FIRST WAVE
Season 3

MABUS

The decidedly not assassinated Cade Foster and sidekick Eddie learn that a Gua conciousness so powerful it can kill people who come into close contact with its sphere alone has come to Earth to oversee the second wave. They decide they must capture the sphere at all costs.

The apparent cliffhanger of the Season 2 finale is dealt with a logical enough twist, but nothing else about this story is an improvement on the last season. The plot rattles along with as much pace as it can muster in order to skim over the gaping holes in the plot. The security of the Gua stronghold set up in the woods to welcome the arrival of the greatest Gua leader is so horribly inept that it is even more of a joke than an Imperial Stormtrooper's ability to shoot straight. A scientist waltzing out with the leader's sphere is one thing (she at least has the authority to walk out), but Cade Foster being allowed to get in and then take an unresponsive human body back out without anyone noticiing is utterly ridiculous.

The story strand of the Gua leader's powerful presence making people bleed from their eyes, bringing attention to a church cemetary, is OK enough, but the sudden arrival of a mysterious killing machine is a bit deus ex machina and the casting of notorious ex-porn star Traci Lords screams of desperation. Whether that's the case remains to be seen, but the season is off to a mediocre start, which doesn't bode well for the rest.

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RAVEN NATION

Cade tracks down a mysterious organisation known as the Raven Nation. There, he finds a well-organised, well-funded and well-armed group dedicated to carrying on his fight against the Gua. Initially encouraged by this, he encounters their leader, Jordan Radcliffe, a woman who suffered her own losses to the Gua and whose methods go far beyond those Cade is willing to countenance.

There is only so long that any 'loner against the hidden enemy' format can survive without falling into a calcified format that becomes increasingly repetitive and tedious. It could easily be argued that FIRST WAVE has long since passed that point. The introduction of new supporters and new resources is one way to freshen up the that format. Casting a notorious underage porn star as the leader of those supporters could also be seen as a way of enliving matters. It could also be seen as a desperate grab for attention. To be fair, Traci Lords is no worse in her role than any of the other regular cast members and there is no attempt to play on her sexual appeal, so we can perhaps be a little less cynical about her casting than we might have been based on the advertising media she appears in.

The story is hardly a revelation. Once the group has been discovered, Cade finds out what the limits of his thirst for revenge are as Gua prisoners are tortured and murdered by poison gas. The Gua inevitably also find the group's hideout, leading to the least impressive shoot out the show could have come up with. The direction is static and unimpressive throughout and there is a very real sense that the show is struggling to stay alive, possibly on reduced financial footing.

One thing is for certain, there will have to be big improvements if the wave isn't to subside into a ripple.

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COMES A HORSEMAN

Cade investigates an underground biological research centre and is infected by a deadly virus.

Humanity's propensity for working towards its own destruction is highlighted in this episode, which at least concludes with one person taking responsibility for their own actions. Otherwise, it's a game of Cluedo in an underground bunker. Someone is a Gua and only their immunity to the virus, through their blood samples, will reveal them. The story is trying to access some of the paranoia of John Carpenter's THE THING, but pretty much fails because the audience really doesn't care about any of the other characters and, since it's the start of the season, there is very little chance of Foster being killed off.

There is some interest in seeing the usually composed Foster being knocked off his game and becoming fearful and uncertain, but since that's a function of the virus and not the character, it is short lived.

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GULAG

Foster enters into one of the Gua's quantum pocket prisons to extract the original Joshua, only to find himself caught up in the same 19 minutes running up to the end of the world.

Yes, it's the time-honoured GROUNDHOG DAY episode in which the same events are run over and over again with just some minor changes to show how the characters are starting to understand their situation. There is nothing new at all in how this plays out, though the premise itself has just enough interest in it to keep the audience going to the end. Finding out exactly how they will finally escape is the only bit of interest there is.

Whilst the central concept is sound (hence it keeps showing up in sci fi shows all over the place), the rest of the set up is fairly inept. We last saw the Joshua consciousness confined to a steel sphere, so why should the Gua rejoin it to a human host body just so they can punish him? Surely being locked in a plain metal sphere would achieve that well enough. Since we are expected to accept that the Gua can create 'quantum pockets' that are perfect illusions inside which people can live, why are they invading other worlds at all? They can just create their own perfect ones out of nothing and live there, after all. How exactly does Cade come into the information the Joshua is in this quantum pocket and how does Eddie know just which one to hack into? Why does Kane (the new Joshua) decide to enter the pocket to become part of the simulation? So, so many holes.

