Mitsuki starts experiencing disturbing side effects from her prolonged exposure to the alien entity. Trevante finds more questions than answers. Caspar’s friends become less reassured by his return.

I had a bit of a worrying moment partway through this episode. Stuff actually started happening. For a few minutes, everything I understood about the world stood on the precipice of being revealed as a lie. But, Invasion gonna Invasion, and by the time the credits rolled, the danger had passed and all was dull, I mean well again…

Where to begin? Well, first up we have Mitsuki, who is not doing so great after repeated traumatic exposures to the thing in the basement at Nikhil’s facility. Seeing and hearing things, losing time and generally not herself, thankfully all it takes is some worried fussing by Maya and some being Mitsuki to sort it all out as she has another one of her Massive Revelations and starts pursuing another new avenue in the fight to understand the enemy. Thank goodness she was there, otherwise all the brilliant neuroscientists monitoring the comings and goings might have stood a chance of noticing something and then where would we all be?

Mitsuki Ex Machina aside, perhaps the most annoying/ridiculous part of this particular part of proceedings involves a resignation from post which goes against everything the character in question believes in, directly undermines claims they made only moments previously, drags on for apparently ages and involves perhaps the longest instance of someone being escorted from the premises ever. It’s truly a low point in a show which is already limboing lower than the Mariana Trench in terms of narrative consistency and coherence, but hey ho, what you gonna do?

Elsewhere, Trevante finds himself stopped agonisingly short of the answers he seeks as the US Military experience a brief burst of competence and catch him. Again. Then they won’t even answer him about what they’re up to or believe his insistent rambling about sketchbooks and his ability to stop the alien threat, not even when he insults them all and tells them how much better than they are he is. The big meanies. Rose, managing to avoid the attentions of that competence burst by… hiding in a field very close by, then makes some silly decisions of her own involving a gun, the sketchbook and an apparent complete obliviousness to irony. Cool.

As for Caspar and his chums, shockingly all isn’t right there either. Casp isn’t really himself, and maybe Monty is The Only One Who Can See It (groan). When they finally locate the other kids he was in the hospital with, more narrative convenience happens, as well as a nice impromptu arts and crafts session.

Of course then, about forty minutes into the episode, Stuff Starts To Happen, and there’s that brief moment of disorientation I mentioned at the start as things seem set to go down. Then Mitsuki happens at the plot again and it all settles down. I can’t even get into how exactly bonkers stupid this part is without spoilers but suffice to say that once again, Kinberg and co. ignore any passing pretence at coherence in order to stumble towards the end credits again with the ‘mystery’ of the whole thing intact. Yay, I guess…

Verdict: Two more episodes to wrap this season up? With the way things are right now in the world of Invasion, I fear that we might be staring down the barrel of at least one more season. 4/10

Greg D. Smith