FIRST WAVE
Season 1

SUBJECT 117

Cade Foster used to be a thief, but now he works for a security system. Then, overnight, his life is turned upside down, his money is taken and he starts suffering from hallucinations. As his marriage suffers, he learns that others have suffered similar visions and they may mean something significant. His desperate investigation leads to a disgraced cop and a millionaire whose sanity is gone and who tells of alien invasions and a hidden book.

FIRST WAVE sets out its stall in this opening episode and that stall is selling a reheated version of THE INVADERS. A single man, framed for murder, working to prevent an alien invasion nobody else knows about or believes in. The aliens wear human bodies to hide their true nature and if they are killed those bodies turn to smoke. The sheer level of the similarities between these two shows based on this opening episode are quite astonishing. It remains to be seen if that will continue.

In Sebastien Spence, the show has at its heart a lead actor who fails to hold the show together. His lack of charisma is startling in a main lead, but this is only the opening episode and perhaps that will change and he will prove his star quality. None of the other actors manage to make any greater impact.

The plot moves with a bit of pace, but makes very little sense. Cade is being experimented on because he has one of 117 personality types, but no explanation is given as to why he was chosen and the desired experimental outcome is a pretty lame set-up for what follows. As an origin story it is barely functional at best.

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CRAZY EDDIE

Cade goes to visit a hermit who lives off the grid and spreads conspiracy theories. He identifies the book Cade uncovered as being lost prophecies from Nostradamus that predict the coming of aliens in three distinct waves. Cade may be prophesied saviour who can end the invasion on the first wave. Closing in on them both is a beautiful, but deadly woman.

This is the second part of the origin story, setting up the prophecies of Nostradamus strand of the plotline, setting up Cade as the last, best hope for mankind. Nostradamus was popular at the time and doesn't add a lot to the situation. Cade is still on the run, framed for murder, the aliens are still invading and trying to get rid of him as the only real threat to their to plans. The addition of the prophecies doesn't add anything, but does quite the opposite, undermining any real conviction the whole premise had. Nostradamus in the 1500s coudl predict the coming of an alien race, but couldn't leave precise details on how to defeat them? Really?

The main plotline doesn't add up to much, serving mainly to introduce the character of Crazy Eddie to provide the technical and scientific support that the main character is missing. More information is provided about the aliens' habit of inhabiting human cloned bodies and how the personality lives on in special vessels that can be placed into multiple bodies and therefore cheat death.

This second episode doesn't give much confidence that the show is going to rise above the misgivings we were given by the pilot.

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MATA HARI

A woman with the power to instantly seduce anyone is preying on a high-tech team in one of the country's leading universities. The people she seduces die soon after from the divers' illness The Bends. Cade decides to investigate.

This third episode provides a bigger world picture, introducing a human woman with special powers and a shadowy military cabal dedicated to dealing with such useful assets, and therefore potentially aware of the alien threat and possibly allies or enemies for Cade in future episodes. A simple manhunt story morphs into a clear and immediate threat to the whole planet controlled by a quartet of eggheads in a university. That kind of technology and firepower could only be controlled by the military and wouldn't be left with absolutely no safeguards at all.

The acting isn't getting any better and neither is the plotting. That the show dispenses with direct confrontation with the aliens this early on could either mean a lack of faith in the central premise or the courage to explore other avenues. We wait to see which.

Sadly, the early indications are not promising.

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HYPNOTIC

A woman running an alien abduction support group is making waves with a new book. Cade goes undercover in the group to look for alien interference. What he finds is people suffering serious aftereffects from what they believe were genuine abductions.

An episode exploring the potential effects of alien abduction on those taken is an interesting one, and worthy of examination. So it proves for the early section of the episode, where the suffering of the abductees and their memory flashes are depicted in fairly impressive flashback sequences, but the plot then descends into a simple 'whodunnit' storyline that is completely predictable.

There glimmerings of interest here, but glimmerings only.

