As the second episode of Vigil begins, Erin Branning (Lolita Chakrabarti) stops DS Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) to ask her about the search she just performed. DS Longacre tells her to open the gate and refuses to talk about the search. While Branning wants a debriefing, she doesn’t detain Longacre, so the gate is opened, and Kirsten is allowed to leave. Meanwhile, the others deal with panic onboard Vigil. They put on gas masks and rush in as the chamber begins filling with nitrogen. Walsh (Daniel Portman) is taken to Tiffany Docherty (Anjli Mohindra) who begins caring for him immediately. Commander Neil Newsome (Paterson Joseph) learns the battery has been restored thanks to the emergency battery. Newsome and Prentice (Adam James) learn it was an emergency shutdown without an emergency. Tara Kierly (Lois Chimimba) interrupts and says there could be four or five above them since it is very noisy up there.

Once they notice Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) listening to them, Elliot Glover (Shaun Evans) is tasked with getting rid of her. They likely have three hours of battery power so Prentice is put in charge of arranging a diesel replenishment. Amy learns how bad things really are and that they could sink while Newsome asks his officer to find out if they’re being shadowed. Silva turns her attention to Burke (Martin Compston) and the fact he was discharged after the trawler when down. Glover admits Craig got into an argument with his superior and it was a stupid thing to do. Silva keeps pushing until she learns Craig died before Glover had a chance to log it in the duty logbook. He shows her where it is found before returning to work. Meanwhile, Tiffany and Adams (Tom Gill) work on Walsh. Although Walsh is able to talk, Tiffany still suspects the worse. She tells him to keep putting saline in his eyes and begins removing his clothes.

As for Adams, he says his vision keeps blurring. Nevertheless, Hadlow is eager to get him back to work. At Silva’s flat, Kirsten cares for the kitty and watches a man advocate against the weapons. She tries to open one of the files on the disk, but her access is denied. She gets a call from DS Porter (Reuben Joseph) who confirms he has the names of the people who beat up Burke. They decide to go for a pizza before Kirsten hides the thumb drive in a bowl nearby. When Kirsten meets with Porter, she learns that Gary Walsh and another man beat the crap out of Craig Burke at a local pub. The other guy was Navy, but nobody could identify him. She checks the database for information and finds that Gary has a brother in the Navy as well. One was dishonorably discharged, and Sam has a record of shoplifting and possession of heroin.

Once she finds that out, she contacts Branning to send a message to Silva. Meanwhile, Amy talks to Prentice about Burke’s problem the day before he died. When she learns about Burke’s troubles, she asks about Gary Walsh being put on charge too. Amy continues until Prentice gets upset with her and tells her how challenging his work right now is. He explains he needs to get the ship refueled without being detected before leading her elsewhere. He takes her to Newsome and tells him what Silva has been doing. Newsome tells her he won’t confine her to quarters, but he wants her to have Glover with her when she works. Heather Cronin (Bobby Rainsbury) is put in charge of escorting Silva to Glover’s office. Kirsten returns and hears something in the flat. She calls the police department to tell them she has been burgled and the suspect might still be there.

She is soon attacked before stabbing the man with a pair of scissors. When the police show up in the distance, the intruder gets away on a motorcycle with another man. Silva gets Kirsten’s message and learns about Walsh and his brother. She searches Walsh’s room and tests his hidden sweets for heroin before turning her attention to Burke’s green fleece. She believes they would’ve only got rid of the fleece if it has incriminated them. Since they can’t throw things away down there, she thinks they can find it. She decides to talk to Walsh while Kirsten tells Colin Robertson (Gary Lewis) about the thumb drive she found in Burke’s room. She learns that Shaw (Stephen Dillane) wants to meet with her. Kirsten argues that Burke was a whistleblower of sorts.

She believes that is just the tip of the iceberg since the main folders are all password protected. Once Silva meets with Walsh, Tiffany asks Glover to check on Adams because he wasn’t well. Then, Silva begins asking Walsh a handful of questions. She asks what Prentice put him on charge for, but he pretends not to remember. He tells her he was in engineering at the time and didn’t leave. Then, he went to his bunk for a nap and slept until Hadlow woke him up. He isn’t sure why Hadlow came to wake up Burke. Walsh is adamant that Burke was a prick, but he didn’t kill him. She wonders if someone was trying to kill him in the reactor area, but Burke doesn’t believe so. She wants him to do a drug test since she found traces of heroin in his belongings. He says his brother is the junkie and not him before trying to do the urine test in front of her.

