Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 8

The eight episode of War of the Worlds, the series is called To Heal the Leper. It features the desperate measures taken by the Advocacy when one of the trio is stricken with the chicken pox, and with the confusion the disruption in their routine causes for the Blackwood team. The aliens steal human brains to attempt the cure, first from cadavers, then from living victims. When the resources in their cavern prove insufficient, the Advocacy leaves the safety of their lair and travel to a human city. Meanwhile, the complete cessation of alien signals baffles the heroes. Ironhorse thinks it might mean the aliens have left, but Harrison can't accept this. Even when Sylvia van Buren confirms that she can no longer hear aliens, he cannot bring himself to believe it's all over. He connects the missing brains (from a morgue and from a hair salon named 'Out of Your Mind') to the aliens, then, fed up with his doubting teammates, tracks the aliens to a power plant. He witnesses the revival of the third Advocate, then is forced to barricade himself in an office when they realize he saw their procedure. As he records his last thoughts, the barricade is breached ... by Ironhorse and McCullough. The aliens have gotten away, though they left their medical device behind. The two scientists examine it with glee, but it disintegrates the moment they lay a finger at it. Some oddly triumphant music plays as the credits roll.

The Good: Ironhorse likens the strangeness in alien signal patterns to the barking of the Coyote; apparently random, but concealing sophisticated meaning. When Suzanne states that science hasn't found evidence that Coyotes communicate like that, his simple replies that his people, the native Americans, know better. He underplays the scene, which makes it more real than the many over-the-top performances to be found elsewhere in this episode.

Despite myself, I'm putting the "Out of Your Mind" hair salon in the good column. The pun is SO over the top that I'm forced to applaud it.

Ann Robinson as Sylvian van Buren. Always nice to see her back, and letting her play the character as sane, however briefly, allows her to give some more depth than the usual rantings that she does.

The indecisive Advocacy, down a member. It's nice to see what they're like down a member, and how helpless their followers are without them. The makeshift alien tech is, as always, pretty cool.

The Bad: The whole brain-snatch thing seems more torn from horror than from science fiction. The whole thing is pretty hard to believe. Also, the brains are pretty obviously props, lacking the right texture or gore.

Harrison, going to the power plant half-cocked and alone. I understand he was frustrated with the team, but they were the ones who pointed him in the direction of the power plant. If he'd gone in with Ironhorse, they could have eliminated the threat of the Advocacy once and for all.

And in that vein, why did the Advocacy grab new human bodies and go out alone? What stopped them from bringing extra troopers with them?

Finally, Harrison should have known better than to touch the device. What if it had been boobytrapped? Bye bye Blackwood team.

The Ugly: How about all those ripped-open skulls?

An interesting episode. The Advocates are a lot more hands-on than one would expect, which doesn't work all that well. The disease angle feels played out and redundant here, since that was what the movie and pilot were about. It's all a bit too contrived for me. The good character moments aren't really worth shifting through the logical weakness to get to. After the strong previous episode, this is something of a disappointment.  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season is available for purchase on DVD.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 4

Episode 4 of War of the Worlds, the series is titled A Multitude of Idols. In it, the aliens attempt to secure what they need to revive massive numbers of their sleeping brethren; radioactive waste to keep the bacteria at bay, a secure location, and many human bodies. They largely succeed at all three aspects.

The episode opens with a reporter, clandestinely filming at a toxic waste producing plant of some sort. Trucks, loaded with radioactive waste that will be hot for a thousand centuries, are rolling over 800 miles to a storage facility. She sees them as accidents waiting to happen, and follows two of the trucks to a rest stop, where she surreptitiously interviews the drivers. After she leaves them, she just barely observes them getting absorbed by aliens. Her camera catches just enough, from between two trucks, to convince her that SOMETHING strange has happened.

