Did ep 6 make it worth it?

Hard to say. Let's see how episode seven plays out. Hopefully it's just a case of a way-too-long, five-episode build up, and now we're off an running. That said, I have feeling it might revert back to its old ways. Episode six worked so well in part because it stuck with one storyline for the entire episode. But now we're no doubt going back to following all the intercutting plot lines again, and they've mostly just been so bland and boring and have felt too far removed from the invasion itself, save for the JASA plot line, which got interesting right at the end of episode five. Could go either way from here...

C@LAg said:

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Spyderman said:

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BowSowy said:

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Spyderman said:

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Thoughts on the reality of "aliens'?

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You don't stop, do you?

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Thoughts on this reality?

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I am an actual extraterrestrial alien, here to breed with Earth women and drink all your coffee.

and you do not know what you are talking about

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This is a classic case of some sort of psychological defense mechanism perhaps. The notion that this subject is much more than fodder for sci-fi entertainment may disturb folks. Time to grow up..

How is the latest episode?

Finally caught up again and it's... fine.

The British's kid's story is getting legit interesting, should have been the central story/major pitch for the series, and they should have "revealed" that conceit WAY sooner. I won't spoil it here, but it's a relatively unique take on the invasion story, and has a lot of potential.

The likely downside is that they just paired him with the worst character on the show - the soldier - but it's too early to tell if the soldier brings the kid's storyline down or if the kid manages to finally lift the soldier. For the record, I'm calling him "the soldier" not for non-watchers, but because I STILL don't know his name, after eight episodes. I *think* the kid's character's name is Casper, and he's a fantastic young actor, but man the soldier and the guy playing him are just so bad.

Other than that, the Muslim family's story has basically stalled (after providing the first good episode of the series), and the Japanese woman's story is interesting on paper, and kind of cool, but has become so incredibly repetitive.

Basically, if everything we've seen so far were the first four episodes instead of the first eight, and the writing was, say, even 10% better, this show would be awesome. But they're still dragging this thing out so damn much, for no apparent reason, and I just keep hoping that once everything finally "clicks," we can move at a normal pace. Because there ARE a lot of interesting things going on. I want to know more. It's just that they're doling out the information and pacing this thing in such insanely slow fashion that it's hard to care.

Two episodes left, though, so I'm gonna stick with it for this season at least...

I wish more shows had the bravery (or the permission?) to have 6ish episode seasons.

I enjoy that about a lot of the European sourced series.

Holy hell ep9 "Full of Stars" was actually fantastic! Like dramatic and suspenseful. First time I've been emotionally drawn in in anyway whatsoever beyond my just wanting the show to be good. Up to this point it's mostly been a way to pass an hour. Some mediocre. Some forgetful. This was legit compelling tv. Go watch it now!

Great to hear. Watching tonight.

Yeah, definitely the best episode of the season - an episode that, yet again, should have come earlier in the run. An epileptic kid who discovers he can control an alien specifies (or alien robots, potentially) seemingly in-part made of sound waves, is a legit cool concept. But it shouldn't have taken us nine episodes to get here.

Either way, I can now definitively say that these are, by far, the most inventive aliens I've seen on screen in years. Or, rather, alien henchmen nanotech robots or whatever they might be. All I know is the way they move is so unique and terrifying. That said, I really hope we're not going down the same, tired path of alien invasion stories where the dumbest and most obvious thing ever is what kills them - be it a '90s computer virus, human germs, water (!), or, in this case, a woman with a shard of alien debris and/or a kid who has seizures. Done well, again, the latter can be cool, but it's going to be an incredibly thin line to walk.

It also bugs me that we *still* haven't seen either a clear shot of an alien ship, or know what it is in more detail that has killed everyone so far. Is it just the spiky black aliens causing all the death and destruction? Or are there alien ships wiping out entire cities? How has there still not even been a single grainy news clip of that kind of stuff? The needless obfuscation/lack of context is maddening, highlighted this episode by the nuke explosion hitting... what, exactly?

Oh, well, at least things are FINALLY happening...

#Invasion has been renewed for Season 2. Catch the epic Season 1 finale this Friday. pic.twitter.com/9HPIp4Bot1

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) December 8, 2021

This worth dusting off my eye patch and stuffed parrot to watch?

Will let you know after the season one finale in a couple of days.

TCTTS said:

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What a terrible show.

For a series called Invasion - about a literal alien invasion - how was the SEASON FINALE the most boring episode in a season full of boring episodes (save for maybe two)? How is that 40 minutes into hour ten of a ten-hour alien invasion series, we get our first look at an alien space ship? But then manage to make it even more confusing with that final shot of some other ship (some kind of mother ship, I presume)? How do they not further explore the "Was it the kid or the nuke that 'killed' them?" - the only interesting question this series has asked? How did so many people sign-off on such a slow, inept, contextless, needlessly obtuse snooze-fest of a show?

I also thought for sure they'd follow-up at least in some small way on the Sam Neill of it all from the pilot, but nope, that whole thing was apparently just a dumb red herring that served absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Seriously, what the hell?

I don't know that I've ever been this baffled at the decision-making process of a TV series. And I'm legit angry at both Apple and myself for wasting so much of my time on it.

If anything, for those you on the fence about watching... you now at least have your answer.

Stay far away.

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I agree. That was one of the most tedious sci-fi shows I have ever watched. They spent way too much time being "artsy" rather than advancing the story. And I also kept hoping they would circle back to Sam Neill's character, but, nope. Guess they just wanted him to star in one episode to try and give it some A-lister cred. I also got very tired of how much of the show was in Japanese. It really takes away from my visual enjoyment watching the actors and scenery while I have to read so many subtitles.

