Invasion

Body Snatchers is one my favorite science-fiction film so when I read Invasion's synopsis I quickly checked my neck for a Puppet Master. Its pilot should both appeal to newcomers and die hard sci-fi fans. Most of the ingredients of a good sci-fi production are there.



First the characters are smoothly introduced in the very first minutes and you quickly understand their complex relationships. Eddie Cibrian as Russell Varon is really the perfect ranger next door. Beautiful Lisa Sheridan plays her wife, Larkin Groves. Even if I found her character lacked charisma and that she looked too much like the perfect girlfriend, her job as a news reporter is quite interesting as her scenes make the story more dynamic and believable. There's also Kari Matchett (Cube 2 : Hypercube) as Doctor Mariel Underlay. Her blonde hair sort of mirror Larkin's one and the smoking purity that emanates from Kari's acting makes her character quite intriguing. Tyler Labine as Dave Groves did also a decent job even if I found his lines weren't original. It's like if he already knew what will happen when he's not supposed to. But I still think he's a good supporting character and should appeal to most geeks, conspiracy theorists or alien hunters. The only characters who didn't really convince me are the children but as I already watched the whole season back in 2006 I already know their profiles are not as boring as they seem. In fact there's one special scene I strongly recommend you to pay attention to, the one between the girl and Larkin about the news. Last but not least after all these years I still remember how amazed I was when I saw William Fichtner as Sheriff Tom Underlay. The actor's charisma is very impressive and confirmed the first great impression I had in Prison Break as Alexander Mahone. Moreover his character is definitely the most intriguing one of the story.



Beside the casting and characters I also really enjoyed the direction and production. For example some of the Sheriff scenes are filmed in a way which makes the character even more mysterious. Eddie and Lisa also makes the perfect couple and I'm sure they had a great chemistry on the set. Moreover there're numerous settings so you'll definitely feel like if you were there. In fact I found there little town of Florida quite homey and I specially liked the outdoor scenes in the wild. And the very first minutes you definitely feel a hurricane is on its way as most people are running like little ants in the rain. The wind blows, objects are flying everywhere and most visual effects are good. My only complain would be that some scenes are too short and I wish the editing had been smoother.



As for the story I found it intriguing but not fascinating because I have already seen films and read novels about the topics covered : Alien invasion, conspiracy theory… Otherwise even the first time I saw it I remember that I really wanted to know what would happen. Many questions were asked and most events should definitely invite you to pursue the experience further. For example I remember laughing at the Sheriff because I noticed something funny about him, it would definitely make a good trivia. An other scene really scared me as I wasn't expecting it. Of course it's still too family friendly for my taste but the universe is heterogeneous enough to appeal most viewers. Everyone should also find numerous references to their favorite cultural works so there're many rock solid elements to enjoy. Or should I have written water liquid instead ?

its been a while but i remembered i loved the pilot of this great tv show. you can say it was love with first sigth :) after i watched the pilot i was eager to see what would come of this tv show. so when it started i was clued to the screen instantly. it had everything going for it, the mysterious alien, the body snatching and let us not for get the great actors that sucked you into this great story straigth away. at the last episode of the season one i was high into everything called invasion. but then it ended shuddently and left us at a cliffhang, and there we still are today. its really sad this show had everything going for it. i still hope for another season and a worthy ending of this great show.

I`m not much of a Sci-fi fan, but i`m a big William Fitchner fan (mainly because of his involvement in Prison Break), so I check this show mainly because of him. Well, it was a pleasant surprise.

Lots of character introduction of course, it looks like the characters won`t take much time to grow on me. The whole alien mystery was very well written into the story and that intriguing character changes after the hurricane is also pretty good.

Fitchner plays Tom and it looks like he is a guy with some mysteries around. I`m quite interested here, it was a pleasant pilot, the series could turn out to be great.

Some have commented that the pilot was slow moving. They’re not wrong but it was because they were making sure they had a solid foundation from which to continue. There are a lot of characters and a lot going on so I enjoyed the depth and detail of this introduction. By the end of it, you knew exactly what was going on, who's related to who etc. So many shows take several episodes to fill in details which can be really annoying. With this pilot, you knew everything up front, means it can move faster later because intro character detail is no longer necessary, they can just add what is relevant as they go.