Our team, meanwhile, has been alerted to possible alien activities thanks to the mutilated body of a federal employee. They know that the aliens have access to a list of radioactive waste hauling, which along with some intercepted transmissions between the reporter and her editor lets them put two and two together. There's a very silly bit where Blackwood and Ironhorse, who are rapidly emerging as the real stars of the show, pretend to be interested in hiring her to do a government documentary of some sort. She hands over her tape as an audition, and they drive off. Naturally, this arouses her suspicion even more.

Reporter and Blackwood Team both hit on the idea of locating the trucks by using the numbers painted on the roofs of the trailers. (Small problem with that - we see a clear shot of the trucks from above and there are no numbers. Oops.) The reporter uses her network contacts, the Blackwood Team hacks into government databases for satellite imagery, much to Ironhorse's chagrin. This leads both to Beeton.

Beeton - a town abandoned in the 60's when improperly stored nuclear waste seeped into the water supply. It's the perfect breeding ground for aliens - off the beaten path (yuk yuk), abandoned, and with high levels of ambient radiation. The aliens hijack a few church picnics and get plenty of bodies, so by the time the reporter and the Blackwood team independently arrive, there are aliens (looking like suburbanites) everywhere. The reporter soon falls prey to the sickly looking truckers she interviewed before, but Harrison and Suzanne manage to avoid detection ... somehow. They actually buy ice cream from an alien vendor, which should have been a big tip off right there. Then, despite the super-high levels of radiation everywhere, Suzanne actually eats the cone. "I really shouldn't," she says, presumably referring to the calories and not the toxic levels of radiation all about them.

Blackwood, eventually, realizes that a town that's supposed to be abandoned plus high rads everywhere equals an alien town. His insight is confirmed when a preacher walks around to everyone intoning, "to life immortal," though he has to elbow Dr. McCullough to get her to say it back. Again, the aliens don't realize humans are among them quite yet. Ironhorse arrives in his civvies, chucks a tomahawk (yes, you read me right, he chucks a tomahawk) into the forehead of an alien guard. The team then sneaks in and observes aliens liberating their slumbering comrades from barrels, shocking innocent people into submission and then feeding them to the newly revived sidereal monsters. They duck out in horror and debate the best course of action for a moment until they get chased by an angry mob of aliens. Off they drive.

The team comes back with a full compliment of soldiers. Tanks, jeeps, troop transports, and armed men storm the town, but it's abandoned. The aliens have moved on. It's a major defeat for the team, and they can't afford many more of those. The now alien reporter, meanwhile, comments on rumors of 'alien activity' by informing the public that it was just military manoevers, mockingly noting that no aliens have come forward to comment.

The good: One of the Advocacy, while debating, expresses a longing to see their homeworld one last time, prompting a sharp rejoinder that Earth is their new home and that their homeworld is even now entering its death rattle. It then apologies for its lapse. I like this level of characterization.

The tanks! It makes sense that, in a conflict like this, there would be the occasional military strike. Glad to see it.

The tuning fork. Harrison Blackwood, for the very first time, employs a tuning fork memory recall technique. It's a good visual and fits with his quirky nature, and we'll see it again.

The ending. A nice, dark, down ending. The humans got away with their lives ... but that's about it. The aliens revived over a thousand of their species and sent them out into the world in new bodies.

The bad: McCullough's subplot about not adapting well to Blackwood's freakish working style doesn't work. She just comes across as petulant, which is impressive because HE'S the one being unreasonable.

Trucks with no numbers on the trailers. If you're gonna make a big deal out of something, it should actually be there. Or, at the very least, don't show the trucks from above.

An advocate, a member of the super-intelligent alien leadership, says "nuke-u-lar" ... grrrrrr.

Hacking into the federal databases. Why bother if the team is working for the government. The reasons why the team didn't get access in the first place were not compelling, so this bit felt tacked on.

Aliens not realizing that there are humans among them. Aliens selling ice cream. Humans eating irradiated ice cream. I can go on. Long complaint short, the humans should have been instantly recognized and assimilated. The actions of the humans once they figure it out weren't much smarter. All told, smacked of bad writing.

