Catching up with Outcasts - Episode 6

I'm still loving absolutely loving Outcasts, it really is the best thing on TV at the moment. I think it's such a shame that the BBC have been so quick to move it to a late night Sunday slot just because it hasn't achieved good ratings/good public feedback. The BBC is supposed to be all about championing challenging new dramas and introducing them to new audiences, so by being so limp-wristed at backing Outcasts at the first time of trouble, it really goes against this. Hopefully they'll still have the faith to make a second series, because quite frankly, there's so much more to Carpathia and its characters that I want to find out.

As it stands, we've got only a couple of episodes left to tie everything up, a rather large feat considering the dramatic end to episode five as another landing ship was revealed, floating in high-orbit over the planet. And even more chilling, Julius was in contact with it. His creepiness goes without saying; whether it's his quasi-religious speeches or silver-tongued persuasiveness, he represents himself as the ultimate manipulator.

In Episode six we got a fascinating exploration into the introduction of the idea that there are 'things' out there on Carpathia. We saw Tate 'seeing'his children, convinced they were real and not a hallucination. And now everyone sees a creepy duplicate of soldier Josie Hunter. Her kids can tell something's not quite right, and so can we, already underminding the immense swell of emotion we felt when she stumbled safely home from the dangers of the desert.

One line got to me more than any other this episode though, when one of Josie's kids tells us the fake Josie that kidnapped them 'wanted to know what love was'. This sent a chill right down my spine, similar to how I felt when I saw the skulls and bones Stella uncovered in the previous episode. We have to remember that although Outcasts has kept many traditional sci-fi elements on the back-burner, what we have here is essentially, that good old staple - an alien. A being not of Earth. Whether it will be truly 'revealed' this series remains to be seen though.

Other highlights this episode were a couple of ACs breaking into Forthaven and turning all the lights off; the sight of a disembodied hand surging up through the sand to claw a tunnel under the perimeter fence was thrilling and acted as a nice little parallel story to all the Josie Hunter stuff.

I'd like to give mention to the series' brilliant music too; the main theme and the various variations of it are beautiful and fit the look and feel of the show so well.