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THE FLIGHT OF FRANCIS JEFFRIES

A bizarre murder case leads Foster to suspect that the Gua now have the ability to pass their consciousnesses into human bodies by touch alone.

Now we're back to the standard investigation case format of the show. It is inevitable that Foster will fall foul of the body jumping and the inclusion of Traci Lords' character Jordan in the plot is simply to inject some 'will she/won't she shoot Foster in the back' energy into the otherwise lacklustre plot. Since we know the hero isn't going to get killed off, there's precious little of that energy and final outcome for the villain is inevitable from the opening shot (though why the heroes can't just break the memory core in question is question to be asked).

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STILL AT LARGE

Cade and Jordan go undercover in a large police precinct building to recover files about the Gua that could very well exonerate Cade for his wife's murder. One of the detectives starts to get just a little too inquisitive about their activities.

Why would there be a huge number of files about the Gua and about Cade Foster stored in a police station? The question is asked, but no formal resolution to the question is put forward, just a lot of guesses and suppositions. This is how the show gets over sloppy writing. The files are only a mcguffin anyway, an excuse for the couple to be in a police setting, sneaking around so obviously they would have been arrested well before the silly denoument in which an entire police precinct decide it's OK to allow a kidnapper and his hostage just walk away.

There is also some amusement to be had by getting one of the world's most notorious porn performers have to pretend to be utterly unable to convincingly make sex noises. Oh, the irony.

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ASYLUM

Eddie gets himself locked up in an insane asylum in search of a judge he recruited to the cause who has suffered an unexplained mental collapse. He soon finds himself facing visions he cannot control.

Now this is a turn up for the books - a genuinely unsettling FIRST WAVE episode. There can be few people who don't have a fear of losing their sanity and for a character like Eddie, his mind is his most important asset, so that fear is compounded. Add to that the fact that the loss of mind is potentially being imposed on him by either malevolent aliens or by misguided humans trying to help and the threat is both immediate and scary. His encounter with a room full of people whose minds have been so utterly erased they can do nothing more than stand and stare into space is a very scary moment for both him and for any invested audience. Rob LaBelle is given something significant to do in this episode and he pulls out a top notch performance as a man on the edge and possibly halfway over it. The show has rarely given him such a chance and he grabs it with both hands.

Why, oh why can't the show be like this more often?

EYES OF GUA

A series of murders with mystic overtones summons Cade to investigate. He finds a plot by Mabus to gain the power of Nostradamus for the Gua. He is determined to stop the plot and the killings. Joshua, on the other hand, seems to have different plans.

After the really rather good Asylum, this is rather a jolt back down to Earth with a sketched out plot, minimal investigation, the usual amount of unexplained fact discovery and coincidence and a denoument that makes no sense after all that has gone before it. Joshua wants the power of Nostradamus for himself, to use to end the Gua invasion. Cade manages to convince him that the last death he needs is no longer available before moments later revealing his subterfuge. This is completely nonsensical plotting. Having Joshua as a sort of, but not quite ally may provide a certain amount of uncertainty into the relationship, but the writing needs to be a lot better than this for it to work.

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SKYWATCHERS

Cade and Jordan go to the small town of Hope to try and discover what happened to a Raven Nation operative who hasn't been heard of. They find a town united in keeping a great secret and may have to pay with their lives to find out what that secret is.

A reasonable set up is ruined by perfunctory writing in which characters have to turn full half circle in their beliefs to bring about the desired outcome. That they make these changes in thinking on behalf of complete strangers instead of the people who have been their neighbours all their lives beggars belief, but then there is very little about FIRST WAVE that inspires belief in the first place.

The plot is predicatable stuff from start to finish and there isn't enough in the way of action or excitement to keep any real interest going.

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THE PLAN

When Mabus calls for the second wave to start immediately, two generals turn against him and contact Joshua for help in killing him. Such an act could cause a civil war within the Gua, so Cade is summoned to put a human face on the assassination.

What had the potential for an interesting plotline turns into a pale GROUNDHOG DAY scenario as the assassination plan is played out in virtual reality a number of times and the various characters grumble about how much they don't trust each other. Add to that the fact that the security around Mabus is laughable at best and throw in a denoument that makes everything else that happened in the episode utterly pointless and you have an episode that is filler at best and a waste of time at worst.

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WEDNESDAY'S CHILD

Mabus is playing games with his enemies. Visions he is sending to an innocent child has Cade and Eddie searching for deadly bombs, whilst Jordan bonds with the child and find's that she may be the target after all.

