Now Streaming-Invasion: The Unseen Enemy

Their here!  Who or What, we don’t know, but we know they’re here!  Invasion, the new science fiction television series by Simon Kinberg and David Weil on Apple TV+ dropped it’s first three episodes Friday.  The story is told from the perspective of multiple people across the globe.  Something descends in a Middle Eastern desert where one man witnesses the landing, and sees something coming toward him.  It is barely visible in some sort of cloaking field.  When he gets close enough to touch it, he gets an adverse reaction.  We then shift focus to the everyday lives of people, some average, some extraordinary.  Sheriff John Bell Tyson (Sam Neill) in a small town in Oklahoma, Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) and her family on the U.S. East Coast and Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Katsuna) in Japan.

Where the first episode’s opening scene is intriguing and meant to hook you in, the rest of the episode is more earth bound, not really showing you “everyday” life, but more exceptional moments of three very different people.  Small town Sheriff Tyson on the day of his retirement after 45 years in law enforcement is dissatisfied with his career and feels like in 45 years he accomplished nothing.  Believing there was one case out there that would define his life and add meaning to why he became a lawman.  Big city couple going through a marital issue,  Aneesha, a Harvard medical school graduate, gave up everything for her husband, but on this day she learns a discouraging truth.  Mitsuki says goodbye to her secret lover, a Japanese astronaut, who is taking off this day for the International Space Station.   In the background of all these stories are strange happenings leading up to what seems to be the initial attack from an unknown and yet to be seen alien being.

Three episodes of the series dropped at once, in full disclosure, I only watched the first one and am undecided on whether I will continue.  In my reviews, I relate a lot of what I see to my childhood.  There was a time where good sci-fi television was hard to come by.  Usually the stories were episodic and there was a definite campiness to them.  Few were taken seriously, but you didn’t have a smorgasbord to choose from like you do now.  Good or Bad, we are now in an era, where sci-fi is no longer looked down upon or shunned and around every corner there is another amazingly done, well performed, beautifully imagined show.  So, producers need to be careful to make sure they grab their audience from the get go!  There is a fine balance between action, intrigue, artistic imaging, and personal drama, and if a production is out of balance, favoring one aspect you can lose an audience, who just needs to shift the channel to find something more in balance.  Invasion, unfortunately is a bit out of balance, focusing a bit too much on slow artistic shots and personal drama.  There wasn’t quite enough intrigue or action to really hook me.

Just to be clear, the show is well done.  The actors are all amazing, and you connect with most of them almost instantly.  The casting is superb.  You feel Aneesha’s heartache and her confrontation scene with her husband was both clever and emotional.  Sam Neill’s explanation of why he is uneasy about his retirement and his dissatisfaction in his career is beautifully written and eloquent, you can feel his anxiety and excitement in the new case which he believes could be “The One” case he believes could define him.  And the subtle romantic gestures between Mitsuki and Hinata (Rinko Kikuchi) were sweet.  Their love, needing to remain secret, coming out in small gestures and quiet whispers.  The show is really about the people, and not the aliens.  The production value is also very high.  The few glimpses of the alien technology is done very well, but it is all stuff we have seen before.  The script has wonderful moments, and the dialogue never seems forced.  There is a beautiful eloquence and poetry to some of the scenes.  The story flows well but can be a bit confusing.  The artistic shots and abrupt transitions between the different storylines make it hard for your brain to shift if not paying attention.

The problem is, like Sheriff Tyson, at the end of the episode, we are left with a reaction of having not accomplished much, a feeling that “nothing happened” in the episode, when in reality, a lot happened, it was just so subtle, that it seemed like “nothing”.  Also, a personal issue  I have right now is, I am not sure I want to watch another “survival in a dystopian world” storyline.