Well, there's the hook - the threatened party was the DI's freshly-ex other half. Bit of a sudden split, that. Why do all TV cops have to have a dysfunctional relationship?
So this time they managed to save the day - so did they change the future? No one said it , but therein lies the paradox. If they saved the boy how could the photographs exist of an event that never happened? It felt a bit soon for a definite we-did-it episode, so unless a later story revisits it and reveals some hidden twist we've got a very uncertain future.
King isn't so sure, he prefers the multiple worlds theory: every decision made splits the world into two, one for each outcome. Anyone familiar with binary, or the chessboard problem sees that this leads to a colossal number of worlds in a very short time. (Computer geeks like myself instinctively know that eight yes/no decisions gives 256 worlds - how many decisions do you make each day?)
And if, in addition to conscious decisions made by people, you allow for random events with many outcomes, that number becomes practically infinite very quickly. So I exist in one of the half-infinite worlds where I didn't choke to death on a Malteaser (it can happen!), but there's an equal number where I didn't.
From a dramatic standpoint this is unsatisfactory. There are no heroes; for each time Bond survives being shot at there's an equally valid world where he didn't. You don't forge your destiny, you just meander through the worlds where your luck held. Until it doesn't.
One of the weaknesses of the second episode is that half the pictures were taken indoors. In the pilot it looked like they were taken from above. (Perhaps the Prometheus II had a powerful camera on board, or forwarded the pictures from a spy satellite.) But the second eight (always eight - another binary link?) showed a boy in a cellar, inside a shed.
No spy camera is that good so, even ignoring the who and why, there'll have to be conjecture on what is taking the pictures and where from. Tonight will have speculation that a 'higher power' is involved. But for good or ill? Even trying to save someone's life can be a bad deed if it muddies the future. Read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, by Stephen Donaldson, for an extended example of do-gooders getting themselves in deeper!
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