The hurricane was very cool and beautifully done. An excellent concept too, aliens using the impressive distraction to invade. And this is how an invasion should be done – subtle, sneaky, more infiltration that outright invasion. It’s the way I’d do it. The aliens themselves are beautiful… but mean.



Taking Mariel is a good choice – she’s a community leader, respected and will obviously have a say in health related issues, like the quarantine. She still seems to be herself so this looks like a form of possession. It will be interesting to see how much control they have over her or will it just make her suggestible?



Liked little Rose, she’s at the right age to know something is wrong with her mother. The adults will just dismiss it as a reaction to her… abduction? or whatever they did to her.



The skeleton Dave found is cool, raises new questions. Are there different types of aliens or just different things they can do? Mariel got changed but Dave got attacked. Definitely want another look at that skeleton.



I was very impressed by the pilot which is why I was so surprised to find it had been cancelled. Typical television execs, cancel the decent shows and keep the low-class garbage like Jerry Springer.

This show starts with the c-130 in the air. a nifty cgi sequence and then the lights in the water hits the plane, and the lights fall close to homestead. then the following day things around town have changed. it's a very compelling introduction to this show, the pacing was written properly so that it connects to the other episodes, the writers did a good job. we are introduced to the ensemble cast. the characters are really interesting, this is a story about 2 families that are finding ways to live together, and it's a smart hook. you just want this 2 families to turn out fine in the end.

I just watched the Pilot episode and I really enjoyed it. :) It's a quite good and interesting start for a show... at least I'm excited how the next episode(s) will be.

Unfortunately, the show is canceled already... I just hope everything will make sense in the end.



I liked the directing/style of this episode and also the cuts to another scene. Pretty good! The only thing that annoyed me was the story of the little girl, Rose.

The end scene is pretty thrilling, now you wanna now what happens next.



I'm glad that I have now a show, which I can watch over the summer hiatus. :D

Different “PILOT”? I had watched this Pilot on cable earlier, but now I saw a different Pilot on local TV. The only difference on these episodes is the opening few minutes, where Russell go pick up someone who un-willing to leave their house; the first version is a women holding a child, then Russell go pick a turtle and give it to the child. The second version is where Russell arrive at the house, a guy, which I belief his name is Earl, almost gun Russell down, Mona have to distract Earl so that Russell could get in the house, grab an empty beer bottle, hit Earl and bring him out of the house. After look through some TV magazine and the special notes on TV.com, I think the second version is an UnAir episode. For my personal opinion, I like the UnAir Pilot episode because it is more close to reality, the real Pilot seem a bit boring. Hence, the episode showed a good start of a series, very contrast on characters and nice background for an alien story. The down side is the storyline is bit slow on the first episode, I hope the following episode could be more exciting.

Overall a pretty good beginning to the show. There were a few problems, but it is understandable that their will be a few kinks still to work out. For me, this episode really caught my attention and made me eager to see the next episode and where the show was heading. Look forward to Wednesdays so much more now.

This is a great way to start a great show. This episode was very cool, the special efects were fantastic and the mistery around the whole hurricane and those skeletons made me want to see the next really soon.

I didn't understand yet but i think in future episodes we'll see that the invasion didn't start that day, it started before.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" from the mid fifties is a classic well beyond it's genre. The 1978 remake set in San Francisco with Donald Sutherland was excellent. Abel Ferrar made a horror version in the 90's. There are many more with the same theme. Now we have it spread over an entire season. If it were a mini series, maybe. But how will they ever stretttttcccchhhh it out. The best character was the young girl. The effects were weak.

What is there here for me to enjoy?

I really liked this new series, is very interesting and entertainig the way the writers tell the story, it has an excellent direction and reallity talking about the visual effects, it was oustanding the way they created the hurricane, it felt very real. Perhaps it had a lot of elements of past TV show but i still feel it has it's own formula that will work in future episodes! Way to go ABC and don't screw it 'cause it's a decent show to watch. Good start but episodes can be better.

First of all when this show first aired, I was glad to see that ABC gave a special note about how this was about a hurricane and that it might affect some of the viewers. I think that was a wise thing to do considering what had just happened right before this .