There are two strands to this tale and it comes as no surprise that neither are particulary interesting. Cade and Eddie chasing after bombs is the least interesting, including a car chase and arrest interlude that appears to have no relevance to anything and is unbelievable in the circumstances. On the other hand, Jordan's strand, with the dying child, also has no suprises as the woman bonds with a child that reminds her of herself at that age and progresses into a mental battle within the visions sent by Mabus. This latter is so easily esaped that it provides no tension at all. This also gives Traci Lords a chance for a some serious emoting, which means the full array of pouts is on display, but no real acting.

This really is uninteresting stuff.

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UNEARTHED

The Gua are searching for a mysterious artefact that is really a tool of great power. The team go undercover to stop them.

Thor's hammer was really an old Gua device that allows for instantaneous travel across time and space and allowed the Vikings to cross the oceans. It's an idea that might have had some mileage if the realisation wasn't so limited. The site of this archeological dig is the middle of school bus graveyard, which allows for endless shots of good and bad guys sneaking through decaying buses trying to find and avoid each other. This happens a lot. The explanation as to how the Gua lost the artefact is banal and you have to wonder how they never managed to recreate the technology. Even the inevitable ending is mishandled.

FIRST WAVE is declining with almost every episode.

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SHADOWLANDS

Cade is having nightmares that might be suppressed memories. The others persuade him to visit a memory regression expert who shows him that his childhood was not at all as he remembeed it to be, but which side is the expert on.

Some dads can be bad and abusive. It's a trope that is more often used than the idea that a dad can be good and supportive. The cliche is the background for some Gua conditioning that seems to make a mockery of the show's whole premise that a remarkable individual can rise to the occasion and save the world. Instead, he has to be someone who was brainwashed and given the skills that would be turned against his masters. Such a profound turnaround in the show's mythology should have been shocking, but it's very much more of the same indifference-inducing dullness that seems to characterise the show now.

It's hard to know how long the show can continue to be this lacklustre.

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LEGACY

Jordan returns to the Radcliffe Foundation in the hope of learning if her father was involved with the alien invasion, not knowing that the Gua have a machine that can take away bad memories, like memories of resistance.

For the second time in just a few episodes, the show delves into the past of one of its heroes in an attempt to give them a little more depth. Traci Lords has to dig deep into her repertoire of pouts, but still fails to convince as an actress. Allowing the leering shots of her semi-naked body at the start certainly doesn't help her case is putting the porn star label behind her. To be fair, none of the supporting cast show her up. The sidelining of Rob LaBelle doesn't help anything. The swapping of memory loss between Jordan and Cade is laughable and the whole thing taking place in just a few rooms, opulent though they may be, smacks of budgetary constraint.

FIRST WAVE is struggling to provie anything new or even vaguely interesting, but then it has been for some time.

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THE EDGE

The visit to a Raven Nation laboratory to view a step forward in Gua detection technology goes wrong when Cade is infected by Gua DNA and begins to change into a monster.

Another 'bottle' episode, in which the small core cast is trapped in a single room, actually brings some invention to the storytelling, though not too much. Sebastian Spence isn't up to the task of adequately shading Cade Foster's existential despair as he slowly loses his humanity and becomes the thing he has been fighting against, so we get whingeing Cade and angry Cade and nothing much in between. Traci Lords is expected to step and fill that void, which is, again, beyond her skills. Bringing back Roger Cross as Joshua fails to create the tension that it should because it's exactly the same 'can we trust him, can we not?' scenario that usually crops up when the character returns. In the end, the episode doesn't fulfil the promise of the drama.

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THE VESSEL

Alien leader Mabus takes over the body of global tech leader just as Cade and the team attempt to prevent the release of a software package that will destroy all human computers.

Mabus is an alien threat that has never really worked, mainly because he is always confined to a control room with a decaying body. This episode at least removes him from that and drops him into the wider world. Sadly, it then traps him and Cade's team in a corporate headquarters and limits the plotting to moving around corridors trying to find each other. There are a number of occasions when the leader of the alien threat could have been eliminated, but somehow the resistance fighters refuse to take it. The establishing plot of the internet-ending software is forgotten about completely and then dealt with at the end in a single throwaway line.

There is one twist tha could have changed the balance of the drama seismically, but the show backs away from it, promising the inevitable through line in the coda. So close, and yet so far.

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REQUIEM

Following a devastating loss, Foster initiates the failsafe option of the Raven Nation. The four generals come together in an abandoned facility to discuss the way ahead. They are not, however alone.

Another bottle episode set in a single location of a few rooms and corridors shows up the limited resources of the show almost as much as the alien chameleon assassin being nothing more than an actress painted green and wearing a leotard. It may be trying to invoke THE THING with its camouflaged alien and its human protagonits riddled with paranoia and not knowing who to trust, but it fails to create any real tension or fear.

