Very unevenly paced episode, the first act being a light-hearted treatment of Abby and her friends' attempts to begin farming, and the arrival of Paul with his helpful insights.
Interesting rumour mentioned by Tom Price that the 'Japs' have come up with a vaccine for the plague. A reference to how it's the ingenious Japanese who work out that ultrasound is the way to defeat the adversary in The Kraken Wakes? Then again, talk about shutting the stable door. 99.98% of the human race have already died.
Then the second act concerns the arrival of fund manager Arthur Russell and 'his secretary' Charmian. I know a point is being made here about the worthlessness of financial claims from the old world, but that point has already been made, with far greater elegance, in episode 1 with the bag of banknotes; and they're such a ridiculous pair that I can't believe in them at all. How are they supposed to have survived the last six months?
Also, Charmian has not had the plague, but Russell has. According to what we learnt in ep 5, he would have transmitted it to her even after he recovered. Unless she has the natural immunity possessed by Jenny, Greg and Tom amongst others. What are the odds though that he should be one of the very few people to have the plague and live ('we've had one survival') at the same time that she should be one of the (equally?) few to possess natural immunity?
Tbh I don't think all the writers are on the same page regarding the plague (or 'the Death' as it's first referred to in this ep). As with the 'vaccine' rumour previously mentioned. Yes, it's just a rumour, but it makes me suspect the writer thinks the plague is still an ongoing thing.
The third act jarringly changes gear into a 'real time' account of Paul and Greg rescuing Tom Price and Barney from their expedition to the quarry, last seen in ep 2. We're given a very broad hint that the quarry's defenders are a mechanical device, but then we still have to watch 5 or 10 minutes of Greg's outflanking manoeuvre before the reveal. Credit where it's due, though, I thought it would be Anne inside the hut rather than the man she callously abandoned (now given a motivation and a name, Vic).
Closing sequence has an entirely unnecessary repeat of the Give Way thing from the start of ep 4.
We really are moving away now from what first interested me about this programme. Eps 1-4 had a transformative effect on me, but the subsequent ones don't seem to be treating the situation seriously enough. Care isn't being taken with the locations either; indoors and outdoors they are much too tidy for a world 6 months post-apocalypse.
Astronomical glitch with Tom explaining that he and Barney couldn't have escaped their pindown during the night because there was a moon. But we're told earlier on that a fortnight has elapsed since ep 7, in which Greg and Jenny were holed up in the minibus on a night with a bright full moon. If that was a fortnight ago then last night was the dark of the moon, the best possible night on which to escape.
(Then again, perhaps Tom is lying about the moon, I accidentally read a terrible spoiler about an upcoming ep, which suggested that lying is very much his forte).
Further to the dating question: Abby said in ep 5 that September 8th [year 1] was 'before the plague', and I used that as backup for my theory based on the weather in ep 1 that the plague struck no later than October/November [year 1]. (I'm getting fed up saying [year 1] so I'm going to assume that year 1 is 1975 henceforth).
Now, I notice that the London arrival stamp in the opening credits has the date Sep 2, and the latest of the international stamps is Sep 4. That can help us date ep 1, which we know starts on a Monday afternoon. Mon Sep 15 1975? I think that's too close, Abby might have said Sep 8 was 'the week before the plague' if it had been Sep 15. So the earliest it can be is Sep 22, 1975, and on the other evidence the latest possible date is Mon Dec 1.
Vic says that Anne left '3 or 4 months ago', putting ep 2 in Nov or Dec. Today must be at least March 15th; we can refer to moon phase tables but, as noted above, there are conflicting claims about when the last full moon was. We definitely saw a full moon in ep 7, so going by that, this episode would finish on Wed Mar 31 1976. But retaining the doubt, today is Mar 15-31 so ep 2 was Nov 7-Jan 7, so the earliest date for ep 1 is Mon Oct 27 1975.
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