As for the show, I loved it. Little Rose is going to creep me out I can tell especially with her knowing something is up with her mother. The ending where Mariel and the sheriff go to the lake where Russell and that other dude caught the E.B.E. creeped me out even more than Rose did. This episode hooked me from the beginning and I'm glad that I watched it. It so reminds me of American Gothic and should since Shaun Cassidy is involved. It will be interesting to see how this show comes along and what is the true reason behind what’s going on in the lake.



Thomas Schlamme's directing was absolutely wonderful and a pleasure to see as always. Also, the editing for this episode was great and who knew I could enjoy watching Eddie Cibrian act for a whole hour?



Possible Emmy Nods: Directing (Thomas Schlamme) and Editing.



Final Grade: B+

I’m not sure what exactly to make of this show so far. For a pilot this sure doesn’t explain very much about what is going on. Oh I understand the references and the whole invasion of the body snatchers thing, but I sure hope there is more to the show than pretty people fighting the good fight against the ‘aliens among us’. Isn’t that just a bit cliched?



That said I liked the pilot on a whole, the actors are charming particularly William Fichtner, a truly is a great character actor. And the dialogue was sharp. I just hope the show doesn’t turn out to be as obvious as it appears. Invasion will need to give more than it did in this episode to keep viewers interested. But for now, I’ll definitely welcome more.

Within the first episode, you can pretty much guess whats going on. The central characters are a divorced man and woman who have this huge extended family. Some of them are aliens, some of them are children, some of them are normal, and some of them are conspiracy theorists.



Its not completely unoriginal, most of the storyline so far has been kind of rehashed in other series, movies, books, etc. This show would be good competition for Surface which is probably its twin show. Lately, television has taken a turn for the bizarre and Invasion is no exception. Shows like Lost & Invasion are a sign that mainstream television is moving more towards a sci-fi genre. Obviously ABC has caught on to this trend. A flood of shows will come and go, some competely disappearing and some sold off to networks like The Sci-Fi channel, much in the same way that Firefly went. For Invasion, it is likely that this won't make it past a DVD release of the first season.



Part of the problem may have to do with the show going head to head with shows like CSI: NY and Law & Order. But what may help it is the show directly following LOST, which isn't going to lose popularity - at least not within this season.



The thing that I like about the Sci-Fi shift is the possibility that it may, once and for all, kill reality television. One can only hope!

This is a slow moving, arduous pilot. If you fast forward through most of the slower storm scenes, it makes it much more watchable.



The basic premise is that during a hurricane, pods are launched by either an alien race, or an aquatic one. They launch out of the sea, and onto the coast and swamps of Florida. They slowly, one by one, infiltrate the population. Nothing overt, nothing you can place your finger on, just that they stare at non-pod people funny.



I'll give it a few more episodes, but let's hope it's better than the pilot

Did anyone else watching this predict exactly what was about to happen next? I know I did. Each character was unsurprising and unoriginal. Who could have guessed that it is the cute little girl who sees the alien lights first? And don't forget the younger brother who lives with his older brother and believes the girl and aliens. Signs, anyone? The LA Times reported that while this episode had a decent audience size for the first half, it dropped significantly by the second half. When people realised how predictable the show would be, they stopped watching it. Also, the "bad guy is ugly, good guy is hot" routine gets sort of annoying. While the acting wasn't that bad and the effects were good, the entire premise is weak. Maybe some hope of redemption later on, but I'm not holding my breath.

"Pod people, pod people...." I kept chanting this at every "suspenseful" moment of this formulaic pilot, until my wife threw something at me. This is the best reviewed of the new sci-fi crop? How many times are we going to rehash the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with people acting strange and there family members proclaiming they aren't themselves? "Mommy, you smell different." Puh-lease. I'll give it another few watches, as a pilot does not a series make. But if this is what to expect every night... count me out. Especially if they follow the "Lost" formula by incessantly dragging the plot out without ever going anywhere, which is why I gave up on Lost halfway through last season. But hey, it won an Emmy, so every serial supernatural/sci-fi mystery must be viable now, right?

It was a pilot episode, I'll give them that, but I think they did a decent job. Granted this was no 'Lost' pilot, I don't think we'll see another one of those for a while. We got the basic idea of who is good and bad, a setting, and we know there is 'something' in the swam that bites people.



