The aliens hatch a new plan to conquer humanity. This time using… wait for it… subliminal messages hidden in rock music. Yep. You read that right. I shit you not. This is a plot that they actually used. Someone pitched this to the producers and instead of immediately firing that person, they greenlit the idea.

We open with a trippy music video style sequence that will make your head hurt, then segue in to some over-the-hill dude banging out a groan-worthy soft rock version of the show’s theme. But wait! It gets worse! Because they’ll be playing this turd of a track throughout the rest of the episode! Oh, fun!

Suzanne and Blackwood go to visit an old scientist friend of Suzanne’s who the aliens have targeted for brainwashing with their music. Suzanne stays for the weekend while Blackwood goes home with a copy of the tape so he can be brainwashed too. For some reason, the music only works on the two of them.

Blackwood starts acting wacky, suggesting that the aliens are just misunderstood and that we should be their friends. Instead of immediately suspecting that Blackwood has been influenced in some way by the aliens (as has happened in the past), they just decide he’s joking.

Meanwhile, Suzanne realizes that her friend has been brainwashed and has been working on a serum that will protect the aliens from Earth’s bacteria. Instead of immediately getting the hell out of there because the aliens could be back at any moment, she decides to hang around so she can be in peril later.

Ironhorse finally realizes Blackwood has been brainwashed, so he gets rid of the tape and forces Blackwood to detox.

The aliens show up at the lab, so Suzanne pretends to also be brainwashed. The aliens debate whether to kill her.

Ironhorse and Backwood show up just in time, but the aliens have left for no particular reason and were kind enough to leave Suzanne alive even though they had absolutely no motivation to do so.

This episode is nothing but a series of what the fuck moments that add up to a great big whopping what the fuck. Seriously, this episode is so stupid it makes the rest of the show look brilliant. I could blindfold a chimpanzee and let him hit random buttons on a keyboard and the resulting script would be better than this garbage. Seriously, man, what the shit?

Team Blackwood finally takes the offensive and sets up an ambush to capture some aliens for interrogation. Unfortunately, the aliens have anticipated this and kill themselves by… punching themselves in the chest. … Anyway, Blackwood is super upset and mopey about this, so Ironhorse tells a story about how he and his unit were pinned down in Vietnam and he had to listen to the screams of his dying comrades all night and it was really rough and that’s all Blackwood is going through. … Seriously? I hardly think that compares.

The team decides to recruit Adrian Bouchard, a scientist trying to communicate with dolphins. They figure he may be able to crack the alien transmissions and help figure out their plans. Before bringing him into the fold, they make absolutely certain he has proper security clearance. I’ll let you draw your own assumptions here.

Harrison informs Bouchard that they’re fighting aliens from a distant planet on the other side of the galaxy called Mortax. Okay, freeze. I thought this show was supposed to be a direct sequel to the 1953 War of the Worlds movie. In that movie, the omnicient narrator states unequivocally that the invaders are from Mars, even going into a lengthy explanation of how the Martians carefully examined all the worlds in the Solar System before deciding that Earth was the most suitable destination. What the shit is this Mortax crap all of a sudden? Okay, look, I get it. We sent probes to Mars in the 70s and discovered it was a barren, uninhabited desert planet. But you chose to make a sequel to a movie about a Martian invasion. You can’t have it both ways. You either accept the established storyline or you have to do a hard reboot. You can’t arbitrarily ignore information that was clearly established in a previous entry. You can’t suddenly retcon something so significant. If this is a sequel to the original film, then the invaders are from Mars. Period. You can’t change that. And while we’re on the subject, since the writers of this show have gone ahead and decided that the aliens are from Mortax on the other side of the galaxy instead of Mars, just exactly how does Harrison even know that? There was never a scene where they interrogated an alien and got that information. It just comes out of nowhere. What the hell, show?!

So they take Bouchard to a government safe house and go to work trying to decode the alien transmissions, but the computer isn’t up to the task and Bouchard totally loses his shit. They decide to blindfold him and take him to their secret headquarters, where he will then have total unsupervised run of the place. But it’s okay, because he has top secret clearance. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about that.

When they get to headquarters, Suzanne’s daughter shows up with her new dog, who goes totally ape shit, barking and howling at Bouchard. No one finds this the least bit alarming. Again, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Yeah, you see where this is going.

Ironhorse and Norton have a pointless sparring match with quarterstaffs – yes, you read that right. Ironhorse and Norton. The disabled guy. Okay, their heart was in the right place, trying to depict a disabled person as being able to take care of himself, but this was a bit hard to believe. The shots of the two of them fighting are just plain laughable. All to set it up for later when, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, Norton will be all alone and have to defend himself against… someone whose identity will, I’m sure, come as no surprise to you.