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ELIXIR

A pretty woman walks into a bar, dances on a bar and then ages decades in seconds and becomes a dried up corpse. Cade, of course, investigates. The shadowy government agency is not far behind.

Aliens have created an elixir that makes old people young for a brief period and then kills them. What for? Some sort of slavery is posited, but no explanation is given. The police and government agents stake out a bus station, but a single unarmed man can make a quick getaway with barely any effort. Two examples of the lazy writing that suffuses this series.

At least the examination of what it means to be old and the power of regret is given some passing thought in what is otherwise an uninteresting and uninspired story. The dialogue and the acting are just as uninspired.

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SPEAKING IN TONGUES

A Nostradamus prophecy takes Cade into a cult being led by an unstable leader who claims to have descended from the stars and warning about the danger of the Aftertime, from which only he can provide salvation.

If you're going to have a stroy about a charismatic cult leader then you really need to have a charismatic cult leader. Unfortunately, what we get is a man who is completely unconvincing as an evangelist or cult leader. He is equally unconvicing as a member of the alien race, the Gua, a military leader and a religious convert.

We learn that the alien invasion is a matter of survival for them and they are not completely single-minded in their conviction to the cause. Otherwise, this is a pretty straightforward infiltration story in which Cade sneaks into another alien enclave and convinces everyone despite being quite obviously a spy. The show needs some new riffs.

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LUNGFISH

A Nostradamus prediction takes Cade to a small farm and a family in crisis. More importantly, it takes him to a fish that is learning to breathe air and walk on the land.

This is the silliest episode to date. The aliens are experimenting on people and fish hybrids, possibly to create underwater slaves for use after the invasion (it's not made completely clear). The military are right on his tail, but fail to follow up on the case when he (inevitably) escapes, allowing him to find a foster home for a child with absolutely no intervention from them. The woman who comes to look after the small boy could have come to help when the boy's sister was alive and needed help, so why didn't she.

The situation with Grace continues to be unclear, though she is clearly covering up Cade's investigations, but exactly why is not explained.

BOOK OF SHADOWS

Cade travels to a town named Salem to become involved in a new witch trial. A young woman is on trial after killing three men she believes to be demons, but which Cade suspects are really aliens.

We've had superpowered psychics, false evangelists and now we have witchcraft. No explanation is given for Diana's powers beyond witchcraft, but those powers offer the potential for identifying aliens and a potion for destroying them. Those are the stakes being played for, though the outcome is never in doubt. Cade can't be allowed to advance too far in his fight.

The story is structured with flashbacks that explore whether Diana is genuinely a witch or not, but that serves only to fill out the running time that the main story doesn't. It's a step up from the last episode, but that's not saying much.

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JOSHUA

Cade is on the run from the police through a wooded area. Hot on his tail is an alien named Joshua who claims to be an assassin for the Gua race. Turning the tables, Cade captures the alien and attempts to get some answers.

The backstory of the Gua invasion is given to Cade, and by extension the audience, in a clumsy infodump sequence at the heart of the fugitive storyline. The episode is hugely dialogue-heavy with Joshua and Cade monologuing at each other through the switches in captive and captor.

Interspersed with that are shots of police and dogs reunning through the forest and a pretty park ranger getting caught in the middle. Throughout the story, the characters continuously make huge errors of judgement. The alien kills a police officer for being racist, even though it can only bring suspicion on him, Cade wanders around in the open when he knows there is a helicopter covering the area, at no time does anyone attempt to take the park ranger's radio away from her despite the opportunity it presents for her to blow their hiding place.

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MARKER 262

A drag race car disappears into thin air on a road. Cade investigates and learns that there is a history of vehicles disappearing at the same point and suspects the aliens are involved.

Considering the potential importance of the experiment being run here (the creation of pocket universes to trap responding emergency and military vehicles in when the invasion comes), it seems unlikely that it would be left in the hands of an unstable drag racer. That's assuming there is an experiment ongoing here since vehicles have been going missing since the 50s. If the experiment is over, surely the markers wouldn't be deployed until just before the invasion to minimise the chances of being discovered.

