return to the front page?