Bouchard decodes the alien transmissions and concludes that a group of aliens is gathering nearby to do some villainous stuff. Ironhorse, Blackwood, and Suzanne rush off to deal with the threat, leaving Bouchard alone with Norton, Suzanne’s daughter, and the help. Yeah, you guessed it. Bouchard’s an alien! Gasp!

Ironhorse, Blackwood, and Suzanne, along with an army task force, arrive at their destination only to discover that it’s a trap! There are over a hundred aliens lurking in the woods ahead! Which our heroes spot from a distance and thus never step into the trap. Gee. Suspenseful. They realize that Norton and Suzanne’s daughter are in danger, so Ironhorse runs off to Rambo his way into the base while the army deals with the aliens in the woods.

Back at base, Bouchard mwa-ha-has around, chasing Norton and Suzanne’s daughter. Along the way he kills some old dude who I guess has been around all along, but I never took note of him. Bouchard then corners Norton in the basement, who uses the Donovan technique to electrocute his attacker. Ironhorse bursts in just in time to do nothing.

They then have a funeral service for the dude who got killed while pictures of him from various previous episodes flash across the screen. I guess we’re supposed to be sad or something. Who was this guy again?

I’ll give this episode some points for entertainment value, and I will admit that they’ve been gradually upping the stakes over the course of the show – the aliens are now targeting our heroes directly. But any points it gains are instantly lost due to the blatant disregard for the show’s origins. Shame on you, writers. Mortax my ass!

The alien chief scientist hatches a diabolical new plan to exterminate the humans: do absolutely nothing. He figures that the humans are self-destructive by nature and will soon wipe themselves out on their own. But the Advocacy is too impatient and decides to jump-start things by detonating a nuclear bomb at a diplomatic meeting between Russia and America. They ask how certain the chief scientist is about his strategy and he assures them he’s absolutely certain. They say he’d better be, because his life depends on it. Guess who isn’t surviving the episode.

Meanwhile, an old flame of Harrison’s shows up – Katya, a Russian scientist. Harrison leaves HQ to meet up with her and when Ironhorse very reasonably asks where he’ll be (you know, in case there’s an emergency, like with the aliens for example), Harrison rudely refuses to tell him. Jesus, this guy is a dick. At this point, Patrick Macnee shows up and announces that he’s a being of extraordinary power who can rid the humans of their enemies if they agree to follow him. No, wait, that’s Battlestar Galactica. Here, Patrick Macnee is just a Russian agent who isn’t very interesting and is a total waste of Mr. Macnee’s talent. That said, it’s Patrick Macnee, so he holds your attention. He’s spying on Harrison and Katya while they have their date, taking pictures of them. Ironhorse is also spying on them and taking pictures of them. Then Ironhorse and Patrick Macnee spot each other and take pictures of each other instead. I guess that’s how spies say hello.

Harrison takes Katya to HQ and Ironhorse understandably loses his shit. Katya wants to defect and Harrison wants to tell her everything about their work. Ironhorse is having none of that, figuring they need to maintain security. But Harrison thinks it would be better to share information. They’re actually both right. Harrison had no business bringing her to HQ, which is supposed to be a secret location, but this is a global threat and they absolutely should be sharing whatever information they have about their common enemy with other world powers.

Ironhorse and Patrick Macnee have their first date, and they agree that Katya should not defect because she needs to conduct the nuclear disarmament summit. Yeah, actually, they’re kind of right about that. And kudos to Ironhorse, by the way. He’s against nuclear disarmament, but despite his personal feelings, he still does his job. Ironhorse is without question the best character on the show.

Meanwhile, someone spots a suspicious van that has been parked outside the embassy for like ever and calls in a bomb threat. Harrison’s Spidey sense starts tingling, so he and the team rush in to deal with the threat themselves, figuring Katya’s an expert in nuclear physics, which naturally qualifies her to disarm a bomb. Oddly enough, she’s successful, and the experience makes her realize that she must do her duty, so she decides not to defect and goes home to Russia with Patrick Macnee. Where I’m sure she was promptly shot.

And the alien chief scientist? Well, he gets to jump to his death as punishment for being wrong. No big shock there.

Not a terribly interesting episode, and the aliens are mostly in the background. Really, Patrick Macnee and Ironhorse carry the episode. Oddly enough, this episode doesn’t end with the usual shootout, opting instead for a “suspenseful” bomb defusing sequence. I guess I should give them credit for trying something different, but it doesn’t quite work. If you can’t give me quality writing, at least give me some cornball action.

