TV episode review
UK airdate 9 February 2010 (BBC One)

WARNING: Contains spoilers if you haven’t seen this episode!

The Family have to mount a rescue to get Tom and Greg away from the slave conditions down the mine...

The ramifications of Tom Price's trial and Samantha's subsequent betrayal of him continue to affect this episode, in which you're never quite sure how certain characters are going to react.

Tom's lack of faith in human nature is sorely tested, both by Greg's attempted rescue from Samantha's commune at the end of the previous episode, and then by everyone coming to try to save him. By the end there's far more acceptance by the Family of each other's weaknesses to the extent that the others seem to condone Tom taking another life.

There's a rare opportunity for a discussion about the ethics of survival, with the pragmatic Henry Smithson taking a hard line with the more idealistic Anya and Abby – a neat reversal, since Smithson is a former lecturer. There's also an object lesson in the brutality of survival, when the tables are turned on Smithson and assistants at the end of the episode.

Finally, after the brief cameo at the end of the first season, we get confirmation that Peter Grant is still alive, with some dramatic irony that it's Tom who unwittingly sets him free. Hopefully that plotline will be resolved in a slightly different way from the source novel (in which Peter kills his mother)! Paul Simpson

VERDICT: 7/10