Jamila and the gang make it to Paris, where unpleasant surprises await Monty. The Movement have a terrifying encounter. Mitsuki resolves to push harder against the aliens.

Week after week, Invasion continues to confound me. Decent cast, obviously large budget and some very respected writers, directors and producers involved, and yet here I find myself once again feeling nothing in particular about any of it, beyond slight irritation that it’s all taking so long.

Jamila and her intrepid band make it to Paris this time out, because apparently the soldiers who rescued them seconds before they could be blown up after being somewhere they shouldn’t were content to just…let them go? Calais to Paris is nearly 300 kilometres. They walk. Granted, we get no concrete idea of how long it takes them but still, they walked to Paris? With Monty’s young sister in tow? Sure, why not?

Anyway, when they get there, nasty surprises await, and not just of the super alien variety. There’s the traditional walls plastered in pictures and desperate messages which feels somewhat redundant in the digital age, not to mention in the wake of an alien invasion. There’s also a particularly unexpected surprise awaiting Monty when the gang finally make it to his father’s apartment in Paris (to which neither he nor his sister have ever been but they find it easily enough anyway because… reasons). I’d care more about this manufactured drama if Monty wasn’t such an oddly inconsistent character anyway, or if it wasn’t clear that the parents who abandoned him and his sister to their fates weren’t exactly Mum and Dad of the Year already.

Aneesha and her new friends in the movement have a terrifying run in with the new super aliens, but not to worry because this gives Aneesha the chance to remind us that she was/is a doctor. It also gives Luke the opportunity to do… something? The nature of his connection with the aliens remains – as with so many things in the show – unclear, and nothing which happens here clears any of that up.

As for Mitsuki, despite the seriousness of her previous encounter with the aliens, and against all common sense and medical advice, she decides what she really needs to do is try again. As per usual, this means that she’s going to trot out a bit of Mitsuki Ex Machina in order to overcome what should be an impossible set of circumstances because… well, she’s Mitsuki and that seems to be reason enough for her, the genius billionaire, the world council and indeed the writers. I wonder what the point of any of the other characters really is, in this fight?

And so it all just rather bimbles along in that Invasion way that it does, asking you to just ignore all  the glaring inconsistencies, the situational stupidity/incompetence of various characters as and when it suits and the apparently superhuman athleticism and endurance of a bunch of schoolkids on little sleep and a diet of mostly sugary snacks.

And I can’t help but sit there thinking ‘What really is the point?’ Even in shows I don’t enjoy I can usually see the point – the core of what the writers and other creators are driving at. Here, rather than the show feeling like the disparate cast are being drawn towards a common goal, it feels more like everything is being made up week-to-week, and the various cast are just pieces on a board.  Only it’s Snakes and Ladders rather than Chess, all random movements and rolls of the dice, with chance sliding some further forwards and others backwards and none of it really meaning anything.

Verdict: At this point, I can’t help but root for the aliens, if only to make this all stop. 4/10

Greg D. Smith