Colin Shaw

I wouldn’t trust a single positive review on here. Paramount has been aggressively filing copyright complaints to YouTube accounts critical of the show, so I wouldn’t put it past them to pay for positive reviews or offer incentives to do so or even have not accounts to create favorable reviews. I don’t believe a show based on a popular IP has to slavishly adhere to its source material, but this diverges so much that it’s almost disrespectful to any viewer. The writing behind this show is horrendous. It uses tired tropes that are insulting to the audience. Main character needs a love interest to seem human and relatable? Can’t possibly show that any other way because our audience is too dumb to appreciate nuance! Don’t explain complicated sci-fi physics…just have a character say “dumb it down for me” because our audience is too dumb! The CGI is clunky. The sets are lazy and lack the awe and splendor of the original games. Everything looks like it was shot on cheap sound stages or in the woods of some nearby park. There’s just…so much wrong with this show that you wouldn’t have time to read if I were to get down to it. Just don’t watch it. If you’re thinking of getting a paramount subscription just to watch this…don’t.

“Invasion isn’t about aliens. It’s about people.” This could go one star up or one star down depending on how this season closes out, but let me try to summarize without seeming as petulant as other reviewers. If you come into this show expecting a typical “alien invasion” action drama, you’re in the wrong place. Invasion isn’t about aliens. It’s about people. Using an alien invasion as a narrative device, the show delivers the perspectives of multiple individuals all experiencing this event in their own personal way. A bullied kid from London who experiences seizures that are more than they seem, a JASA sound engineer with a hidden same sex love affair to an astronaut believed to be dead, a US soldier in the Middle East struggling to get home to his estranged wife, and a wife trying to keep her family alive despite discovering an affair her husband was having. I personally love that this show doesn’t follow the tropes of a typical sci-do alien invasion story. Epic fights to stop the baddies and win back our planet? Eye roll. It’s all been done before! Instead, the show builds the tension never fully revealing what the alien menace is. You explore how this event is affecting individual on a micro level, not societies and countries. Seven episodes in and I’m still intrigued. It’s not without faults though. The soldier’s storyline is by far the weakest and least compelling. His character is not given hearty enough content to deliver on, instead relying on “soldiers and guns are exciting”! Mitsuki, the JASA engineer, on the other hand is the most compelling for me followed closely by Aneesha and her family. These storylines are far more intimate and deal with difficult themes and character choices. It’s worth a watch in my opinion, but far from an action sfi-adventure. Turn away now if that’s your hope!