Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 26

The twenty-sixth episode of War of the Worlds, the series is titled Doomsday.  In the face of a massive heatwave and drought, the aliens have concocted a scheme to shut down the city's water system.  As an addendum to this plan, they try to hijack our worship system to get humans worshiping the Eternal.

The Blackwood Team, meanwhile, start to suspect something is amiss when they witness water flowing from the baptismal font of a church. Harrison and Suzanne track the water to the source, the city's blocked-off water supply. Kincaid, meanwhile, witnesses the priest getting abducted by aliens and tracks him to a cloning lab under the reservoir.  Together they blow the alien membrane holding back the water and get the Priest and his son out of the lab.  The priest confronts his doppelgänger and they both die of unclear causes even as it starts to rain.

The Good: There are some neat exchanges between Malzor and his minions. "What kind of life form bases itself on water when the water supply cannot be depended upon?" wonders Malzor after Ardix informs him that their clone templates were cooking in the heat.  Later, a distracted Mana calls the Bible a "blueprint for human control."

Unfortunately, however, there wasn't much else that I really enjoyed in this, the first truly 'typical' episode of season two.

The Bad: Suzanne freaks out while they're underground.  Why? We've seen her underground before in Goliath Is My Name with no issue.  It didn't add anything to the episode and just made her character seem weak.

Why did the priest die at the end? Heart attack? Not at all clear. And why did Ardix then stand up and blast the clone of the kid? And from now on, The team should know Ardix on sight. We'll see if they do.

When Harrison starts futzing with the membrane, the aliens discover this and send guards. Ummm... why didn't they have standing guards there?


The Morthren give the priest several miracles: water; he apparently 'heals' an alien; they replace his son with a clone, who appears dead and then comes back to life (after a way-too-apt reading about Lazarus.)  Only after all this do they replace him with a clone.  Ummm.... why not do it the other way?

And the whole team just happens to be in the church where the 'miracle' takes place? Major coincidence.

The Ugly: How about the membrane over the water supply? It's not much, but it's what we got.  Even the few dead aliens this episode didn't get the full corpse treatment.

After a strong start to the season, this episode seems like a huge step backwards.  We're starting to see the limitations of the new format; whereas before the heroes could get intel on the aliens from anywhere in the country, now they literally have to stumble into the building where the alien schemes are taking place.  We're starting to learn about the bleakness of the new environment, with water shortages and dirty desperate people huddled into churches, which should be a good thing but completely failed to hold my interest.  It's not interesting-bleak, it's dull-bleak.  This is especially troublesome, since this episode is the first 'standard' episode of the season.  This is the template upon which others should be created, and so far it's not looking promising.  We'll have to see if it gets back to the promise of the first couple of episodes.