Episode Guide
Last Day – | Review Score – 4/5 Crash – | Review Score – 3/5 Orion – | Review Score – 3/5 The King Is Dead – | Review Score – 2/5 Going Home – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Home Invasion – | Review Score – 3.5/5 Hope – | Review Score – 2/5 Contact – | Review Score – 2.5/5 Full Of Stars – | Review Score – 2.5/5 First Day – | Review Score – 2/5 Invasion is a character drama disguised as an alien invasion thriller. It’s a show that promises big things, looks close to delivering on that and then ultimately disappoints. The first episode starts off really promisingly. An eerie atmosphere descends over the world as aliens begin to show up. Four separate groups of characters (five if you count Sam Neill’s brief appearance in episode 1) across the the world each deal with their own close encounters, trying to survive and thwart the threat. In Japan, engineer Mitsuki finds herself emotionally invested in a failed space mission in JASA. It seems aliens have smashed into the shuttle holding her lover, Hoshi, and she struggles to communicate with her and figure out what the aliens want. Occupying the military boots on the ground is Trevante, a soldier in Afghanistan. His whole squad investigate a strange signal, only to come face to face with the alien threat. In London, Casper and his classmates end up in the middle of this invasion when debris crash around their school bus, tumbling down a steep cliff. There’s a real Lord of the Flies angle to this before Casper’s significance in the invasion itself – and some of the meaning behind his foreshadowed sketches – is explored. Finally, the Malik family round out this quartet of story lines, with Aneesha and Ahmed going through marital issues when the latter cheats on his wife. However, they’re both thrown into a pressure cooker situation, forced to team up to try and survive. The trouble is, Invasion is so preoccupied with its soapy character drama that it forgets about the aliens completely. The invasion itself though is one of the most uninteresting and lackadaisical ever shot, with episodes 4, 6 and 9 the only examples of significant action. While that in itself isn’t bad, the show is just outright boring at times. The characters just aren’t that interesting and don’t have enough depth to carry this one. With the exception of Mitsuki, no one really grows or changes or has a definable arc. Numerous questions remain unanswered and worst, the final episode concludes everything and then teases a last minute cliffhanger for a second season that may or may not arrive. Invasion is certainly lavishly produced and there are some moments of genuine tension. Some of the cliffhangers are unnerving and episode 1 in particular is fantastic at building up a sustainable level of suspense. The trouble is, this soon dissipates and stagnates into a humdrum of boredom. Given the sheer wealth of good TV content this year, Invasion is a below-average disappointment. Its an indifferent shrug to alien invasion fiction and doesn’t have interesting enough characters to carry its long, drawn out scenes of fluff. A real boring disappointing; Invasion is not one to remember.
