Invasion 2.3: Casper and Luke

[Spoilers ahead ....] 

The high profile thread in Invasion 2.3 is Mitsuki hacking the invaders' code, with the result that a whole bunch of their ships (seven -- of course not all) fall mostly into the sea.  A very important development, to be sure, but that wasn't the most interesting part of episode 2.3 for me.

And that would be the special connection that Casper and Luke, on two different continents, have to the invaders.  We don't see Casper in 2.3, but Trevante -- now in the same American small town as Sheriff Tyson in Season 1 -- has one of Casper's drawings, and Trevante is beginning to put two and two together, though the math and the situation is much more complex than that.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Luke has quite a night, sensing that the invaders are increasing their attack, going out to fight them, and making what could be a romantic connection with one of the young women in the group.  Unfortunately, though, this part of the story has no happy ending, as Luke's mother finds his sister missing at the end of the episode.

The connection that Casper and Luke have to the invaders raises all kinds of questions.  First and foremost would be: why do they have those connections?  Were the invaders here on Earth prior to the invasion featured in the TV series?  Are Casper and Luke in some biological sense related to the invaders?  Can they telepathically connect to each other?  Are they unique, or are there other people like them?  (In a way, Mitsuki has that connection.)  Or, is it possible that all humans have that kind of brain, but the connection has to be triggered to be realized?

I like those kinds of questions, and that's just one of the reasons that I continue to like this unusual series.

See also Invasion 2.1: Tenuous Meeting of the Minds

And see also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders ... Invasion 1.8: Contact! ... Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning ... Invasion 1.10: Peering Through the Opaque

first starship to Alpha Centauri, with just enough fuel to get there

Invasion 2.2: Jamila and Trevante

Episode 2.2 of Invasion had two good, non-intersecting stories about Jamila in the UK and Trevante in the USA.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

I thought Jamila's story was tighter at this point than Trevante's.  She's determined to find Casper. She knows he has some sort of mental connection and control over the invaders.  She feels she's been in some sort of touch with him.  She joins up with the two of the young gents from last season, picks up another other guy and his young sister, and they're off to Paris, where she has reason to believe Casper may be, and the newbies say their parents have a flat.  The makings of a good story.

Trevante's starts off a little lamely.  He saves his young nephew, who jumps into the deep end of a pool, and screams at him after he's out of the water and awake.  Trevante's sister is so furious at him for screaming at the kid that she throws Trevante out of the house.  Does that make sense?  She wouldn't be happy about Trevante screaming at her son, true, but where's her gratitude for Trevante saving the boy's life?

Fortunately, Trevante finds a better reason to leave Florida -- he finds there's some kind of invader activity in Oklahoma.  At this point, his story gets back on track, as he maneuvers his way to getting where he wants to go, and gets put behind bars for his effort.

In both cases -- Jamila's and Trevante's -- the authorities and their military and police are worse than useless. getting in the way of our heroes, obstructing their worthy actions, at every turn.  This is an old story in science fiction, but one which alas seems ever reasonable.   See what I said about governments and invaders from space on Ancient Alien (at 1 min 23 seconds in the video) 13 years ago:

And I'll be back here next week with something to say about the next episode of Invasion.

See also Invasion 2.1: Tenuous Meeting of the Minds

And see also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders ... Invasion 1.8: Contact! ... Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning ... Invasion 1.10: Peering Through the Opaque

first starship to Alpha Centauri, with just enough fuel to get there

Invasion 2.1: Tenuous Meeting of the Minds

Invasion -- the latest narrative that explores an H. G. Well's War of the Worlds scenario -- is back on Apple TV+ with the first episode of its second season.  It's entitled "Something's Changed," but I don't think all that much has changed, unless change is defined as zooming into elements that were already there in the first season, which is fine with me.

Episode 2.1 is indeed less crowded with simultaneous stories of the interstellar invasion that were happening all over the world, and I found myself missing that frenetic, often inchoate pace.  On the other hand, at least one of the remaining segments has some promise, and the other one coming into focus looks like a pretty good if less original story, too.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

The mind-bending story, maybe literally, is Mitsuki's, who opts to go face-to-face, or mind-to-mind, with the interstellar intelligence mounting the invasion, although I guess we don't know that this billowy entity mounted the invasion for sure.  Significantly, Mitsuki is not so much brave as certain that she'll survive this encounter, because she already feels some undefined connection to the invaders.