The plot makes little sense, the minor characters are barely sketches and the lead acts completely out of character in a vain attempt to give him some emotional depth.

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MOTEL CALIFORNIA

A Nostradamus prediction takes Cade to a hotel where the aliens may be giving the guests hallucinations. He will have to fight against his own deepest desires as well as those of others to uncover the truth.

This is the dullest story in the series yet. It's padded out by a series of hallucination that are as predictable as they are uninteresting. Whilst those suffered by Cade and a female guest are at least believable, the one belonging to a hunter is shoehorned into the plot in an attempt to create some tension towards the end. It fails completely.

No surprises, no excitement, no character development, no interest.

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BREEDING GROUND

A bullied young girl at a boarding school discovers developing powers that provide her a way to fight back against her oppressors. Cade goes undercover as a track and field coach to find out if this is another alien experiment.

The Stephen King story CARRIE gets a name check in this episode, not least because the opening sequence is stolen from that book almost wholesale. If you're going to steal, you may as well steal from the best.

The central mystery is around the source of the girl's powers and who at the school is responsible for them, and how. Cade goes about his investigations with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and somehow isn't immediately caught. And why would the aliens carrying out the experiment keep the incriminating death certificate in a file where it could easily be located?

There's also some lip service paid to the idea of power corrupting as the young woman goes from being the bullied to the bully almost overnight as her powers grow, which is the most interesting aspect of the episode and yet given the least attention.

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BLUE AGAVE

Cade returns to New York to meet with a friend of his late wife's. A high-flyer, she frequents the Royal, a club for the rich and influential where anything is available at a price. Cade suspects the alines are using it as a front for mind control experiments.

The old worm in the ear leading to mind control trick from the likes of STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN is trotted out here, mixed in with the hedonism expected from the rich and influential. Except that the worms don't seem to control anything. Cade's friend is infected in the opening scene and she doesn't seem to have any ill-effects at all. What the worms really do is at least an interesting twist.

At least Cade's investigations aren't quite so obvious. The surprise infection of Cade leads to a disappointibly simple escape from that same infection. The aliens lock up a known master burglar in a room and just walk away is sloppy writing and the which doppelganger is the real girl scene is just plain lazy.

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CUL DE SAC

A young boy with troubled parents warns Cade that an attractive woman in his neighbourhood is really an alien and has her claws in all them married men around.

First off, the suburban cul de sac in this episode is just about the busiest residential street in the world. There is not a moment of the day when there aren't about thirty people wandering around. This is in stark contrast to the normality of the suburbs and makes it harder to understand how the woman in question can go around seducing every married man in the area without a lynch mob of wives taking her down.

The answer for how she does that is fairly straightforward, but the reason for why stretches credulity somewhat. The resolution of the family issues is also a bit pat, to say the least.

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THE BOX

On his anniversary, Cade visits his wife's grave and is promptly arrested by police. In the station, an interrogation begins, but it is far from usual.

There are a number of twists and turns in the power struggle that takes place in a single room and they are not all completely predictable. It is a shame, then, that the characters are painfully obvious and the dialogue is quite often just painful.

With all of the action taking place in a single location, it's fairly uninteresting visually, but it is at least trying to do something different and is the better for that. If only it had simply been better.

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UNDESIRABLES

Cade encounters alien assassin Joshua again, this time whilst both are searching for an alien who has fallen in love with a theoretcial physicist. Can Cade persuade Joshua to give love a chance, and if he does will Joshua be able to avoid exposure to his superiors.

The most interesting parts of this story are the ones set within the alien camp, the discussions of alien sympathisers, of how inhabiting human bodies transmits human frailties to the Gua and the suspicions that have fallen onto Joshua because of his inability to kill the alien. That this all takes place within a luxury home either undermines the significance or rather underlines it. It's hard to tell which.

The rest of the plotline is a dull love story and third rate noir mystery storyline.

