Jamila and her ragtag group find themselves confronted by an even deadlier threat as they make their way through the Channel Tunnel on their quest to find Caspar.

Having had an episode where we followed various characters and their threads, this one focuses back on the band of kids merrily driving a ‘borrowed’ classic Jag down mostly empty motorway to the Channel Tunnel, so they can hike across to France and rescue their mate they are pretty sure is there. Occasionally, the episode dallies with Caspar himself, still comatose and watched over by a French doctor who is Very Sad about the fact he seems to be a vegetable, and determined that he be protected at all costs despite being a vegetable and her being a doctor, presumably with some passing notion of a duty of care towards her other patients in the middle of this literal apocalypse.

Yup, it’s Invasion time again folks, and this week, Kinberg and co have decided to have a slight borrow from the Christopher Nolan bag of tricks, with a slight rewind so we get to (sort of) experience the launching of all those nukes and the immediate aftermath from a different perspective. That perspective being that of a bunch of kids stuck in an underground tunnel who hear some rumbling above. Wow.

Monty once again gets to be one of the most inconsistent characters in a show that’s full of them. He’s alternately really good with and kind to his little sister while also being a complete dick to her whenever it suits. It was clear in Season 1 when he was tormenting Caspar constantly that there was supposed to be something deeper to the character, but a kid sister with mental health issues only makes his behaviour towards Caspar last season even more objectively awful and utterly baffling.

Caspar’s mates haven’t forgotten either, and relentlessly remind Monty of what an enormous prat he really used to be and that they don’t trust him (though they were happy enough to use his dad’s car to get them where they needed to be). Except for Jamila of course, who despite having been very close to Caspar seems only too willing to accept Monty and his apparent hidden, kinder side. Ho hum.

The journey through the tunnels is, I imagine, supposed to be thrilling, but I kept thinking of things like ‘This is at least twenty five miles of hiking, for a group of kids including a very young girl’ and ‘That’s a lot of dead soldiers and other adults who apparently just weren’t as smart/plucky/quick as this bunch of literal children’, and ‘Why on earth would you do that to the Channel Tunnel and expect it to achieve anything?’.

That’s the problem with Invasion (or one of them at least). Between the glacial pacing and the insistence on lingering on the Small Scale, it doesn’t have enough to distract you from the sheer nonsense of so many of its narrative beats, such that perfectly, blindingly obvious solutions to problems which were apparently insurmountable five minutes before look absolutely as dumb as they are.

Still, at least they aren’t making it even sillier with some psychic shenanigans mixed in with the alien stuff like some weak sauce Chosen One narrative is being… oh. Oh well, never mind…

Verdict: About as much fun as you’d imagine being stuck in the Channel Tunnel with a bunch of fractious children for an hour would be, except the involvement of aliens might lead you to expect it to be at least a shade more exciting. 4/10

Greg D. Smith