How's that?  We'll no doubt find out.  But I'll hazard a guess and say that's because these destructive visitors have been here before.  In the one scene in which she and the extra-terrestrial have close to a physical but apparently not yet a figurative meeting of the minds, the two seem to know each other.  At very least, the star-traveler doesn't kill Mitsuki or destroy her mind, at least, not yet.

The other main story in this episode is Aneesha and her children, who come under the protection of the "Movement," a human para-military operation who are trying to help.  As I said, this is a far more conventional science fiction story, found not only in invaders from space narratives, but threats to the human species that come from Earthly pathogens.  But Aneesha and her kids are so appealing that I really don't mind seeing this kind of invasion story again.  

So, I'll be here watching and reviewing the second season of Invasion, and letting you know how I think it turns out.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders ... Invasion 1.8: Contact! ... Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning ... Invasion 1.10: Peering Through the Opaque

Outer Range 1.1-2: Elusive Hybrid

The hybrid of science fiction/fantasy with the western (contemporary or historical) genre has long been sought after, touted as a natural, powerful combination for a television series, for as far back as I can remember.  But it's seldom been realized, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single successful example.  Last year's Invasion on Apple TV+ took a shot with a lead-off episode out West, with no less an actor than Sam Neill in the lead -- but it was the weakest episode segment in an otherwise top-notch series.  My wife suggested Westworld as an example that achieved the elusive goal, and yes, it did, but only partially, because the heart of its narrative was not western.

But I'll never say no to a recipe which seems so logical, so I'll gave Outer Range and its first two episodes which went up on Amazon Prime Video on Friday a shot.  The upshot: I wasn't blown away by the narrative, but I liked it enough to keep watching.

[Spoilers ahead ...]

Here's the story:  On a ranch in Wyoming, Royal Abbott (well played by Josh Brolin) discovers a water hole or pond (I'm not sure what it is, or should be called) that has some strange properties.   It's not clear as yet exactly what those are either, but they may entail bringing back the dead, or some kind of time travel, if the bison that keeps appearing with some arrows in its side is any indication.  Before the two hours are over, Royal throws a dead body (whom one of his sons killed) into the water, and is shoved in the water himself by Autumn (Imogen Poots -- great name), a young woman who shows up with a deep interest in the area.  Royal comes back fine the next day -- with just a wound in his leg -- but the dead body, not as yet.  Autumn clearly has some knowledge of what's going on, but even she doesn't know the whole story -- she's surprised when Royal comes back.  It's also no doubt also significant that Royal's daughter-in-law is missing (did she fall into the water hole and then the hole disappeared, too?).

So clearly, there are a lot of provocative questions in the air, which means a lot of possibilities for this series.  I would have advised Amazon to put up all eight episodes of Outer Range, so it could be properly binged and therefore comprehended and appreciated.  But, as I said, I'm sufficiently intrigued to watch more, and I'll see you back here with my reviews of the next two episodes next week.

  

Invasion Season One Finale: Peering Through the Opaque

There's much less talking and no real combat in the Invasion Season One finale up on Apple TV+ today (yes, there will be a second season, the series was renewed two days ago).  Our main characters all over the world, still in various stages of profound shock, after what happened last week, struggle to understand what's going on.  Much like us, the viewers, on our other side of the screen.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

As I said last week, the Earthly victory felt too easy.  We knocked all the interstellar invaders with just one shot, however powerful?  Not very likely, not likely at all.

And, of course, as our point of view characters on Earth begin to come to -- that is, come to the edges of an understanding -- we find that the invaders are indeed not gone.  Some begin to glimmer and pulse back to life.  Or maybe they were never dead.  And/or maybe there are other more powerful invaders pulling their strings.

The ruptured human relationships are to some extent repaired.  Not completely.  And Trevante and the love of his life see that glimmering interstellar ship coming down, landing, in the water off the beach. Just as Heinlein intended.  It's a beautiful last scene.  What does it mean?  What do the beings in that ship want of us, of Earth?

Like all good finales that don't finally conclude a story, it's too soon to tell.  There's certainly an intelligence in that shimmering ship that we haven't seen before.  As I said early on in my reviews of this series, obviously it took some kind of massive, extraordinary intelligence to get any species out of outer space onto to this Earth.  So that glimmering ship, which looks like something from a place we've never been, just as it should,  should be no surprise.

