Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 2, Episode 5 Review

So, after several weeks of teasing, Agents of SHIELD finally answers the question: what happened to Simmons?
This of course means a return to everyone's favourite blue-tinted desert planet, and the introduction of yet another character and story-line to this already busy season. If Inhumans, Lash and the ACTU wasn't enough, the mystery of the blue planet and the rescue mission of Will, not to mention "it". Whatever "it" is.
"4, 722 hours" gave us a very different episode of Agents of SHIELD, styled almost like a hybrid of "Sleep No More" and "Heaven Sent" from last year's series of Doctor Who, with the embedded title card and single-character-focus of the piece...until Will came along. Just swap Simmons for The Doctor, "it" for the Veil and the desert planet to a castle planet and you have a very similar episode. Or maybe I'm too much of a Who fan. Hmmm...

In terms of production quality, this episode provided some great visual moments, ruined of course by the apallingly amateur colour corrections. When Will mentions that the planet is consistently in night time, I suddenly realized that the colour corrections were in fact meant to make it look like the planet was in night-time and not just make everything look blue. Well done, Agents of SHIELD editors. At least we can rely on the dialogue to understand this.
The first half of the episode was quite slow, building up several mysteries to explore, and then the episode provided us with a sense of ambiguity as to "it". According to fellow captive Will, "it" is like the planet's Death, turning those trapped insane. "It" also wears an astronaut suit, for reasons unknown. I can think of a million simple explanations the episode could have given us, but why do we need explanations when we can have mystery box approaches to stories? The episode didn't need to have such an open ending, and would probably serve the series better if it did conclude this story thread, but clearly the writers have other ideas.

To be honest though, "4,722 hours" is a very enjoyable and very interesting episode of Agents of SHIELD. It consistently manages to keep up the suspense while also creating a deep human connection with its two main characters. There are far too many mysteries to tell whether this episode will stand the test of time, but other than the criticisms I have mentioned, this really was a great episode. 8/10