The ugly: Let's go with the mutilated federal employee. Though, he was so annoying in his 45 or so seconds on screen that it's hard to be sympathetic for him.

Overall, a relatively weak episode. Not a very smart plot; at least, not once the team gets to Beeton. Less gore than usual, probably saving money for the army to show up. A good ending, but it doesn't salvage a bad lead-up.  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season remains available for order on DVD.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 3

The third episode of War of the Worlds, the series is titled Thy Kingdom Come. It features an attempt by the aliens to secure more of their brethren and reinforce their numbers, as well as an awesome special guest star.

Four aliens (yes four, not three, which is unusual for them) have appropriated the bodies of hunters and are making their way through Montana. They stop to call home with a makeshift device connected to their car engine by jumper cables. By using a local satellite dish, they are able to contact the nuclear testing facility in Nevada which houses the Advocacy. After they receive a response, they jabber excitedly in their unsubtitled native tongue. All this activity seems to have repercussions though, when an aging redhead in a far away room starts to freak out and call for Harrison.

Harrison, meanwhile, is taking Ironhorse to meet his secret contact. Blackwood gently ribs Ironhorse, who mostly keeps his cool and agrees to keep the contact out of official reports. We arrive at a mental institution and find that the contact is none other than Sylvia van Buren! Ann Robinson reprises her role here, though she's a far cry from Dr. Forrester's love interest. Repeated exposure to alien tissue and electroshock therapy has driven her a little mad, but she has a connection to both the aliens and natural phenomena like earthquakes and volcanoes. Harrison is tender with her, while Ironhorse treats her as a wounded veteran of a prior war. She directs the team to Montana, which dovetails with transmissions that Norton has intercepted. Off they go to Wolf Jaw, Montana - Indian country. "Great," quips Ironhorse awkwardly, "first the white man, now aliens."

The aliens run into difficulty - their car has broken down, and their radiation burns are becoming quite noticeable. The advocacy directs them to find new bodies and a new mode of transportation. If the soldier aliens really needed to be told this, then it's no wonder the Advocacy is worried about what would happen without them. They eventually flag down a prison bus, improbably transporting prisoners to Canada for a hockey match. The guard decides to give them a ride, at least as far as the border.

Blackwood and Ironhorse speak to the authorities in Wolf Jaw. Though the local sherrif is skeptical about terrorists, when the team mentions radio transmissions he produces a video tape of the game from the night before. There is a strange pattern overlaying the images. Blackwood hops a flight back to Sylvia with the tape, this time bringing McCullough along. Unlike Ironhorse, she thinks Sylvia's mental state precludes usefulness, though she gives them the key to unlocking the transmission. It's a map of Canada, as seen from space.

The prison bus arrives at the border, and the guards inform the "hunters" that this is the end of the line for them. The aliens, apparently possessing almost no judgment, decide to appropriate the bodies of prisoners to proceed. As the prisoners are allowed to commingle freely and unsupervised with civilians in the bathroom, this proves easy. Soon a puddle of goo is all that's left of the hunters, as four prisoners (one with a large briefcase under his jacket - and since when do prisoner's have jackets?) board the bus. Terrible plan salvaged by bad writing. When they arrive at the site of the match, the aliens attempt to just walk away, though of course the prison guards won't let them. They're forced to play hockey, which in a confusing series of events winds up with one of the aliens ripping off the arms of one of the opposing team members. The guards shoot him dead as the other three aliens, um, skate off. News of the incident reaches the team, who are consistently one step behind their adversaries.