They step outside and Tiffany says she can’t spring something like this on one of her patients. Silva insists it will clear Walsh since he couldn’t have met Burke on the missile deck if his alibi holds up. Walsh yells that he is finished before intentionally spilling the urine on Amy. Glover quickly tells him to clean it up. She tells him he needs to drink more water before returning and testing the sample. She confirms the sample is negative for opiates and suggests he didn’t bring them on board for his own use. Glover insists she isn’t doing herself any favors by treating Walsh this way, but she is convinced he is involved somehow. He encourages her to get some sleep before she admits she doesn’t understand why they don’t want her to find out the truth. Elliot tells her how important trust is on the ship since it is being led by people making split second decisions. Robertson and Kirsten meet with Branning and Shaw.

Shaw admits they’re getting a boat to replace Vigil so Silva could stay until it returns. That would give her three weeks and Shaw promises to cooperate. Branning says they want to be debriefed when they’ve been working on the base. They agree not to call it a murder investigation before Kirsten asks about the trawler sinking off Barra Head. Shaw tells them what they’re doing and says the cause has not been confirmed. Once they leave, Robertson and Longacre agree they believe Silva is right and it is murder. Kirsten admits she ignored Jade earlier, but she’d like to talk to Branning again. Kirsten asks her immediately, but Branning recommends putting it in an email. Kirsten insists they need to work faster than that. Branning says it must work both ways and they need to be debriefed. Kirsten agrees to cooperate more before Branning says she wasn’t at the pub during the fight.

Burke allegedly went to the pub to apologize because Douglas Walsh had been involved in bullying at the base. Burke gave evidence against Doug, and he was discharged as a result. Doug killed himself and Burke showed up at his wake at the pub to apologize to Gary. Branning confirms she knows who the second guy was. Meanwhile, Amy Silva dreams about her past. The 8-year-old asked her to marry her boyfriend and she admits she might be coming around to it. Then, the accident occurs. The submarine experiences another calamity when it reaches periscope depth. Tiffany explains they’re close to the surface, and it is a bit rough. She is told to stay out of the way before getting the next message from Kirsten. The letter confirms that the other person involved in the fight was Engineering Office Simon Hadlow. During the middle of the chaos, she approaches Hadlow and records their conversation.

She questions him about his relationship with Burke and he lies. She presses him and tells him what a jury would think about the evidence she already has. Hadlow insists it wasn’t him or Walsh, but nobody meant to kill him. He says he can’t talk about it right now because of the chain of command. Prentice interrupts and ridicules both until the conversation abruptly ends. Prentice takes her back to her room and she leaves her phone recording. She insists she is going to continue doing her job regardless. They get into a heated argument and Prentice curses Craig Burke who he calls treacherous. He argues that Burke got exactly what was coming to him. He locks the door and leaves her, so she begins calling for help. Next, Kirsten tracks down Jade (Lauren Lyle) among the advocates and tries to get her to talk about Craig Burke. Kirsten explains she found a USB stick he wanted Jade to have. Jade wants it back. Kristen wants the password to the main folder. She tells Jade what they did to her to try to get the USB stick. She insists it could be MI5, but Kirsten isn’t sure about that. Ben Oakley (Cal MacAninch) interrupts and doesn’t like the fact Jade is talking to a police officer.

Once Ben leaves, Jade thinks they’ll say he was a bad guy, but he wasn’t. The Captain finds that the submarine is scarily close to another ship so he orders them to go deeper. They brace themselves for a collision. As Amy tries to kick the door down, it reminds her of the traumatic event from her past. The submarine manages to slip under the other boat. Matthew Doward (Lorne MacFadyen) is scolded for not hearing the other ship. Amy gives up on bashing the door down and decides to climb through the nearby vent hole. Glover finds Amy sitting on the ground, but she insists she is fine. He says the boat has come up so everything is going to be fine. She tells him about Prentice locking her in before collapsing to the ground. Glover walks her through the panic attack, and she tells him about the accident with her family. In a flashback, we see that Amy decided to save the little girl and let the man drown since he was knocked out in the car anyway.

Once she saved her daughter, she tried to go back for him but couldn’t get him out. They’re interrupted by Cronin who says they’re going to have a briefing in twenty minutes. Amy tells Glover she is going to need his help. At the camp, Jade tells a friend she met someone who knows what happened to Craig and she is going to meet them. She insists they want to help and know everything that has happened. Meanwhile, the Captain needs to find out what to do next. Hadlow believes they should wait around the surface, but Newsome does not. Hadlow says they need to find out why the reactor was shut down in the first place. Newsome says to get it ready. Amy approaches Prentice and says she is arresting him for obstructing an investigation. Matthew listens as Newsome tells them to follow him. During this time, Glover searches the submarine and finds something interesting. Amy questions Prentice about Burke and Gary Walsh.