But for all its translucence, its intentions remain opaque.  In the second season, perhaps those intentions will become more clear.  But I have a feeling that we're just at the beginning of an impossible long-form Haiku poem that has no ending.  Good.  More episodes to watch.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders ... Invasion 1.8: Contact! ... Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning

Invasion 1.9: Tables Turning

A block-buster penultimate episode of Invasion -- 1.9 -- in which it looks like the tables may be turned, or may be beginning to be turned ...

[Spoilers ahead.]

But let me see if I have this right.  Over in Tokyo, Mitsuki's sure she's in contact with Hinata, but everyone else doubts that, including her father (who's an engineer) and an audio specialist who concludes that what Mitsuki and the people in the control room are hearing is a synthetic replication of Hinata's voice.  But, at the beginning of the episode, we see that David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is very significant in Mitsuki and Hinata's relationship -- Hinata thinks Mitsuki looks like Bowie -- and, later, at a decisive moment in the control room, Bowie's "Major Tom" is suddenly broadcast from space, when Mitsuki prompts "Hinata" to play it.  (One of my favorite songs -- see my brief comments about it on WNBC News after Bowie's death in 2016.)

This convinces Mitsuki that Hinata is indeed alive.  It convinces the American military guy that this is the time to launch the attack on the invaders -- he says Mitsuki bought Earth some valuable time -- and the attack succeeds.   Here I'd just say: what kind of invaders are these, that they would so succumb so easily to the attack on them from Earth?  Wouldn't they have expected that we here on Earth would defend ourselves and counter attack in any way we could?

There are excellent action scenes in the hospital in London and the forest in the New York area, where the (presumed) destruction of the Invasion mothership stops the invading  creatures here on Earth, dead in their tracks.  Unfortunately, not in time to save Ahmed, who sacrifices his life to save Aneesha and the kids, and perhaps not Casper, either, whose survival is uncertain, given that the destruction of the invaders destroyed or disrupted a part of his mind.

And the question remains: how much if any of the invaders survived, and what kind of damage can they still mete out to us here on Earth?

But that's what season finales are for -- and I'll see you back here next week with my review.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders ... Invasion 1.8: Contact!

Invasion 1.8: Contact!

I don't usually entitle my reviews with the given title of an episode, but today's Invasion 1.8 on Apple TV+ was so much about contact, that I didn't have much choice.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

First, I realized as soon we saw Trevante's plane land in England that he would likely come into contact with Casper and Jamila, and sure enough, he did.  This is a very important development.  There's no way we beings of Earth can stand a chance against the invaders unless we pool our intelligence -- the smarts and the knowledge -- that some of us have.  Plus, after seeing the separate narratives play out in isolation in the previous seven episodes, it's good storytelling to see at least two of them come together now in episode eight.

But "contact" has crucial relevance in another important way.   We finally learn about what's going on in Casper's head and what that has to do with the invaders.  He's seen them, before they arrived.  He tells Trevante and Jamila that when he has seizures, scenes of the invaders appear in his mind.  More than anyone on Earth -- except Luke, who may have similar powers -- Casper may have seen things essential to the defense of this planet and the survival of its human inhabitants.

By the way, Billy Barratt as Casper and Shamier Anderson as Trevante work well together.  As does India Brown as Jamila, as I mentioned last week.   Only two more episodes left in what I hope is just the beginning season of Invasion.  It's time to get Luke in America and Mitsuki in Tokyo into the mix.  I'll be back here next week and let you know how I think that went.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up! ... Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders

Invasion 1.7: Two Boys and their Connection to the Invaders

Another top-notch episode -- 1.7 -- of Invasion up on Apple TV+ today, with excellent interludes in the three areas of our planet that we didn't see in last week's episode 1.6, devoted solely to the New York sector.

• In London, we got my favorite segment, as Casper tells Jamila about the voices he hears in his head, which hurt, but apparently have some connection to the interstellar invaders.  We also get to see one of them, even more clearly than last week, or perhaps this one is a more streamlined version.  It also was nice to see Jamila and Casper almost kiss.  (Good acting here by Billy Barratt as Casper and India Brown as Jamila.)  As I said in an earlier review, Casper joins Luke in New York as having some sort of relation to the invaders, and it will be fun to see how this plays out.
• In Kabul, there's no real advancement of our knowledge of the invaders, but it was heartwarming to see how Trevante managed to get that Afghan family on to the last departing plane.
• In Tokyo, we have the most outer-space focused story -- as we always do -- in which Mitsuki may have picked up a signal from her lover on board the (presumably) destroyed space shuttle.  Of course, she's stopped before she can complete her work, and verify what she's hearing, but in Invasion the government is almost worthless in every sector of the Earth.  Here again is what I said more than a decade ago on the History Channel about terrestrial governments and interstellar beings:

So Invasion continues to be a compelling series, even unique, and I'll be back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing ... Invasion 1.6: Close Up!