The episode left me with a lot of questions which is either becuase it was a pilot, or they are going to try to go the route of Lost and just have suspencful episode after suspenseful episode, which I think the viewers wil get tired of, seeing as how (if I remember correctly) this airs directly after Lost.



As I said, this will either be a great show, or it will tank. I don't think there will be a middle ground for this show. The next 2-3 episodes will decide it's fate, in my opinion.

I thought to be honest this show wasn't that bad, lots of people have slammed it saying it's just a copy of 'Body Snatchers' but I think it has the potential to be so much more. Hopefully I will be right and it will turn into another unmissible show like 'Lost', or it will completly deadpan itself by the fourth or fifth episode.

Pilots are a tricky business. “Lost” delivered one of the finest pilots in recent memory last season. This season, “Supernatural” made more widely acclaimed series like “Threshold” and “Surface” look like amateur hour. And then there’s a series like “Reunion”, which had a pilot that simply relied on a gimmick to overcome horrible writing and acting.



“Invasion” leans more towards the “Lost” end of the spectrum. There are still a few hiccups here and there, but given that this is a drama about a complicated family dealing with extraordinary circumstances, the pilot only had to establish the key relationships and the beginning of the central mystery. In that sense, while I don’t think the characters are as vivid as those in “Lost” or “Threshold”, the pilot served its purpose well.



I didn’t catch all the names of the characters (my brain was all but filled after the “Lost” premiere, after all), but I certainly picked up on the relationships and the various conflicts. The series is based on the sense of isolation and threat to family that any human being can empathize with, so the details can take their time to unfold.



Shaun Cassidy seems to have taken a number of thematic undertones from his cult classic “American Gothic” and updated them for this series. There’s the sinister sheriff, apparently already possessed/subsumed by the unknown creatures in the Everglades, who seems to be a relative of Sheriff Buck. There’s the young child who knows more about what’s happening than anyone else (I have to admit, though, that the girl bugs me). And then there’s the almost incestuous nature of the extended family, where everyone is way too familiar with everyone else.



What I like are the “everyday” natures of the characters. None of them are too damn pretty to be real, and when they do stray towards the photogenic, there’s a reasonable explanation for it. The best looking woman is the reporter, and in that field, it makes sense. Certainly the cast isn’t ugly, but the realistic casting makes the whole situation much easier to believe.



As far as the mystery goes, there were things I liked and things I didn’t. I personally think that the “evil alien invasion” thing has been done to death, and it might be interesting to do something more complex. For instance, “Threshold” seems to be presenting their aliens as pure invaders. This series has more potential to develop these apparent aliens as something other than an invasive force.



In terms of Merrill’s slow response to these changes, the process is certainly one that modifies the individual affected. But does it need to be a bad thing? Or at least, couldn’t the cost/benefit dynamic be explored and taken into intriguing and even disturbing directions? Apparently not, if the aliens are attacking people and driving spikes into them. Of course, there’s still time for that to be self-defense or protection of whatever it is that they need to take people over for.



Time will tell, and it seems as if the story will center more on the mystery’s effects on the family than the mystery itself, in keeping with the direction that “Lost” has taken. That character dynamic should be fun, but I hope that the mystery is more than what it seems now. It is does become a lot more complex, then this could be the perfect companion to “Lost”.

This was a decent show that could have been better by taking out some of the plot holes. For example, in preparation for this hurricane, they appear to be boarding things up yet when the storm hits there is a huge glass window with nothing covering it. What happens? The glass shatters all over the living room. Surprising huh? Anyway the big thing this show has going for it is the alien twist and it was definitely intriguing. The production values were extremely high, making the show feel more like a movie than a tv show. Overall i think i will give this one a chance to see where it goes. I just hope they close up some of these plot holes over time.

I thought that the pilot was interesting. It was more interesting than \"Lost\" was. If though it does remind me of \"Invasion of the Body Snatchers\", I am willing to keep watching to see how the season goes. That is if it last the whole season. I am just wondering how they are going to keep this going for more than one season. They can not keep a town in quarantine for seasons.

