FIRST WAVE
Season 2

TARGET 117

Cade is lured to a remote island with the promise of meeting an experiment survivor like himself. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a battle with a Gua warrior encased in an enhanced body that is virtually indestructible and can see and hear better than any surveillance technology. Cade's resilience is to be tested and the results may cause the invasion to be started.

FIRST WAVE returns for a second season and the opening episode doesn't bode well for big improvements. Lady wrestler Sable is pressed into service as the alien warrior, confusingly called Lucas and with a personal history with Joshua, but unfortunately she proves to be completely inadequate to the task. This is not entirely her fault, since the majority of the direction involves her walking aimlessly or striking a pose. Considering she is supposed to be a super elite killing machine, she seems to be mainly a super elite waste of space. She takes forever to find the fugitives and allows them to shoot her, bulldoze her and drop a shipping container on her head, all whilst she does very little at all and Joshua stands by and watches.

None of this makes much sense and putting it down to an alien experiment with hugely high stakes, but no real logic behind it smacks of tired, lazy writing.

The second season is off to an poor start.

Top

DEEPTHROAT

A US Senator is blocking all NASA space missions. An investigative reporter is on the story. Cade needs to help her along the way.

Mr Foster goes to Washington in this dull story of the search for a package. There's an attempt to spice it up by adding a dominatrix into the mix, but the truth is that you invoke the name of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN at your peril and this story certainly doesn't have the goods to back it up.

Top

THE APOSTLES

Cade learns of a biker gang who may have witnessed the death of an alien. When he finds them, he learns that they are true believers in his cause, but their methods leave a lot to be desired and they might be hunting the wrong alien.

This episode has a bit more depth than the usual. Cade finds a group that believe him, but finds that is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it comes to a ending that is much more downbeat than the normal, which gives it a bit more bite.

Unfortunately, the episode is deeply average on every other level.

Top

SUSPERIENCE

A powerful psychic is killed in her sleep. Cade investigates the group she was part of and discovers a larger conspiracy may have been at work.

Foster's approach here seems to be to bully everyone in sight until someone finally admits a titbit of information, which leads to more bullying and another titbit. Subtle is what it is not and it is somewhat fitting that, at one point, he is immobilised by a powerful telekinetic and made to feel completely helpless.

The idea of dying in real life if you die in your dreams is an old, old one and was dealt with much better in the film DREAMSCAPE, but the dreamscape here consists of a bit of smoke in a cemetary and an open grave that goes on forever. Both it and the final battle of wills that takes place within it are disappointing. At least the identity of the killer shows a little bit of originality.

Top

THE CHANNEL

A woman killed in a car accident starts quoting Nostradamus. Cade joins the media circus outside her house in the hope of protecting her from the inevitable alien interest and hoping to learn something more about his mission.

Cade Foster gets to speak to the actual Nostradamus across time and space and though he asks all the right questions, all he gets is a bunch of mumbo jumbo meant to inspire him. A few choice hints about how to wipe out the alien threat might have been more helpful. It is inevitable that the wise mystic has to speak to in riddles that help no-one.

The rest of the story makes no sense. Cade is identified by the press, aliens and police almost straight away and yet the aliens on site make no moves towards him and the police don't arrive until the very last minute when everything is already over. In the final analysis, nobody is any further forward at the end of the episode than they were at the start.

Top

RED FLAG

Cade enters an elite military competition with high office as the reward to the winner in order to investigate strange goings on at an army base.

This is the silliest episode set up to date. Apparently, all it takes to get into the most elite army training exercise and competition is some forged computer identification. This is utterly ridiculous. Just slightly less ridiculous is Cade's ability to wander freely around the base in the dead of night without his departure being noticed by either the military brass or the super elite soldiers sharing the same dormitory. At least the writers have the good sense to see Cade coming last in the various exercises against these elite soldiers, but he then outsoldiers them all in the final test in order to save the day.

If the military were to really hold such competitions for rapid advancement, they would certainly be much more involved than the tasks we see here and the best of the best would certainly find them less of a problem than these ones do. It is also sad to see that the only female entrant is the only entrant who strips down to her underwear.

Top

PRAYER FOR THE WHITE MAN

Cade gets involved in plans to build casinos on Native American reservations which might just be an alien plot to turn away the spirits that protected those lands in the past.

Native American tradition and spirituality is at the heart of this story, adding a new dimension to the show's mythology. There have already been hints of psychic powers and magic in other episodes, but this really doubles down on that by explicitly featuring spirit animals, visions and Native American spirits. There is more to Cade's philosophy than simply science.

It is therefore disappointing that the episode as a whole is so very dull.

Top

THE PURGE

A high-powered official arrives from Gua with a mission to purge unbelievers from the mission. Joshua is made his right hand man in rooting out who is working against the Gua invasion and executing them following an attempt on his life.