The aliens then appropriate the bodies of a nice family of American tourists. While little Bobby washes his hands in the bathroom, his mom, dad and grandma are all appropriated. "Do you take credit cards," asks Dad of an alien. "We take everything," he responds. When Bobby comes out, his family starts acting weird, speaking in tongues and saying things like, "to life immortal." Bobby realizes that something is very wrong, and after attracting the attention of some nuns in a passing car holds up a sign saying "help me," though the nuns seem more amused than concerned. One fun touch was seeing Bobby play with some Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures. It was a nice way for executive producer Greg Strangis to acknowledge his year with that program.

By nightfall, the aliens have reached the gates of the military complex holding the bodies of hibernating aliens. Playing the part of stupid tourists, they overwhelm the guards and drive on through. They wade into a lake, under which the barrels are stored. Bobby takes the chance to bolt and summon help. Our team, on the other hand, drives up the same road and gets taken into custody by the Canadian army. This is especially problematic as the soldiers that Bobby asked for help from start getting absorbed by newly awakened aliens. Fortunately, Blackwood manages to hypnotize a guard and the team heads down to the lake. Realizing what they're seeing, Ironhorse uses some explosives to drop some power lines into the lake, killing most of the newly revived aliens. Not all, though. Some have gotten away.

The Good: Holy crap! They got Ann Robinson back! This is utterly awesome. Martin does a good job playing her surrogate son, and Chaves' portrayal of Ironhorse's reverence for her is touching. I expected more from Dr. McCullough, though.

Mixed endings. Sure, the aliens were stopped, but a lot of them got away too. Neither side gets a free pass in this show.

Indifferent (or at least oblivious) nuns - very dark.

Alien technology. I love the idea of them using everyday items as parts of their bizarre contraptions, like the blender-keyboard that the mom/alien used.


The Bad: The whole prison hockey idea was fatally flawed from inception. It probably grew out of "hey, hockey is violent, let's make the aliens play hockey" but it's ludicrous to think that a prison bus would take on hitch hikers, that prisoners would be allowed to mingle about at the US / Canadian border unsupervised, or that the aliens would be daft enough to think that prisoners would make good host bodies.

Missed opportunities. Originally, little Bobby was to be a running gag in the series, showing up from time to time in the back seat of an alien-filled car. This would coincide with what would today be considered a viral marketing campaign, called "Save Little Bobby." Alas, Paramount objected, so this is the last time we'd see the little scamp. Obviously the idea of the aliens dragging along a little kid is pretty preposterous; why not kill him? Or at least abandon him? But I'm willing to overlook that because the image of some poor kid being shuttled as an unwilling passenger from alien mission to alien mission is pretty damn amusing.

Hypnosis. Ugh. I've studied hypnosis and while some parts of the induction were legit, when Blackwood started to coo about how the guard was "getting sleeeeeeeepy" it just became painful.

The Ugly: Gonna have to go with the whole arm-ripping scene.

Overall, a very typical War of the Worlds episode. Some gore, some bad writing, some clever ideas and some nicely dark humor.  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season is readily available for sale on DVD.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 2

War of the Worlds, the series began with a two hour pilot that gave a broad sketch of the world. It falls to the second episode, though, to set the pace for the average episode. The Walls of Jericho, in essence, establishes the formula for the series.

For the first time, we see the opening credits for season one. "In 1953 Earth experienced a War of the Worlds. Common bacteria stopped the aliens, but it didn't kill them. Instead, the aliens lapsed into a deep state of hibernation. Now the aliens have been resurrected, more terrifying than before. In 1953, aliens started taking over the world; today, they're taking over our bodies!" Appropriate images are juxtaposed with this dialogue, showing some carnage from the movie before moving on to images from the pilot. We then get a very 80's montage of our main characters being vaguely actionish. Except for poor Norton Drake, he's pretty much sedentary. In a bit of a cheat, they climax with the heroes running away from the war machines from the end of the pilot. It's undoubtedly a highlight of the season, though a bit misleading since we'll never see them again. The credits get the job done, but they aren't particularly inventive.