Disappointing. Really disappointing. All the hype this series got, from the local paper to the network ads, were, to put it mildly, misleading. Looking for great drama? Not there. Looking for innovative science fiction? Better tune into Battlestar Galactica instead. Looking for eery photography and suspenseful action? Better watch the WB's Supernatural on Tuesday nights instead. Looking for interesting aliens invading the earth and changing human beings into them? So help me, CBS' Threshold, which I thought was a poor effort, is looking better and better against competition such as Invasion and NBC's dreadful Surface. Not a good batch of sf/horror coming to the networks this year, in my opinion. The scorecard, so far (on a scale of 1 poor to 10 great): Supernatural 9, Threshold 7, Invasion 6, and Surface 1. That leaves one more to go, The Night Stalker, which I'm already pretty sure is going to be a grisly failure.

I wasn't really impressed with Invasion, and I don't think I will continue to watch it. It's in a great time slot, right after LOST, but I don't know if it will survive. The storm was creepy, as were whatever those alien things were, but I don't feel a show can last on the shoulders of a cute little kid. The adult characters (with the exception of the funny uncle/brother guy) were dull and unimpressive. Sure it's a little bit of a hook to find out what happened to the mother, but I don't feel like it's worth the investment. All of the younger actors out-acted the adults. Seems more like it belongs on the WB for that reason!

Invasion Episode 1.1



Wow! What incredible production values! I was initially disappointed because I thought it was getting too bogged down from the very beginning with Spielbergian family relationships that dilute the scariness of any sort of new mythology they want to establish, but actually this was good because by the end of the first 20 minutes I felt connected to all of the characters, knew them all by name, and genuinely cared about what happened to them. The maim dramatic thrust of the first half of the pilot are centered around themes of family separation, bitterness, and isolation, very similar to the family politics of War of the Worlds only much better written. The storm is extremely well executed. It was probably done on a soundstage, yet was unbelievably realistic but it involved some of the most amazing special effects I have ever seen, without lots of fakey CGI effects. The show started with a bang with the hurricane hunter being destroyed in the eye of the hurricane by those strange lights moving up into the eye, obviously something otherworldly. After the storm Dr. Mariel Underlay is found near the water where Rose saw the lights and is without clothes and is acting strange. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be just a serialized Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because that has been done folks. Amazing production values, but not the best script. The actual story seems to be really quite unoriginal, engaging yes, but this storyline has been done before in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Twilight Zone, it has a lot of elements of The X-Files, and it is essentially Lost in civilization, with the same claustrophobia of Lost achieved by the isolation of the Everglades and the lack of contact with the outside world due to the hurricane. It also has a Stepford Wives like quality to it that seems a little cheesy, especially in regard to Kari Matchett’s character Dr. Mariel Underlay, who after her rescue from the swamp seems to constantly be walking around in a Paris Hilton-style vaccuus daze. Some of the plot points didn’t make much sense either like how easily Rose was found during the hurricane, and I think the writers could have come up with something a little more creative than making the new husband of Mariel the arch-villain, who, we learn at the end was the first member of the apparently alien invasion team to arrive. Add in a little Godzilla Roland Emmerich-style and you have Invasion, a show that is extremely well-made and well-shot with out of this world effects, and certainly instantly engrossing and addictive and highly entertaining, but that has a startling lack of originality.

Originality: 70

Coherence: 85

Complexity: 90

Intensity of Effect: 90

Bonus points: +3 points for having amazing effects, +2 for impressive set design, +1 for lighting and cinematography.

Invasion: A-

While on the outside "invasion" looks like a cookie cutter version of all the alien encounters the world has seen done many times before, on the inside lies a promise that could wash away all convention and bring out one of the most innovated and original program ideas of th year.



The episode starts off with one of the most exciting and well produced 15 minutes of television since the pilot episode of lost, which include a Hericane of such proportion, that the episode aired after warning abotu "Katrina unease." What follows if a family drama with characters that only over the course of 40 minutes the audience becomes atached too. The family involved in the story in actually a rather large extended family that involves a environmentalist, his ex-wife, their two children, her new husband and step-daughter, his new wife and unborne child, as well as the new lifes brother. It sounds confusing in the beginning, but you catch on really easily.



But there is an unsettling aftereffect of the huricane. Some of the people that where lost, are now found but they act different, with just the slights things off abotu them, so slight that only a 6-year-old girl notices any differences... But the biggest bombsheal of the night is the "EVT" skeleton that is foudn in the everglades.



Invasion could very well be the next x-files or the next birds of prey... I guess its fate in the hands of the writers and ABC.