That said, the episode pulls a trick at the end that tips the advantage firmly in the direction of the Gua and leaves Cade and Eddie right back where they were at the start of the first season.

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CHECKMATE

Alone and without support, Foster and Eddie are taken prisoner. The book of Nostradamus is in the Gua's hands. The aliens have just about won, but Nostradamus still has a trick or four up his sleeve.

This episode matches the best of its mythology against the worst of its storytelling. The book of Nostradamus reveals some secret messages and a possible truth about its creator. The latter is hardly unexpected, but the former raises the stakes as the its sets a four quatrain limit on the time Cade has to save the world or lose it.

There's some nasty torture stuff aimed at Eddie, whilst Cade gets away with being given little more a natty dog collar and some taunting from Mabus in Jordan's body. The assistance, when it comes, comes from a highly expected source and the impossibly well-guarded compound is breached with ridiculous ease.

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BLACK BOX

A crashed Gua ship offers up an unexpected solution to the Gua problem, a warhead with power enough to wipe out Mabus's entire command structure. The downside is the millions of innocent humans who will also be killed. Joshua is willing to pay that price. Cade is not.

The show decamps to the forests where there is much running around between trees and breathless arguments about whether the death of really quite a lot of people is justified by the freedom from the Gua that would be enjoyed by all the rest. And that is just about it. Gua soldiers spend most of the episode shooting ineffectively at the trio and then, when finally they have them, they fail to take the inevitable next step of killing them. The number of times the Gua could have won their war simply by putting a bullet in a captive Cade Foster's head is something we've never bothered to count, but it must be pretty high.

The outcome is never in any doubt and the whole thing is just tiresome.

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BENEATH THE BLACK SKY

Cade is transported to a planet laid waste by war against the Gua. The last member of an alien race attempts to teach him that the battle against the Gua is not simply fought on the battlefield, but also in the mind and the heart.

FIRST WAVE at least tries something different with this episode. Stepping out of the main plotline to concentrate on a duel of wits and beliefs on a higher plane is straight out of left field, and all the better for it. Christopher Guest (of STARGATE fame) makes for a suitably inscrutable teacher and his teaching style is sufficiently obscure as to irritate both Cade and the audience. Sometimes, a little straightforward speech can go a long way. Even so, Cade is particularly impatient and hostile to someone who is obviously very powerful and may possibly be offering useful assistance against an enemy that has all but won.

The twist towards the end, based on location, is too clearly borrowed from elsewhere to cause other than a rolling of the eyes and its revelation upon Cade's arrival would have made for a much shorter, and possibly better, episode.

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TERMINAL CITY

Cade travels through a portal to a future where the Gua hold sway over all the Earth and Cade himself has given up on saving the small band that is all that remains of the human resistance. Present day Cade must learn what he did in the past that brought about this catastrophic result. Mabus, however, is not far behind.

Time travel again and welcome back to the disused junkyard setting that has featured in so many episodes of this show. Broken down old buildings are clearly cheap to rent. The conflict between a young Cade Foster who still believes in the fight the old Cade Foster who has already lost it ought to have brought about more interest than the script manages to raise. The inclusion of the race for Thor's Hammer (and yes, that's still as risible as it sounds) distracts and detracts from anything interesting going on in the character development area, but that's not really a great loss.

This looks and feels exactly like so many other episodes of the show that it barely rises to meet it's function of bringing in season finale.

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TWICE BLESS'D MAN

The day of ushering in the second wave of the Gua invasion has arrived, but Cade, Jordan, Eddie and Joshua are all safely locked up in an insane asylum being told they are participating in a mass delusion.

Ah, the old 'you're insane and the rest of the show is your delusion' storyline rears its head in FIRST WAVE. To be honest, the tried and tested formula might have provided one of the better episodes had it not been stitched into the season, a series apparently, finale. That means the same running time has to be shared with yet another incursion into what ought to be an impregnable fortress in a last ditch attempt to thwart the aliens. That means both storylines get short shrift and, considering that three seasons of the show have been leading up to this exact point, that seems like a bad move.

And the finale fails on just about every single level. There is very little attempt at a sense of scale, the action is weak, the main focus of the story (stopping the alien invasion) is broken up by the incursions into the asylum storyline and a last minute attempt to shock with an obviously fake betrayal and murder scenario comes off as just desperate. All in all, we've waded through three seasons of this show to get to an end point that wasn't worth the journey. At least there's a postive outcome for the characters, if not the audience.

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