The episode itself isn't 100% in-line with the formula for the episodes yet to come, but it's pretty close. It's been six weeks since the defeat of the aliens at Hanger 15, and the team hasn't heard a peep from them. This prompts General Wilson to contemplate a declaration of "Mission Accomplished" and sending our team home. The Colonel doesn't seem unhappy with this prospect, though the rest of the team thinks the call premature. They feel betrayed that Ironhorse shared with Wilson data indicating that the radiation that kills off alien-incapacitating bacteria is ultimately fatal to them.


The aliens, meanwhile, attempt to deal with the killing heat of the radiation. The Advocacy is literally rotting away, as are many of their minions. Blood baths (literally, baths of bovine blood) help slow the process, but not reverse it. A plan to steal special plastics to build cooling suits is successfully executed, though an initial attempt to steal liquid nitrogen from a rocket base results in an alien fatality. The team, in the process of packing, puts together the attempted theft of the liquid nitrogen and the plastic and the radiation heat and realizes a probable alien target - Jericho Refrigeration, Inc.

Blackwood and Ironhorse go undercover to the plant, posing as members of the Department of Health and Safety. They quickly realize that folks are acting strange and that radiation levels are way too high. They return that night, with Wilson and McCullough, to plant a homing beacon on a delivery truck and trace the aliens back to their lair. Unfortunately, they are spotted and engage the aliens in a pitched battle. Things go well for our heroes, partially because only three of the twelve aliens spotted actually fight. What happened to the other nine isn't clear. The General blows up the truck as it flees, which kind of defeats the purpose of the mission, but convinces him to allow our heroes to continue their mission.

The Advocacy, now ensconced in their coolant suits, laments the loss of the plant, but observe that they've already got enough coolant to see their invasion through to the end. "TO LIFE IMMORTAL" they declare as the credits roll.

The Good: The Advocacy. The leadership of the aliens continues to prove one of the most interesting aspects of the show. They refuse to contact the council until they have good news to report, wishing to report only of victory. When one of the three succumbs to the radiation heat and must be submerged in the tanks, they lament that there may not be three other worthy candidates to take their place. This is also the first episode that they will mutter the alien's memorable catch phrase, "to life immortal," though in the pilot they do express a longing "to live life immortal."

The use of the alien's hand as a third appendage with which to fight. This would be used many times in the first season, but it's first used in the fight at Jericho Refrigeration. I love the imagery of the alien arm bursting from the stomach of the hapless hosts.

A scene in the Jericho Refrigeration plant when a woman comes to ask her husband why he hasn't been home in days. "I've been working," he calmly replies. "Who is she," she hysterically demands. "I've been working," he reiterates. She then demands a divorce, which prompts another alien to move to her and assure her that, "he's been working." The alien workers stare at her and Ironhorse and Blackwood realize that things here are very wrong. It was a nicely creepy scene.

Biblical allusions (but see below). The title of the episode, The Walls of Jericho, references the book of Joshua, sixth book of the Old Testament of the Bible. The story is of the conquest of the city of Jericho by Joshua and the Israeli army, wherein the walls of the besieged city crumble allowing the slaughter of the inhabitants within. The imagery involves a mighty fortress crumbling due to divine intervention, though it's difficult to see exactly how that applies to the episode. After seeing this title, one can't help but revisit the title of the pilot (The Resurrection) with new eyes.

John Vernon's performance as General Wilson. Certainly, any genre fan has seen or heard him in numerous roles including Doctor Strange, Rupert Thorne, General 'Thunderbolt' Ross and Doctor Doom. He's wonderfully charming as he subtly brings around the idea of evicting the team from The Cottage, and almost manages to sell the very shaky 'selective amnesia' theory. Almost.

The Bad: The very shaky 'selective amnesia' theory. It is mentioned for the first time here that many people who have encounters with aliens simply forget, possibly because of something mesmerizing about them, possibly because of our own subconscious desire to not experience these kind of horrors, most likely a mixture of both. It's a weak explanation for allowing the extras to be incredulous about the existence of aliens and smacks of lazing writing. Which brings us to ...