He claims he doesn’t remember why there were no punishments for Gary Walsh, but she doesn’t believe that. Amy lays out her theory that Walsh tried to plant heroin on Burke to get him kicked out to avenge his brother. She confirms she swabbed Prentice’s cabin and wonders what he’ll say when those swabs come back positive for heroin. He says he picked up the drugs from Burke’s body so he would be contaminated anyway. She asks him about calling Burke treacherous, but he denies it. She plays the recording so Prentice claims he called him that because he had been sleeping with a girl at the Dunloch Peace Camp. She thinks he picked on Burke, but he says he always played by the rules and picked him up on his poor standards. Amy asks for Hadlow to join them since she believes he witnessed the assault on the missile deck. Newsome calls for Hadlow while Amy says she believes Prentice hit Burke and caused him to bleed.

When he found Burke dead, he panicked and planted the drugs on Burke’s body. Before long, Hadlow arrives and is promptly questioned about seeing someone hit Burke on the missile deck. Hadlow admits he saw someone, but he didn’t see who it was. Amy asks him about the chain of command. Nevertheless, Hadlow isn’t willing to tell who he saw. He won’t give them any answers. Once Hadlow leaves, Prentice and Newsome get into an argument. Newsome says being married to an admiral’s daughter doesn’t make you an admiral yet. Prentice demands to have Amy locked away until they can get her off the boat. Otherwise, he’ll write the book on Newsome’s many, many failings. Glover interrupts and reveals he has found Burke’s fleece. He confirms Amy told him to search the direct route from Burke’s cabin to Prentice’s cabin and found it around there. As for Walsh, he admitted to trying to frame Burke and says Prentice took them. Once Glover leaves, the captain learns the engine room is ready. He tells Prentice he is stood down and will be confined to his cabin.

Kirsten gets a call from Jade who wants her to come and meet her. Jade thinks she has messed up. She was meant to meet someone, but she wants to talk to Kirsten about it first. Kirsten rushes to her location and gets a text message from Jade saying Purity. She calls Porter and tells him to try Purity on the USB stick. He tries it, the password works, and he finds tons of files on the stick. Prentice asks Amy not to go after Hadlow and he knew Walsh was trying to frame Burke. Then, he claims Burke asked him to meet him there on the missile deck. He says they got into a fight and he has bruises to prove it. Burke hit his head. He went to his bunk to apologize but Burke died in front of him. Prentice confesses to using the heroin to try to cover it up and says he didn’t want to lose everything he had worked for because of one punch. She searches the fleece and finds a stain on it. Prentice says Burke was comatose but twitching when he found him.

He insists he didn’t hit him that hard since he didn’t lose consciousness. Amy insists there is someone else she needs to speak to before rushing out of the room. Porter watches Burke’s video in which he reminds Jade what to do with the stuff he put together. A car approaches Jade on the car road and stops. Amy decides to talk to Adams. He tells her about his symptoms and confirms he gave Burke mouth to mouth. She argues he needs to see the medic as soon as possible before rushing off once again. Newsome tells everyone they’re going to restart the reactor and what could happen. The process begins while everyone waits anxiously to see what is going to happen. Full power is restored after a few tense moments. Then, Shaw learns they’ve found the wreck of the missing trawler, the Mhairi Finnea. He orders to have them dive at first light. Amy goes to Glover to say she thinks she is wrong about Prentice because he did what he did thinking he killed Burke.

She thinks Burke was poisoned. Kirsten arrives at the meeting point only to find Jade missing. She looks around and finds Jade’s lifeless body in the water nearby. She tries to resuscitate her but it is too late.

 

Vigil Review

Vigil has everything it needs to be incredibly successful including a massive budget, great cast, and unique setting. As this episode dragged on, I began to wonder whether the thing that makes Vigil unique is the one thing that hurts it the most. The show already has too much going on with Amy’s past, Kirsten’s investigation on land, and most importantly the submarine. Although the submarine idea is ambitious, it might add too much to an already overloaded bag.

It doesn’t help that the things that matter the most have been predictable. Amy’s escape, Jade’s death, and Kirsten’s attack were expected. I also noticed something odd about the vehicle crashing into the water. There wasn’t a road anywhere near the spot where the vehicle sunk. With a normal BBC budget, Vigil would’ve been mediocre at best. With the massive budget it had, Vigil is a serious disappointment through two episodes. Could that change? Possibly, but I don’t see it happening. The second episode scores a 6.5 out of 10. Previous and future recaps of Vigil can be found on Reel Mockery here.