Cade Foster is completely abandoned in this episode and the focus shifts to Joshua and the rifts in the Gua camp. Sadly, this diminishes the Gua from menacing threat to squabbling factions no better than the humans they are trying to enslave. The whodunnit mystery isn't very interesting and only the twist in the very tail of the tale makes any of it worthwhile.

Top

LOST SOULS

A woman is found alive in a building foundation after more than fifty years. Cade pretends to be her grandson in order to find out if aliens were involved and learns there were two other test subjects. Can he determine where they are and what happened to them without alerting the federal agents he is working with to his real identity.

This is an example of that very rare thing - an intriguing FIRST WAVE episode. The mystery of the entombed woman is a good starting point and she is given enough screen time to explore some of that, though the horror of spending half a century entombed in concrete is not really covered off enough, which is a shame because it is the most interesting aspect of the episode and could have been delved into much more deeply.

The Federal agents supporting the case are given a bit more depth than the usual background characters, though this is abandoned later on when the plot finally kicks off and characterisation is given a back seat. That said, this is one of the few times when Cade fails utterly in his task, which makes the ending a little darker and more satisfying than it could have been, the explanation for the entombed humans being a lot less interesting than the rest of the episode set it up to be.

Top

THE HEIST

Cade returns to a life of crime when a planned robbery could lead to alien technology. Instead, he finds himself trapped with an old flame and old friend in a series of ever-increasingly deadly traps.

This film riffs on the movie CUBE with its series of interlinked rooms, each containing a deadly trap that can't always be seen. As a plot device, it's a good one, and the first death provides a real surprise punch, but the characters trapped together are disappointingly dull and the backstory they share feels forced and less than riveting. This is also down to the acting, which is falls far short of what is necessary to make this a much more interesting episode.

Characters trapped in a deadly bottle is a well-trodden trope of science fiction shows, but when only one of the characters is a regular and the others are completely uninteresting, things are going to suffer, as is the audience. Still, it's better than the average FIRST WAVE episode, which makes two in a row.

Top

OHIO PLAYERS

The Fairview Falcons are on course to win their first ever championship, but Foster believes the change in their fortunes is down alien intereference.

And after two better episodes, FIRST WAVE falls back into dull and uninteresting territory with this story that borrows from just about every High School football story ever, whilst throwing in some BULL DURHAM with the presence of a hot older woman on the sidelines. There is an attempt to make all this seem more important than it is with some late revelations about beekeeping and DNA splicing, but by that time the audiene interest has wandered off elsewhere.

Certainly not a touchdown.

Top

NIGHT FALLS

Cade is injured in an escape and has to go to take a woman hostage and go to ground in her apartment. As both the Feds and the Gua close in, he finds his safe haven coming to mean more to him that he might have imagined.

Only the sheer predictability of this storyline allows it to avoid accusations of glorifying Stockholm Syndrome. In fear of his life, Cade takes a woman hostage and she falls for him once he has convinced her his life is in danger. So far, so stolen completely from THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, but that film had better writers and actors and, well just about everything actually.

Then comes the big twist, which isn't really a twist because the audience ought to be able to see its inevitability from space. The episode doesn't grate as badly as some of the others, but it only just about scrapes into average territory.

Top

NORMAL, ILLINOIS

Normal, healthy teenagers are dying of brain aneurysms in the town of Normal, Illinois. Cade investigates with the help of a true believers.

Another set of mystery deaths to be investigated. More generally inept clue gathering and more supporting characters of very little interest and another experiment that makes almost no sense and so requires a last scene info dump from a dying alien to explain it all.

FIRST WAVE hardly seems to be trying any more.

Top

ALL ABOUT EDDIE

Crazy Eddie attends his high school reunion to put right a wrong from his past. Inevitably, the aliens are not far behind and Cade isn't able to assist. It's all about Eddie.

High school reunion? Really? This is scraping the bottom of the barrel territory storywise. Admittedly, learning a bit about the past of mysterious, paranoid Eddie is welcome, but the threadbare plot is showing holes here, the direction is perfunctory at best and it ends up risible rather than exciting or engaging.

This really is bargain basement stuff, except it's no bargain.

Top

PLAYLAND

Foster discovers an alien experiment in which teenagers are thrust through a portal into a deserted fairground where they align with two tribes fighting for survival.

What is an intriguing premise doesn't have the story to carry it through to being an interesting episode. The idea of turning teenagers into killing machines by forcing the to play what amounts to deadly versions of the 'capture the flag' game is initially interesting and dropping Cade into the middle of two tribes that are both equally uninterested in listening to him is a good starting point, but the narrative never really takes off and the ending is both inevitable and underwhelming.