The writer of the episode, one 'Forrest van Buren.' The pseudonym indicates that this episode was written by a scab during the writer's strike of 1988. Bad, scab, bad!

Reusing a scene from the pilot. Specifically, when an alien runs into an electric fence at a facility making rocket fuel and melts, the shot of her remains is the exact same shot as the image I used of an alien body from the pilot. Her face melting against the fence was a pretty cool and gruesome image, though.

The acting. Leaving aside Philip Akin (I'm not going to blast him week after week), the extras playing the cops who investigate the plastic factory and the farmer and sheriff discussing the cows drained of blood were really off.

Our heroes going undercover. While this would be a standard device throughout the series, it never quite gelled for me. They are legitimate government operatives, so they shouldn't have to engage in this level of subterfuge. It's a bit overlookable for now, since they were on the verge of having their funding cut, but it's a trope that would be employed time and again.

Forced Biblical allusions. Don't get me wrong, I like the Bible-inspired titles. But to justify this title, both the refrigeration plant and the rocket base have the name Jericho in them. Also, the fort where alien bodies were stored in the pilot was Fort Jericho. It's a bit much.

The Ugly: If ever there was a show that lends itself to this style of analysis, War of the Worlds is it. I'm tempted to go with the scab-covered Advocates, especially once one of their numbers is immersed in cow blood. The face-melting electric-fence killed alien is another good candidate. But the real ugliness of the episode would probably be the alien who gets sprayed with two canisters of liquid nitrogen and shattered. Aliens normally dissolve into a gooey mess, but this takes things up a notch - bam!

Overall, a fairly representative episode, one that fits the last few pieces of the puzzle left over from the pilot in place. Both the virtues and the flaws of the series are apparent. I'd say the virtues outweigh the flaws ... but not by a huge margin.  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season remains readily available on DVD from Amazon.com.

Review: War of the Worlds, the series ep 1

War of the Worlds: The Series starts off with a two hour long pilot titled The Resurrection. It introduces us to the premise of the show and all of our main characters and settings for at least the first season.

The premise of the show is introduced gradually. We start off witnessing a large tractor-trailer truck approaching a military storage depot. The two drivers shoot the guards, then let their compatriots out of the back to roll around the base in ATVs. Much delightful carnage ensues as the terrorists (they're with the People's Liberation Party) hunt down the poor army men. It's a bit silly, seeing how easily the terrorists mow down the armed soldiers, but it's just the prelude. During the battle, some stray bullets hit drums of radioactive sludge. These drip down onto the steel drums below them, marked "Classified 1953." Ominously, a three fingered hand emerges from one as the credits start.

From there, we get to meet most of the main cast. The male lead is Jared Martin as Dr. Harrison Blackwood. Blackwood is an astrophysicist who's parents were killed in the invasion. He was raised by Dr. Clayton Forrester, protagonist of the 1953 movie. Kudos to Martin for his excellent portrayal of this quirky scientist - he at times seems to be channeling Gene Barry's performance. The female lead is Lynda Mason Green, playing microbiologist Suzanne McCullough. McCullough has just come to work for the eccentric Dr. Blackwood. She's a bit uneven, at least in this episode. Some of that might be intentional - Blackwood keeps her off-balance with his unusual style. Her new job (at the New Pacific Institute of Technology no less, a nice reference to the first film) is to daydream about other alien life forms. The reason is to narrow down their search for extra-terrestrial life from a few billion areas to a mere hundred million. The third member of the team, Norton Drake, is played by Philip Akin. He's a wheelchair-bound computer scientist / hacker and a good friend of Blackwood. Unfortunately, I find Akin's portrayal of Drake to be almost painfully bad. He drifts from a neutral accent to a (mercifully faint) Jamaican accent and is rather over the top. The moment when he tells McCullough that she better like her coffee black (he himself is black) is particularly cringeworthy.