A super-rich dude is cheating on his wife with his secretary and cheating on her with someone else. His company has developed a new radiation-resistant grain and he wants to sell it worldwide. Suzanne figures this can help her in her search for a pathogen that can resist the radiation that has revived the aliens. She approaches him about it and he tries to get into her pants. As if that’s not gross enough, the other members of the team tease her about it. Despite her best efforts to form a legit partnership with the business guy, he’s only interested in sex and won’t help her unless she sleeps with him. So she tells him to fuck off and goes back to work. Good for her.

Unfortunately, he gets possessed by the aliens, who figure they can poison the grain, then distribute it worldwide for free, and decimate the population. Alas, tribbles get into the grain shipment and start eating it. No wait, that’s a different show. Our heroes get wise and go to the dockyards to destroy the shipment. There’s a shootout (of course) and the aliens are thwarted.

This episode is a mixture of good and bad. The shootout is pretty fun, and we see more of the aliens in their natural form than in any previous episode, which is a treat. But it’s also really gross and misogynistic. And it seems like they’re trying to force a romance between Harrison and Suzanne. Not only is this coming out of absolutely nowhere, but it’s not like either the characters or the actors have any real chemistry together. So really, just why?

Overall a bland dud of an episode, but with an entertaining finish.

One of the alien leaders contracts chicken pox. Naturally, the cure is human brains. Because that makes sense. For some reason, the leaders (a trio called the advocacy) go out to collect the brains themselves instead of sending their lackeys like they usually do. This is a terrible plan, considering that the alien foot soldiers are utterly incompetent and if any one of the advocacy dies, they will be unable to function. In other words, if any of them dies, the invasion will fail. Really, this seems like an enormous plot hole in the entire show, but we’ll let that go for now.

There’s a nice little cameo by Ann Robinson, once again reprising the role of Sylvia Van Buren. With the advocacy crippled, she’s back to normal, since she’s no longer bothered by their telepathic transmissions. Or something like that. That is until the aliens harvest a few brains and briefly start transmitting again.

Harrison goes into full asshole mode, shutting his team out of the investigation for no good reason and going it alone. But Ironhorse is having none of that, so he has the others investigate on their own. This eventually leads them to a power plant where the aliens have rigged up a big gizmo to distill human brains down to their essence. Whatever that means. The sick alien gets enough brain juice to be healthy again and they head for the hills. But not before encountering a very angry Harrison and Ironhorse. There’s a shootout, but the aliens get away.

And that’s it, really. The episode is pretty basic, but there’s plenty of cornball horror/sci-fi imagery. Dead bodies with the brains removed, brains being dumped into big vats to be melted down, a goofy sci-fi electro gizmo, and of course the obligatory shootout. It’s actually the most fun the show has been in a while. Not actually good, per se, but fun.

Holy fuck. This episode is so brain-meltingly bad, I don’t even know where to begin. Alyssa came up with a theory on how this episode was conceived that I find highly plausible. They didn’t have a script ready and the show was going to get pulled unless they came up with something by the next morning, so the writing staff locked themselves in the office and just kept snorting cocaine and chugging coffee and writing until they had something.

The episode opens with a genuinely creepy shot of a TV monitor displaying an image of a sleeping baby as a slimy alien hand reaches up and touches the screen. We track across more TV monitors displaying various images of humans going about their business while alien hands reach up and touch the screens. It’s actually unsettling and better imagery than this show usually delivers.

It’s all downhill from there, though. A squad of aliens stands in their hideout wearing Blues Brothers costumes as their leader informs them, “With these disguises, you will blend in with human society.”

… Seriously?!

So then the aliens go to a college that they’re supposed to infiltrate and burst in on a party where … everyone is dressed as the Blues Brothers. The people partying freeze when the aliens enter. So the aliens look at each other and then in unison don their sunglasses. This causes everyone to relax and they go back to partying.

Yes. Yes, that happened. Someone wrote that and then submitted it to their boss who then approved it and then gave it to someone else to film who actually did, in fact, film it. And at no point in this chain of events did anyone say, “No, that’s dumb. Let’s not do that.”

But wait! There’s more!

There are a bunch of kids playing a game in the school’s basement. The game is a combination of Laser Tag and LARPing. Seriously? Is that a thing anyone would do? Whatever. Moving on. Anyway, the Laser Tag LARPers run into the aliens in the basement, who decide that some nerds would be better cover than the Blues Brothers. They’re actually right about that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Suzanne is in tears because a lab assistant she knew has been murdered (he was one of the LARPers). She’s so distraught that Harrison agrees to go with her to the school to look into it. Lynda Mason Green puts everything she’s got into the scene and it still falls flat. She’s crying over a character we don’t know and don’t care about and it’s just a contrivance to get our heroes to where the action is happening. Thus, it’s not actual character development. It’s just boring. We’ll never hear about this character again, so it’s just a waste of our time.

