Invasion: Earth [tv]
Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: TV.
UK tv series (1998). BBC co-production with the Sci Fi Channel. Created, written and co-produced by Jed Mercurio. Directed by Patrick Lau and Richard Laxton. Cast includes Anton Lesser, Maggie O'Neill, Vincent Regan and Fred Ward. Six 50-minute episodes. Colour.
The Blitz, 1944: Lieutenant Charles Tyrell (Lesser) leads a UK bomb disposal squad that finds a crashed UFO containing two obvious Aliens. One is shot and Tyrell makes First Contact with the other.
North Sea, 1998: another UFO seemingly attacks RAF planes and their airfield with a power-draining Weapon. It is shot down by RAF pilot Drake (Regan) and crashes in Scotland. Drake meets and teams up with SETI amateur Dr Amanda Tucker (O'Neill), whose group has detected a mystery transmission; both are recruited by USAF Major General Reece (Ward), in overall charge of official investigations. The downed pilot proves to be Tyrell, who has been working with the peaceful alien "Echos" from the 1944 episode; these have since committed racial Suicide rather than be harvested by the inimical "nDs" who operate between Dimensions and now threaten Earth.
Tucker and various RAF personnel are abducted via interdimensional portal and returned somehow changed, most with memories of Torture and a propensity for irrational violence. Tucker, according to Tyrell, has now been Genetically Engineered to transform her into a half-human, half-nD overseer of alien Invasion. Extraterrestrial diseases spread; there are further portal kidnappings; Tucker, though still siding with humanity, is slowly and inexorably transforming. A shifting, tentacular nD beachhead reminiscent of Cthulhu Mythos horrors is established outside Kirkhaven, absorbing organic matter and transmitting it to the nD home dimension. When destroyed in a near-suicidal missile strike, this structure is all too quickly replaced by another. The Prime Minister takes the decision to H-bomb the site and wipe out all remaining life in a wide surrounding radius, hoping to deprive the nDs of their organic raw material. Tucker chooses to escape further transformation by placing herself close to ground zero as the bomb is dropped. The screen whites out and this consistently dark series ends on an effective note of Horror. There was no second series.
A novelization of material from the Television serial is Invasion: Earth: The Last Echo (1998) by Peter Cave. The production is unrelated to Invasion: Earth (1982) by Harry Harrison. [DRL]
further reading
- Peter Haining. The Invasion: Earth Companion (London: Headline, 1998) [nonfiction: with cast and crew Interviews: pb/]
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