This Nightsleeper episode 3 recap contains spoilers… The real-time drama continues to gather pace, as Abby Aysgarth hatches a plot to put The Heart of Britain on a separate line, while we find out that Rachel Li had a clandestine meeting with a member of the terrorist group…
Tobi (Gabriel Howell) arrives in the NCSC incident room and tells his colleagues there are actually TWO phone jammers blocking out communications on the train, yet it’s still receiving messages from The Driver. Essentially, this means someone is driving the train in real time. However the team are also picking up a second signal from the train, pointing to a second satellite phone. Does that mean someone still on the train is part of the conspiracy?
Abby (Alexandra Roach) passes that information on to Joe, but he doesn’t share it with the other passengers. It’s not the first suspicious thing he’s encountered though and he advises the Cyber Security boss that he found a firearm on the train in the minutes leading up to the collision. “Don’t trust anyone,” says Abby.
Meanwhile it seems the French company who run The Heart of Britain are blaming the attack on the “long-underfunded British infrastructure” and saying such a thing was inevitable. The Home Office wants Abby to prove that isn’t true, which might be quite a task.
Aboard The Heart of Britain, the passengers are starting to get to know each other and in some cases, falling out. But who’s the secret villain who’s in league with cyber terrorists, BBG? Is it the wheelchair bound Chrissy Doolan (Ruth Madeley)? Yas Brown (Sharon Rooney), the member of staff who gave everyone the free drinks? Mr Oil Rig (Daniel Cahill)?
What’s the story with Joe’s son?
If it is Mr Oil Rig then he has a lot on his plate right now, because after hinting that he needs his phone back to make an important call for several hours, he finally reveals that he needs it to contact his wife, who’s in labour in London and has pre-eclampsia.
“Have you got any kids?” he asks Joe (Joe Cole), who says he has a son. We already suspected there was some serious trauma there though, after the way he responded to young Mouse when he mentioned the subject in the last episode. So what’s the story with Joe’s son?
There’s more buried trauma at the NCSC, when Pev (David Threlfall) starts talking to Abby about her father and how sorry he was to hear what happened to him. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” he says. “There’s a before and after, when they’re here and when they’re not.”
However Abby is busy thinking about the situation in front of her and wondering why someone who’s still involved in the conspiracy would remain on the train? She’s also confused about how this hacking group is planning to get away with this vast plot, without being caught afterwards..
Yet the debrief with Pev seems to have given her a bit of inspiration, because as soon as they’re back on the floor, she hatches a plan to take the runaway train off the West Coast Mainline at Carlisle and put it on the line to Settle. That line isn’t electrified, so the train will automatically started using its diesel back-up, which will only last for a couple of hours.
“I couldn’t stop the train so I tried to stop the clock,” says Abby, suggesting they put The Heart of Britain on a loop. “You’re literally going nowhere!” she tells Joe. Alan Partridge, eat your heart out.
Is Rachel Li part of the conspiracy?
Back on the train, Joe is keeping an eye out for anyone looking suspicious and his eyes widen when he sees Erin Connolly (Lois Chimimba) throwing her bag off the train. But what was it there that she was so keen to get rid of?
There’s also news about the wife of Daniel Geoghan – aka Oil Rig Man. Mother and child are in critical condition, but Joe decides not to tell him that. Whether it’s a good decision or not remains to be seen.
Meanwhile the team at NCSC are going through all the passengers to try and work out who could be the conspirator. They zero in on Sophie Warren (Leah MacRae) and Drinks lady, Yas Brown (Sharon Rooney), who could both have financial reasons for joining the plot. However it seems Erin Connolly – aka Bag Lady – is a student who works at the same hotel the lady with the baby from Glasgow station was last seen heading into. Could she be part of the plot?
When the team pulls CCTV from the hotel they find that Erin did serve the lady with the pram at the hotel, yet it was journalist Rachel Li who sat down and had a meeting with her. Abby tries to warn Joe, but after dropping the phone, Rachel Li (Katie Leung) picks it up. Eeeep.
Abby soon has another problem though, because the train is starting to accelerate and the lines aren’t designed to deal with a locomotive going at such speed. Luckily there’s a helicopter buzzing overhead, which finally gets eyes on the train in time to see Joe trying to break down the toilet door and get to Rachel Li, who now has the satellite phone. At that moment the train comes to a juddering halt, perched on a viaduct.
The police are on their way and will be on the train in less than five minutes, but the passengers are starting to turn on Rachel Li after hearing about her meeting the woman with the pram at the Glasgow Hotel. Under pressure from Sophie, she admits that she does know something about what’s happened, but swears she’s not involved.
“I was contacted a week ago,” she says. “They said there was going to be an incident,” says Rachel, who’s been working on a piece about hacking for months and wanted to be on the train. She then reveals the woman gave her a USB stick (what is this? 2011?)
But Oil Rig Man isn’t waiting around to find out what’s on it, because after Joe hints that his wife’s labour isn’t going to plan, he jumps out of the window and begins clambering along the train, which is now going backwards, towards the driver’s carriage. Yet when it stops suddenly, he’s thrown onto the track.
Meanwhile at the NCSC, Abby finds out that they’ve lost control of everything, not just the train, but the whole rail network. It’s bad news for Oil Rig Man, because the train runs him over, killing him instantly.
At Victoria Station, a message reading “The Heart of Britain is no longer arriving at Euston” flashes up on the screens, as the runaway train leaves the loop and heads off into the unknown…