Now things get really trippy. The aliens are wandering around the underground tunnels because they’re lost. Their superiors have given them bad intel and they can’t find their goal – a bioweapon that has the potential to wipe out humanity. So imagine some nerds in Laser Tag gear wandering around some underground tunnels while occasionally throwing their heads back and making gargling sounds with subtitles that read: Our leaders are stupid! This job is horrible! I hate this!

Our heroes show up and start investigating. They learn that Suzanne’s friend has been found murdered, so Harrison is immediately all “I’m not saying it’s aliens, but… aliens!” They go to the guy’s dorm room and Harrison gets absurdly excited to see a computer. “A computer! I love computers!” They figure out where the LARPers were playing their game and go to investigate. Naturally the run into the aliens and Ironhorse kills them all. Except for one, who has taken over the body of a football jock who realistically should not have been part of this crew to begin with.

Jock alien finds his way to the lab and snags a sample of the bioweapon, but not before accidentally getting a dose himself, which causes him to mutate. Now he’s some kind of alien/human hybrid who thinks the LARPing game is real. He takes some kids hostage and forces them to go wandering around the underground tunnels until Harrison, Suzanne, and Ironhorse catch up with him. Harrison manages to distract him long enough for the kids to get away. They then corner him in the lab and hit the decontamination button, which depressurizes the room and causes him to explode. Harrison and Suzanne are suitably grossed out, but Ironhorse seems to think it’s cool.

Honestly, I think I’ve made this episode sound more interesting than it actually is. It’s mostly just a bunch of lengthy shots of people wandering around tunnels. The only thing that saves it from being totally boring is how absurd most of what you’re watching is. I spent most of the episode alternating between laughing my ass off and scrunching my face in disbelief. It would be fun to watch this episode with H.G. Wells and observe the look of utter confusion on his face as he tries to figure out how this material is in any way based on his book.

Norton discovers a secret military vault containing vast stores of information on the 1953 invasion. Blackwood is so excited that he stops doing Yoga long enough to get some actual work done. He, Suzanne, and Ironhorse go to the vault but for some reason they don’t have clearance, so Ironhorse has to go schmooze with some generals to clear everything up. Blackwood and Suzanne are granted access to one small room, however, and they go to work.

Almost immediately they find a crystal which, when they shine a light on it, causes a flash that sends Blackwood flying across the room. He starts acting like a jerk – even more than usual – yelling at Suzanne and grabbing her violently. He even calls Ironhorse to rudely demand a pepperoni pizza. He then insists that Suzanne try the crystal because it’s a huge rush. She refuses, so he forces her to do it anyway. It has the effect of turning her initially into a sex maniac and then later into a complete idiot. Oddly, the crystal’s effect on Blackwood wears off as soon as Suzanne is affected, but Suzanne is out of it for the rest of the episode.

Meanwhile, the entire base has been taken over by Martians except for one girl. But the Martians can’t access the vault because the computer somehow knows they’re Martians and won’t accept their voice commands. Fortunately, the only girl who hasn’t been possessed is in love with one of the possessed soldiers, so he seduces her into opening the vault for him – and then of course kills her.

Blackwood and Suzanne are in big trouble, with Martians swarming the place. But just in time, Ironhorse shows up with Blackwood’s pizza, sees all the Martians, and starts mowing them all down with a machine gun. He’s wounded in the battle, but he takes them all out single-handedly.

All of this was over a list of where the rest of the hibernating Martians are being kept. The list changes hands several times over the course of the episode, with its ultimate fate never established. Even the crystal is lost in the proceedings, so we never find out what it was for.

Start to finish, this episode is a bunch of missed opportunities wrapped up in a bigger missed opportunity that’s part of a whole series that was a missed opportunity. Here we have a vault that should have contained all sorts of awesome and crazy Martian technology, but all we get is some crystal that makes people high and a poorly designed ray gun. We could have seen Martian war machines all torn apart for reverse engineering, great big anti-grav devices, crazy science that would make your head spin. They descend in an elevator deeper than the bottom of San Francisco bay to reach the vault and it’s just some hallways and some rooms. This could have been as mind-blowing as the Krell laboratory in Forbidden Planet, but instead it’s just super lame.