By this point, though, the team hasn't quite realized the trials ahead of them. The terrorists patrol the base, getting ready for a broadcast. It seems that their plan is to threaten to make dirty bombs if the President of the United States won't back down. (For those keeping track, that would probably be Ronald Regan - the series starts in 1988, 35 years after the 1953 invasion.) Before they can make their demands, they are one by one grabbed and dragged off by aliens. It's a true horror-film moment, and Director Colin Chilvers does a good job selling it. It helps that he keeps the aliens to the shadows, only giving us an occasional glimpse of their hands or eyes. I'm sure that the full-on alien suit would look very silly, but we never get the chance to realize it. He also does some alien POV shots and they're quite reminiscent of a scene from the movie where we see what a view from an alien camera might look like, a nice touch.

The aliens have merged with the bodies of the terrorists, and after a bit of consultation with 'the council' back on their home world, the Advocacy (the triumvirate of alien leaders) decide that their best bet is to go elsewhere with the bodies of their brethren. Off they drive, their bodies already starting to decay from the radiation that kills off the bacteria that laid them low in 1953. They need to regroup before they can renew their invasion and secure for themselves 'life immortal.' Still, decaying or not, the bodies provide some measure of protection from prying human eyes.

Norton has been monitoring odd signals from space for years, but when he finds those same signals coming from Earth he is intrigued. Intrigued enough to call Blackwood away from a black-tie event with his fiancee Charlotte (Gwynyth Walsh, who would go on to play Klingon femme fatale B'Eator on Star Trek: The Next Generation.) The dissolution of Blackwood's relationship with Charlotte would play out over the course of the episode. Perhaps symbolizing the abandonment of his old life in favor of the alien-hunting life he would be forced into, it never really resonates. This is probably because she is so obviously wrong for him, trying to push him into the private sector where he could make some real money. One wonders what they saw in each other in the first place. But I digress.

Based on Norton's research, Blackwood and McCullough head out to Fort Jerico, the alien-compromised base. There they encounter the last main character, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ironhorse. Ironhorse, played by real-life Vietnam veteran Richard Chaves of Predator fame, is heading up the investigation into the attack on the base. Blackwood convinces the Colonel to let him be a part of the investigations with some bogus tapes of the intercepted transmissions. What he sees terrifies him - six barrels, burst from the inside. But what he doesn't see terrifies him more - there should be hundreds, perhaps thousands of barrels, and yet there are only the six burst ones.

Blackwood attempts to warn the military about his fears, going to General Wilson (John Vernon), who happens to be Suzanne's uncle. Wilson does not dismiss the pair out of hand, but wants some hard proof. This brings Blackwood and McCollough smack-dab into the middle of Ironhorse's anti-terrorist operation. Despite Blackwood's dire warnings, Ironhorse launches an all-out assault which is promptly defeated. Most of his men become hosts for newly freed aliens, though Blackwood improbably rescues the military man while McCollough hides in the trunk of a car. Ironhorse demands to know who those 'terrorists' were, but is skeptical about aliens. Which brings us to one of the fundamental flaws of the series - if aliens leveled a large number of cities in 1953, no one would be skeptical about their existence now. The film left no doubt - the aliens were systematically leveling our infrastructure, and doing it damn quickly. No one would ever think humanity alone in the universe after that.

Thus armed with new eyewitness testimony (and some dissolved alien tissue, though that doesn't come up in dialogue,) Wilson decides to give Blackwood a blank check to pursue the aliens. Blackwood, Ironhorse, Drake and McCollough are moved to The Cottage, a secure government mansion outfitted with the most advanced gear money can buy. Debi, Suzanne's eleven-year-old daughter (Rachel Blanchard, who would grow up to play Nancy in the awesome Britcom Peep Show, which isn't as naughty as it sounds) isn't too pleased with the forced relocation. At least, not until she finds out that they have horses. It's a fine performance of an annoying child, which means that it's an annoying performance too. Don't worry, Debi will get a lot better as the series progresses. Drake and McCollough are quite pleased with their new labs, though Blackwood is oddly chagrined to find that his office has been duplicated exactly here. It's as if his old life doesn't matter, he muses. It's true - the subplot about his fiancee went nowhere. The last time we see her they seem to be making up after a big fight.

