Wasteland

A bank gets ram-raided in broad daylight, which is a strange way to start a story about religious fanaticism. But that is where Charlie Scott's investigation lands: a cult called the Core, devoted to a leader who likes to chop off fingers and whose members are ready to die for him. The cult has form for bank robbery, which gives the squad its hook into them.

Grace Harris goes in undercover as a new recruit, which means sitting through the group's rituals with her fingers very much in mind. And her work confirms Scott's worst fears: these people mean the martyrdom talk. Then the leader torches the building, and the case becomes a Waco-style siege with a gunfight in the middle of it.

All of this happens while Scott's wife Stephanie is in labour. The episode cuts between the blaze and the hospital, which sounds gimmicky and works better than it should. There is a real chance Scott does not get out of the raid to see his first child, and the episode lets that sit.

Len Collin wrote it, Douglas Mackinnon directed, and it aired on 27 July 1996, closing the first series on its biggest set piece. Reece Dinsdale's Scott carries the worry; Pooky Quesnel's Harris is the one actually inside the burning building. Brendan Coyle's Tate, Lynda Steadman's Ash, Robert Willox's Donachie, Gary McDonald's Oxford and David Sterne's Uttley are along for it. Rory Edwards plays Peter, Peter McNamara plays Seth, and Neil Stuke plays Gideon.

The Core makes for the grimmest villains the show has fielded, and the finger business is the sort of detail you do not forget. Wasteland is loud, and it ends the series loud. Whether Scott makes it home to his new family is left hanging, and the episode is better for it.