Invasion 1.6: Close Up!

Well, I'm beginning to feel like I'm handing out "best episodes of the season so far" like bouquets at the end of this week, but they're well deserved.  I said yesterday that Foundation 1.9 was best of the season so far -- actually, tied with Foundation 1.7 at that spot, in my opinion -- and tonight I'll say that about Invasion 1.6. In fact, I'd say it easily is the single best episode of the season so far.

Why?

First of all, it's an episode devoted completely to one family's storyline -- an approach Foundation could stand to use, once in a while, come to think of it -- and the story about the Maliks in New York was 30+ minutes of sheer adrenalin.  

The beginning sees Aneesha struggling to get back to that house with that couple that I was suspicious of, and I was sorta of right about them.  They're not in league with the interstellar invaders, just insanely afraid of them, but of course it's not insane to be afraid of them.  But the woman wants the Maliks out of her house because they're too noisy, and the husband is a little too quick to point his rife.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

And then things really get rough.  It looks like Ahmed might have been killed by an invader, but he staggers out of the house in the end.  The important thing, as far as the overall series is concerned, is that we get a pretty close look at the tentacled monsters that are attacking us.  That part was nothing we haven't seen before in countless interstellar invasion movies and TV series, but at least we got a close look at them in action.

As I said in a previous review, we still don't know if these murderous creatures are the intelligent beings that traveled through space, or in effect a living weapon being wielded against Earth by the beings from outer space that traveled here.  Four more episodes to find out at least more about that, as well as how our people are doing in the other three theaters of focus, and I'll be back with reviews of that all.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four ... Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing

Podcast Review of Invasion 1.5

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 205, in which I review the fifth episode of Invasion on Apple TV+. 

My appearance on Ancient Aliens on the History Channel in 2010

Earlier podcasts about Invasion:

• November 2, 2021, Review of Invasion 1.4 ... October 26, 2021, Review of Invasion 1.1-3

Written blog post review of Invasion 1.5 is here.

 

Check out this episode!

Invasion 1.5: The Little Creepy Crawly Thing

I thought the single most impressive thing in Invasion 1.5, up on Apple TV+ yesterday, was that little creepy crawly thing Aneesha took out of the guy on that operating table.  That saved his life, the other doctor told her.  And taking it out likely did.  But of far greater long-range consequence is that crawly thing is evidence of interstellar life.  Whether it's an offspring  of the invaders, or some kind of parasite planted in the poor guy on the table ... well, that's very significant indeed, with lots of story to tell there.

Meanwhile, across the globe, Mitsuki's making some real progress.  Her former boss at JASA -- she was fired -- turns out to be a decent human being, and he gives her run of the place.  The combination of her smarts and the high-tech should help her find out what those sounds that are now being picked up from the destroyed space shuttle mean.   A nice bonus would be if she indeed finds her lover somehow still alive.

The U.S. President's speech did tie all four theaters together, as I hoped something would, last week, and that was good to see.  The content, though, was obvious, and nothing special. Also, as I told an interviewer back on an episode of Ancient Aliens back in 2010 (at 1 min 23 sec into the clip), it doesn't and shouldn't really matter what our leaders tell us when we're visited by extraterrestrials -- it's a whole new ballgame once that happens, and in a democracy, no President was ever really elected to deal with invaders from outer space.

Trevante in Afghanistan was a little more interesting than his segment last week, and the conversation with his wife provided a good segue into the Presidential address.  Over in England, nothing of any great consequence happened, but as I said last week, three out of four segments performing well is fine with me, especially when two of them are especially strong.

See you here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender ... Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four

Podcast Review of Invasion 1.4

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 203, in which I review the fourth episode of Invasion on Apple TV+.  This episode of the podcast also includes congratulations from Don Frankel and his very famous alter-ego! Written blog post review of Invasion 1.4 is here.  Podcast review of episodes 1.1-3 is here.