In absolute agreement with everything you just said.

Again, I get that the show is supposed to be more about humanity than the aliens. The tagline, after all, is Hold on to your humanity. But if you're going that route, you HAVE to have more compelling characters/stories. And their arcs/journeys actually have to advance, more than they did, across ten hours of televsion. As is, each story, save for the British kid's, was so incredibly slow and repetitive.

It was also desperately missing a character with any charisma or spark whatsoever. Overall, I just wanted more... life. More mischief. More dread. More wonder. More purpose. More of a sense of discovery.

Instead, what we got was the most vanilla show of all time about the end of the world.

I got about 15min into ep10 last night and stopped it. Just over the show at this point. I would have still been disappointed in the show, but I was thinking to myself ep9 could have been the finale. I agree with everyone above.. this may be the most "meh" show of all time.

Duncan Idaho said:

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This worth dusting off my eye patch and stuffed parrot to watch?

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I think for TCTTS the answer was to watch it from a distance.

This show was terrible. I can't believe that they spend so much money on this. It's so bad that it almost makes me angry because of what it could have been.

I need to search the depths of my brain to find a show with less of a payoff than Invasion. An entire 10 episode season, which had exactly one truly entertaining episode, one. This is not a cheap show, it's financed by Apple. It's the most rudderless crap I've seen in a long time, it had no idea where it was coming from or where it was going. The only character with a real arc I was interested was Sam Neal, and he was killed off early. The alien design was stupid. Almost all the characters were terribly conceived. But the biggest crime was the story itself was crap. They really only needed a couple of stories from different parts around the world, but most of what they put on screen was unnecessary and incoherent, and that's putting it mildly. I haven't heard any real positive press about this show, a second season puzzles me.

If they redid season one from scratch I'd invest the whole thing in the kid in London, and Sam Neal, small town sheriff in Oklahoma. The Japanese NASA storyline was nothing. The American soldier story was also nothing. I was also out on the family from NY real early, they tried to overcomplicate it with family drama to draw us in and invest, well the opposite happened with me.

Did I miss something? Who were the people that used a humvee and a F150 to take out a heavy duty military transport? WTF was going on? I'm so confused.

I will admit the very lost shot of the season was great, that was a tremendous visual/holy **** moment. That's the kind of stuff I thought I was signing on for. And the size of the ship that landed in the Amazon was cool to see as well.

Max Power said:

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Did I miss something? Who were the people that used a humvee and a F150 to take out a heavy duty military transport? WTF was going on? I'm so confused.

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I was so out at the end of that episode that didn't even cross my mind as strange until I read this..

Series was so disjointed in general that I had to think really hard about which set of dudes in humvees that roll up you were talking about and only clued in when I read they killed off a character.

I wanted this to be good. There is a story (-ies) in there somewhere that are interesting but man this was overall a major disappointment. Shockingly so given it had to have cost a fortune.

What a worthless finale. I legit thought Ep 9 was the finale until I got the notification of a new episode of Invasion. Most cringe part to me was the doctor falling for the mom and kissing her because she's such a good doctor. Ugggh. How did anyone sit in a room and decide this was a good way to tell this story? It's baffling.

Yeah that finale was lame. Had hope show would finish strong. It seemed to pick up in middle episodes but then finished "meh".

I'm with TC. For a show about an alien invasion that's kicking humanity's ass there were frustratingly few shots of the invasion itself.

I liked it. Onto Season 2...

I'm late to the party on this one. I actually enjoyed it, but have many of the same questions/concerns.

- Obviously the British kid (Casper) is 'special' and has some kind of connection to the aliens, but what about the Muslim boy? He was the only one at the school that didn't get a nosebleed, then the only one at the farmhouse that could hear the high pitched ringing, and he found/bonded with the piece of black alien material. But they never took it further than that - is he 'connected' also?

- OMG is the lesbian astronaut dead or alive?? They showed her doing the Princess Leia space crawl back into the shuttle, but then mission control determined the speech to be synthetic, no breathing etc. ???

- Regarding the redneck civilians versus the national guard humvee battle - when the Muslim husband ran into the national guard guy in the forest, he (national guard guy) identified himself as knowing the Muslim wife, had worked with her when she was running around playing doctor, etc. But then he seemed to be working with the rednecks and was on their side - ?

- Why was the army trying to get the Muslim family to the Pentagon in the first place? Was it solely because of the shard of alien rock? If so, why not just take the rock? Why did they need the entire family? And why did the rednecks even care?

- More of an observation than a question, but why in the world would earth rejoice after taking out ONE alien ship? Did they have reason to assume that the entire alien species was on that one ship and that there was zero chances of reinforcements arriving?

James Harden! Lol. I thought the same thing every time that actor was shown. WTF is James Harden doing on here? When did he get into acting?

Here's a trailer for a very good documentary dealing with the subject:



No, its not science-fiction. In this case, reality is far more fascinating than fiction.

You folk that enjoy a good movie dealing with this reality...what are your thoughts on it?

This was an absolute piece of crap. I have never hated a fictional character more than I did the quasi doctor lady. Fake James Harden wasn't much better. I don't even really know how they killed the aliens and I don't care enough to look back and find out. I hate the Lina Hidalgo look alike. Hell, she even sounds the same with the whiny crying voice. ****! I hated this and want my time back.