At the same time as our heroes settle into their new home, the aliens are doing the same. An abandoned nuclear testing facility in the Nevada desert is perfect for their needs - far from humans and full of bacteria-killing radiation. They have also located some war machines, and are preparing to seize them. Fortunately, Harrison provided Drake with a critical clue (the aliens do everything in threes) necessary to crack part of the alien's language. Our heroes, and villains, converge on Hanger 15, site of three war machines. The villains look particularly good as the Advocacy watches a helicopter take off to bring back their greatest technological triumph. It's not all good, though. In one of the biggest plot-holes of the episode, the heroes trick their way into the base so they can plant plastic explosives on board the ships. Why they don't just warn the Airforce that there is a lightly armed group of aliens on the way, I don't know. They were warned by General Wilson to 'keep things quiet', but this is absurd.

The aliens board their craft and rise up, blasting through the ceiling. The FX guys do a fantastic job here. The war machines look and feel like the 1953 versions. The sounds they make are spot-on, and the heat ray effect is perfect. The machines blast some aircraft on runways before taking potshots at our running heroes. The explosions do their job, though, and all three ships are destroyed. The team pats themselves on the back, but Harrison feels that the aliens are still out there and will be back. He's right, of course. The Advocacy communes with the council from their caves, bemoaning human cleverness and revealing that they have a deadline of some sort. Alien hands play across a keyboard connected to a makeshift computer as the credits roll.

This is a fairly campy continuation to the classic film. Between the dissolving alien bodies and the idea of alien bodysnatchers, we've crossed over from what is basically a war story to what is basically a horror story. Aliens can be anywhere, heck, be anyone! However, they lack the gear that made them invulnerable in the movies, necessitating guerrilla tactics on their parts. Though they would make the occasional attempt to secure new tech, they'd never get quite as close as they do this episode. The performances range from quite good (Martin, Chaves) to adequate (Green) to downright terrible (Akin.) The production values are pretty good this episode - we're given two big fight pieces and both work fairly well. Bringing back the immortal war machines gave some great emotional continuity with the movie. Hearing those mantas click and chitter again was fantastic.

There are some great moments. Chaves is at his best when he shows his human side, telling Debi a story about his ancestors, a tribe of Native Americans, possibly encountering a non-human artifact. When Blackwood tries to connect with him over the story, Ironhorse immediately withdraws. "It's just folklore," he replies. Just about every moment with the aliens was fun. We never got inside the alien's heads in the movie, but now we get to see their leaders deliberate. Their guttural language is suitably alien, though seldom spoken. I also love seeing them meditate in threes, back to back to back and softly chanting. The Advocacy, the field commanders here on Earth, are terrifically macabre and will only get more so as the series progresses. Doctor Forrester, while not in the script, looms large over their world. His notes inform their research, the lessons of his life informing Blackwood's cynicism towards the government.

Unfortunately, there are some terrible moments too. Martin and Walsh have no chemistry together, short-circuiting their subplot. The plot holes (people not believing in aliens, not warning the Airforce) are glaring. The acting is too uneven - Akin aside, there are a couple of hillbillies that are painfully over the top, as well as some drunken helicopter pilots. One wonders if the director was telling them to keep hamming it up, though there is subtlety in other performances.

Overall, I feel that the good outweighs the bad. I don't think that being a fan of the original is enough to recommend the series - there aren't enough of the same elements, and the quality just isn't as high. That said, if you enjoyed the first movie and like science fiction horror, this series delivers very well.  War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season  is available on DVD from Amazon.com and other places DVDs are sold.