Listen to "If I Traveled to the Past" with Don Frankel's accordion on Spotify, Bandcamp, and Apple Music.

Check out this episode!

Invasion 1.4: Three Out of Four

A good fourth episode of Invasion on Apple TV+, with no breakthrough events, but solid developments in three of the four areas of Earth under attack.

My favorite was in the New York area, and not because I live there.  We already knew that Luke -- Aneesha and Ahmed's boy -- has some special connection to the invaders.  We saw last week that he hears sounds and doesn't get nosebleeds when everyone else does, after the invaders arrive on our planet.  This week he wanders off in a forest in upstate New York, and winds up in what seems to be a friendly couple's house in the woods.  There's got to be some connection between Luke, the friendly couple that welcomed him and later his family, and those invaders.

The British school kids Lord of the Flies story was also good.  We knew that Casper would get the better of the bully.  But it was fun to see him climb up those rocks out and inspire those other kids to do the same.  If one of the themes of this series are a few kids having some special connection to the invaders, the kid in England who had that would be Casper, though we've no direct evidence of that as yet.  But his noticing that the debris that made the bus go off the cliff had the name Tokyo on it -- and we know that came from the shuttle that was destroyed -- can't be a coincidence.  And the same for his drawings of beings from outer space.

Meanwhile, over in Tokyo, we don't see any progress in learning about the invaders, but Mitsuki going to see the father of the lover she lost in space is a promising development.  The father is an engineer who used to work for the Japanese Space Agency, and he'll no doubt play a role in helping them figure out what's happening to our planet.

Afghanistan had no connection in this episode to the invaders that I could see, other than Trevante seeing the destruction caused by their attack.  But that's ok.  We can't expect every sector to be firing on all cylinders in every episode.  I'm looking forward to more connections among the four places on Earth that are the loci of this story.

And I'm looking forward to seeing the next episode of Invasion and reporting back to you right here next week.

See also Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender

Invasion 1.1-3: Compelling Contender

This has been a great few days for science fiction on the screen.  An excellent episode of Foundation, an outstanding first half of a new Dune movie and ... I decided to see if I could get a trifecta by watching a brand new science fiction series.  Like Foundation, Invasion is on AppleTV+, which put up the first three episodes of this ambitious series on Friday.  It had a lot to contend with, debuting just as Foundation was getting into really high gear, when Dune was making a justified name for itself the moment it opened.  And ... Invasion succeeded.

Let me say first, though, that I thought the very first episode, in which the largest part was a nearly standalone story of an aging, retiring sheriff in Oklahoma, was by far the weakest of the three opening episodes.  I mean, Sam Neill is a fine actor who was fine in the role, but the story had only the slightest to do with the interstellar invasion of Earth which is the heart of this series.  Fortunately, the second and third episodes were out-of-the-ballpark powerful and enthralling.

The stories that unfold in this slightly into the future tableau include a Japanese shuttle to a space station, attacked  and destroyed by the invaders, leaving behind a lover in Tokyo, who works for the Japanese equivalent of NASA and is determined to find out what happened; a school bus of British kids knocked off the road by an interstellar attack, which results in a Lord of the Flies scenario; and an apparently lone survivor of an American unit in Afghanistan presumably all killed by the invaders.  (Yeah, this part of the narrative obviously was conceived and filmed before the precipitous U. S. withdrawal in our reality -- we just have to assume watching Invasion that the U. S. went back in there for some reason.  This kind of thing reminds me of science fiction stories in the 1980s talking about a Soviet Union in the 21st century -- one of the hazards of writing fiction about the future.)

But Invasion is doing just fine after three episodes, even with this Afghanistan anachronism.  There's a 1950s War of the Worlds feel to it, except the personal lives of the characters are fleshed out better than in those old movies.  The family that figures in the New York part of the story features an Asian Indian couple with two kids and  a Tesla, but their marriage is falling apart even before the buildings, because the husband has fallen madly in love with another woman (a blonde, as his wife points out).  Indeed, all the backstories are notable and interesting, with the exception of the Oklahoma sheriff, but we haven't seen him since the first episode, and, who knows, something significant could yet happen out there.

The second half of Dune won't likely be seen for a year.  But now there's some science fiction on television that I'll be watching every weekend as soon as I finish my sojourn into the fate of the Galactic Empire in Foundation.