Even so, Playland is a more interesting story thn ths how has managed to come up with in a while and should be appreciated for that fact.

Top

THE HARVEST

Three women go missing and a prediction shows this to be of interest. Cade investigates with the help of one of the missing women's sister.

Another thoroughly uninteresting episode that makes such a faint impression that it will be hard to remember almost immediately after the end credits role. The usual investigative beats are hit and there is nothing to mark it out from any of the other equally unmemorable episodes.

Top

RUBICON

Cade is lured into a trap and is knocked out by a car bomb. Waking up, he finds that he has finally made an impression on the world, the government have woken up to his efforts to alert them to the alien threat and are finally willing to work with him to end the invasion once and for all.

This is a time-honoured trope with the hero waking up into a world that is as he would want it to be, but which is suspicious by its being exactly what he has been looking for since the start of the show. Can it be real? Are the aliens controlling his mind? Are they trying to trick him into giving something away? By resisting is he aiding the aliens in their cause?

Everything runs pretty much as might be expected. If you are going to use a trope then you might as well follow it exactly. The supporting cast are more interesting than in usually the case and a trope only becomes a trope by being interesting enough to warrant repeating. As a result, the episode rises up above the average FIRST WAVE instalment, but that isn't really saying all that much. It's watchable, and we could wish that more episodes reached even these meagre heights, but there need to be a lot more of this, and better, quality to raise the show up.

Top

GLADIATOR

Foster enlists the aid of an ex-con bare knuckle boxer friend in order to infiltrate an alien operation aimed at creating the perfect warrior husk that will ensure their ability to take over the planet.

The usual story of an alien experiment being investigated and thwarted by Cade and Eddie with some help from individuals on the scene is only slightly shaken up by bringing in a boxer who believes he can still have a shot at the big time despite criminal convictions, drug issues and migraines caused by cold conditions. This is one of the more original characters the show has allied with Cade purely on the grounds that he doesn't much like his former cell mate and he is utterly resistant to being convinced that aliens exist and are experimenting on him. As long as he can fight real opponents, that's all he cares about.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story is the usual nonsense in which security appears and disappears when needed, nobody recognises the aliens' biggest enemy or takes the time to search him for useful things like guns or lockpicking tools. The writers really aren't picking up their game.

Top

THE TRIAL OF JOSHUA BRIDGES

Alien ally Joshua is being put through 'realignment' when Foster manages to break into the facility and rescue him. Now, he must persuade his Gua friend once again of the justice of his cause.

This is a dreaded 'clips' episode, in which an, admittedly strong, framing device is used as an excuse to use clips from old episodes in order to keep production costs down. In this case, the interactions are mainly those involving the alien turncoat. The battle for Joshua's soul between the propaganda of the brainwashing he has been subjected to and Foster's human pleas for understanding make for a more interesting than usual storyline, and there is a nice twist in the tail at the end, but a clips episode is a clips episode and so this is an unwelcome addition to the storyline.

Top

UNDERWORLD

Foster believes the Gua are trying to make deals with mob bosses and steps in to save the one boss who seems to be targeted for death. Can he trust a man who is a career criminal and killer?

This is the typical FIRST WAVE story, wrapped up in some crime genre trappings and with a touch of appropriate gangster music. There's a duplicitous moll, a traitorous lieutenant, a back alley meet and even a stripper with something more on her mind than taking her clothes off.

Apart from that, though, it's business as usual, competently played but with very, very little to get excited about.

Top

TOMORROW

Cade wakes up into a world where the Gua have already invaded and Earth has been lost. The occupation is eleven years old and all Earth's people are registered and controlled. He reaches out to Eddie and tries to restart the Resistence.

Yes, it's that story again. Finding himself in a world he didn't create, the hero struggles to understand what has happened to his past life, but can he really be sure what he is seeing is real? It's been done before, and better, in many other shows and adding genre stalwart Victoria Pratt (CLEOPATRA 2525, MUTANT X) doesn't improve things sufficiently to raise interest.

It's far from being the worst FIRST WAVE episode, but that's hardly the strongest recommendation.

Top

THE BELIEVERS

When they learn of a TV show that is doing a special programme all about Cade the wife killer, Cade and Eddie take over the TV station in an attempt to force the crew to put out the word about the Gua invasion.

This entire episode is leading up to the single shocking shot that is the cliffhanger to the season. At least it ought to be shocking, but the audience is merely left with a mild sense of 'what?' because this is a show about aliens inhabiting human-like shells, so the resolution isn't really too hard to work out.

As for the rest, Sebastien Spence's trademark always as 100% intensity turns the hero into a jerk and just makes us care about his fate a little bit less than we did before, though we had not thought that was possible.

Top