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SECOND WAVE

The invasion begins and Cade is forced to take shelter in a basement with an assortment of ordinary people. With emotions riding high, paranoia begins to set in and long entrenched personal grudges and prejudices threaten to spill over.

This is a thinly-veiled reworking of the classic TWILIGHT ZONE story The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. Still, if you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best and the borrowed quality shows through. The breakdown of society is abrupt in the face of the invasion, but is helped along by the unfaithful spouses backstory and some committed playing by the small cast.

True, it makes no sense when you try to work out how aliens could have staged a full scale invasion and giant attack ship in the sky without any of the neighbouring streets even so much as noticing, but that's OK because the rest works so well, right down to the final betrayal.

Easily the best episode of the show to date, but that's down to the borrowed source material.

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BLIND WITNESS

A Nostradamus prediction takes Cade to a hospital with an abandoned wing that seems to be home to a woman whose sight has been partially restored and who may be able to see the aliens beneath their human disguises.

A gothic horror story set in a hospital? Hardly the most original idea, but there are few locations better for setting a horror story than a place where people are cut open on a daily basis. This episode makes the most of that setting with lots of dark corridors, bloody medical instruments and body horror. The idea of doctors carrying out experiments without the use of anaesthetic is bad enough, but the idea is pushed further when the doctor is an alien.

And the horror angle is pushed just about as far as it can go in a science fiction TV show. There are eyeless children, half alien hybrids and horribly burned aliens bent on cutting people open. The darkness adds to what is otherwise just another example of Cade investigating another organisation.

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DELUGE

In a town where it never stops raining, the people have turned to human sacrifice. Cade tries to prove that the unending deluge is an alien experiment before an innocent victim follows a murderer on the sacrificial altar.

In case it wasn't obvious enough that this is a reworking of THE WICKER MAN, the opening scene uses a an almost exact copy of the burning man from the that film. The townsfolk have a strong connection to the traditions of the past and have a penchant for animal masks. The hero takes a room at the local inn where the barmaid shows an interest in him.

The rest is the usual Cade sneaking around in plain sight and other people acting so foolishly that he always has clues to be easily followed. At least his escape from the prison cell shows some initiative.

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MELODY

A Nostradamus prediction takes Cade to Detroit where a rock band apparently has the power to send young people into violent rages.

This is one of the dullest of the FIRST WAVE episodes to date. There is some discussion about the difference between artistic freedom and corporate sellouts, about the music being more important than the deals, the art more important than the money. This is mere lip service to a story that has Cade wandering around carrying out his usual investigations in plain sight, this time pretending to be the world's worst talent scout.

The characters are one-dimensional, the main female artist flip-flopping between the art and commerce arguments with almost every scene. The outcome, though, is never in any doubt.

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THE AFTERTIME

A female warrior from the time after the Gua invasion arrives to save Cade from death. She wants to take him back to the future with her to lead the Resistance, but he has more immediate business to attend to.

Welcome to THE TERMINATOR, FIRST WAVE style.There are no killer robots in evidence, but the gender swapped Connors/Reece dynamic is all present and correct. She doesn't tell him to come with her if he wants to live, but she tells him to come back to the future to save the world dozens of times.

The classic conundrum of whether changing the past can change the future is partly sidestepped by the future girl only wanting to take a dead man forward with her, but the shadow of Connor's musings about Judgement Day being averted lay heavy on the episode. It is a shame that the side story involving a disc and a teenage radio operator is so desperately uninteresting.

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THE DECISION

The Gua meet to make the determination as to whether the invasion should go ahead. Joshua stands up to make the argument that Cade Foster is dangerous enough for the Second Wave to be delayed.

The first season of FIRST WAVE decides to go out on a real low with this clips compilation. Assuming that the audience has made it this far, they will be familiar with the stories that have been told and don't need to have them explained back to them in truncated form. It's a cheap and tacky way to end the season and does nothing to elevate what has been a derivative and fairly middling show at best.

On the evidence of this episode, perhaps one season is all the show deserves.

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