Contact
Episode 8 of Invasion begins with Trev touching down in the UK. Loud rain almost completely muffles the dialogue but the gist of it is that he’s grounded. There are no flights out of the UK right now. The best Sergeant Harris (the guy in charge here) can do is give him a pistol and safe passage out the facility. So Trev sets out with his handgun, heading into the capital where he finds blockades in the city center. The place is a mess and heading up to higher ground, he gets a good look at London. Thick black plumes of smoke rise into the air, while the city is almost completely abandoned. Trev phones home from a phone box but he only gets his wife’s voicemail message. It’s directed at Trev though, telling him this is a war they can’t win. She also goes on to regret whats transpired between them in their marriage. Aneesha continues to grow closer to Barton, who reveals over lunch that he’s divorced and is happy she’s there. To the shock of absolutely no one, Aneesha and Barton wind up kissing in the hallway. “That was nice, I haven’t been kissed like that in a long time,” She eventually says. Luke meanwhile, wanders the hallways where he finds a kid called Jack. He brings Luke into the secluded area of this facility, where deceased victims of the invasion lie dormant. They’re covered in some strange black goo and it appears nothing can kill or stop them – except for that shard of metal Luke has of course. Holding it close to the bodies, he stands mesmerized as the black goo begins to disappear. Aneesha shows up and sees this too, prompting all the other staff onboard to try and make sense of it. In London, Casper and Jamila head home where the former finds his mother lying dead on the table. Casper however, has been sketching these aliens for a while and he talks to Jamila about it, deciding he needs to communicate with the aliens. Casper believes that he’s the key in all this, and he’s all set to kill all the invaders. On the way to the nearest hospital, the kids find Trev in a bar, drinking away his sorrows. Casper points out that he’s been seeing these aliens in his head whenever he has a seizure. One of his sketches happens to include the skull insignia from Trev’s platoon, which certainly grabs his attention. That’s enough for him to agree to help. In Japan, Mitsuki is kept handcuffed in an office, with a guard who refuses to engage. The communication with Hinata has certainly riled them all up. However, Akira shows up and confirms that the shuttle – or what’s left of it – is being kept in geo-sync orbit and they have fixed coordinates. Hoshi-12 is the only communication they have with the alien visitors and Mitsuki is the key to communications. After talking to Akira, she’s allowed to leave and front the comms team. Everything depends on getting this right, so Mitsuki opens the shuttle comms channel. It’s a pretty big leap, believing the aliens will even communicate with them when they’ve made it abundantly clear that negotiations are off the table. Well, Mitsuki continues to work, deciding to use some machine translation gear to at least speak in the alien tongue. We’ve seen the patterns before, what with the cacophonous radio waves, but whether it’ll work or not is another matter. Mitsuki is defeated, Knowing it’s futile to work against such intelligent creatures. Instead, she sends thousands of pictures and videos of Hinata across all radio frequencies. As it seems they’ve made contact, Mitsuki rushes back to her console, throws on the headset and whispers, “Hinata?”
The Episode Review
So Invasion returns with another episode of slow-paced character drama as any hope of this show actually kicking into high-gear and deliver some action is long-gone. Now all that’s left is to see how this show ends and deals with the invasion itself. How Casper is going to use his seizures to kill the aliens is still unclear, but seeing him and Trev’s stories collide is a nice inclusion. However, there’s also Luke too, who could prove to be an important catalyst in all of this as he holds that shard of metal. This appears to work against the aliens so hopefully that will be explained more in the coming episodes. For now though, Invasion bows out with an indifferent slice of drama, one that preps us ready for the final few episodes of this disappointing season.
