I could swear I’ve already looked at earlier episodes of Jed Mercurio’s forgotten Sci Fi epic Invasion: Earth but there’s no sign of it on the blog. So that rather scuppers my plan to re-read my previous entries to find out what the hell is going on, before watching the two episodes here, which are the final two episodes.
So I’m afraid today’s entry will be a little more uninformed than usual.
Episode 5 is The Battle More Costly. We’re reminded of men jumping into reservoirs to spread an alien infection, which looks rather icky,
Vincent Regan is Chris Drake, our hero, member of the military group trying to contain the outbreak.
Maggie O’Neill is Dr Amanda Tucker, who had the icky infection and is now worried she’s going to turn into an alien-controlled zombie.
I think that’s all the information that the recap is giving us. I saw Anton Lesser get sucked into a swirly Alien portal, and we get news that there’s an outbreak of ‘food poisoning’ in a village not far away.
A scientist is working on testing toxins against the ‘nDs’ – Did that mean n-dimensional? It was something like that. It;s one of the things that always annoys be about these things that they all try desperately to come up with a name for the aliens that isn’t actually ‘Alien’. Did 20th Century Fox have a trademark or something. Base commander, Major General David Reece (Fred Ward) is getting worried that progress is too slow, and the nDs will attack before they have a way to fight back.
A Mercurio regular, Jonathan Dow, turns up as Lt. Jim Radcliffe. He’s in the local village to talk to the police, and when the police detective introduces herself, he looks her up and down and his body language is practically screaming ‘phwoaar’. In 1998. I can’t work out if the man with him is the young chap from the Murphy’s Bitter adverts. Could be. He has an accent.
At least the Detective Sergeant isn’t taking any of his pick-up schtick, and shuts him down swiftly.
The scientist is making progress.
The only source of actual nD infection is Amanda. So she gets injected.
General Reece has one of his techy guys working on ways to detect the nD portals before they open.
They get a woman from the village who has been infected, but while they’re examining her, she gets zapped by an alien wormhole. Or taken away. Hard to tell.
It seems she was just moved, as they get over to her house to find her appearing there.
The anti-toxin eventually starts to work on Amanda, so the soldiers get bullets filled with it, and can drive off an incursion – although Murphy’s Guy does get snatched, so it’s not a complete win.
The head scientist hatches a plan to inject all the sick villagers with the anti-toxin, then let the nDs take them, harvest their serontonin, which is what has been happening, which will then infect the nDs with the anti-toxin. So they have to stand by as the patients are taken.
With luck, this happens in front of Air Marshal Bentley (John Shrapnel) who so far has refused to believe any of the talk of alien invasion.
Squadron Leader Knox (Phyllis Logan) has been looking for other small towns which might also be the sites for nD incursion – the indicator being a much larger female population than normal. Mars Needs Women.
But the patients aren’t being returned. Have they beaten them? Is it over? In episode five? Unlikely, and there’s a huge signal detected all over the village, as the aliens return in the form on a big blobby mountain.
BBC Genome: BBC One – 5th June 1998 – 21:30
Before the next episode, the end of Newsroom South East and the weather.
There’s a trailer for Out Of Hours and Black Rain.
Then, Invasion: Earth episode 6: The Shatterer of Worlds. The tech guy thinks he’s found a way to communicate, and rather than share this with the rest of the military, he goes out on his own to try it. He ends up getting zapped into the big blobby mountain.
After Knox flies into the blobby thing to get information about its structure, they find out it’s absorbing all life from the ground it’s on. A Nuclear bomb might be the only way to destroy it, and might be enough to persuade the nDs not to come back. But Amanda and Drake look at the information Knox sent back and think that flying a weapon into the structure, and sending it through the higher dimensions, might be enough to destroy it all. I confess that the technobabble in this isn’t doing the show any favours. I wonder if it all made sense in Jed Mercurio’s head, or whether he knew it was all bollocks. Also, this is the point where the show’s effects aren’t really up to the task. All the CGI is a bit rubbish and untextured.
But their attack fails, and the blobby mountain grows back. So the military does the only thing it knows how to do – they throw a nuke at it.
I think this rather bleak and helpless ending was one of the reasons I didn’t really like this show. I need happy endings in my escapism.
BBC Genome: BBC One – 12th June 1998 – 21:30
After this, there’s a trailer for World Cup 98 Live. And there’s a trailer for The Fear of God, Mark Kermode’s Exorcist documentary.
Then, the start of In The Mouth of Madness, It’s a Fright-Day Night Movie.
The tape ends during the film, which we looked at fairly recently.
VHiStory 