The episode focuses most of its running time on the Martian crystal and its effect on Blackwood and Suzanne, but it doesn’t do anything interesting with that. Other sci-fi and fantasy shows used similar plot devices to fantastic effect. In the Angel episode “The Shroud of Rahmon,” the titular MacGuffan causes everyone to become hostile and violent, or in some cases simply out of it, but the episode doesn’t leave it there. Hidden resentments and hostilities come to the surface, giving us glimpses into what’s going on inside the characters’ heads and forcing them to work through some of their issues. And in the Star Trek episode “The Naked Time,” the crew of the Enterprise is infected with a disease that lowers their inhibitions, allowing us to learn more about them. It is here that we see for the first time the depth of Kirk’s love for the Enterprise and the conflict he feels between his devotion to his ship and the desire for a life of simplicity. And we get our first glimpse of Spock’s inner torment as his human and Vulcan halves war with each other. “The Second Seal” does none of this. I had hoped that the crystal might be our first look at how the Martians are suppressing the memories of the ’53 invasion, but it doesn’t even do that. There’s nothing. The characters act like idiots and then there’s some shooting. That’s it.

And the sad part is that the characters actually have some potential to grow. Blackwood, having been orphaned in the ’53 invasion and haunted by his memories of that horror, is obsessed with unraveling the secrets of the aliens. Okay, that’s a great starting point. Now do something with it!! They don’t. He just acts like a jerk and we’re supposed to think it’s funny. Show us some actual PTSD and survivor’s guilt! Delve into how Blackwood has trouble forming healthy attachments.

Suzanne has potential too, but they don’t do anything with her. She just tags along and does what she’s told. There’s never any inner conflict. How about this: She just wanted to study biology and now she’s thrust into this war to save the planet. That’s gotta be a lot of pressure. But maybe she feels obligated. She wants to turn her back on it and have a normal life, but when faced with the enormity of the situation she felt she had to do something. But she just feels like she’s in over her head. She’s really a brilliant biologist, but she’s suffering from impostor syndrome and is afraid she’ll let everyone down. And then also, she could spend time worrying for her daughter, and worrying that she’s not spending enough time with her daughter. And maybe her daughter isn’t able to hang out with friends because she’s living on this military base and so there’s tension there. There’s a lot they could do with this scenario, and they don’t.

Norton Drake suffers from a lack of development too. Here we have disability representation and don’t do anything with it. Why is Norton in a wheelchair? Was he born with legs that don’t work or was he crippled later? If it was an accident, have him talk about it. Delve into how he used to be physically active and now he wastes away in this chair. Show him dealing with that and learning to cope. Show the problems he faces. It was the late 80’s and not all places were wheelchair accessible yet, so they could have shown him having trouble getting into places. And maybe go into the guilt he feels as his friends go into the trenches where they’re getting shot at while he’s safe and sound back at base. Have him wonder if he’s doing enough to contribute. Jesus, give him some kind of inner conflict. Anything at all! Have him complain about the food at the base. Something. ANYTHING!!

And then there’s Ironhorse. Well… he’s a badass. That’s it. That’s his entire character. He grumps about everything and then kicks ass. And goes for pizza. Honestly, he’s such a blank slate that you could do anything you want with him. Maybe he had to do some secret missions and is haunted by the horrible things he’s had to do. Maybe his superiors aren’t taking the situation seriously and he has to choose between following orders and doing what’s right. Maybe… I dunno, anything. Create a character with some depth. I don’t expect Shakespeare, but for god’s sake it’s not that hard to create conflict.

Another big problem with this episode is that it miserably fails the Bechdel test. There are four female characters in the story: Suzanne, two military women, and a reporter who’s really a Martian. We’ll cross the reporter off the list. She’s a Martian, so she doesn’t count. So really there are only three women in the story and there are only two scenes where they interact with each other without any men around. And what do they talk about in these scenes? Men. Which men they think are hot and how to make themselves more attractive to them. UGH!!! And of course there’s the trope of the nerdy girl with glasses who is encouraged to ditch her glasses and wear make-up so the men will want her. Never mind that she was cute to begin with. Conforming to society’s expectations is the only path to true happiness, which for women means pleasing men. Gross!!!

This episode was perhaps the darkest yet. There was some genuine tension and a real sense of danger. A character died and I actually cared. So it’s truly frustrating that it was so problematic. Usually I’m able to just kick back and laugh at how awful this show is. But this episode actually bordered on being good. To see it fall short when it came so close was just disappointing.

The team heads for Grover’s Mill, New Jersey to attend the 50^th anniversary celebration of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Yes, you read that right. In the world of the TV series, there was a War of the Worlds radio show fifteen years before Martians invaded the world. The writers try to make it work by suggesting that in 1938 a Martian scouting party landed at Grover’s Mill to scope things out before the main invasion. The government then hired Orson Welles to do a radio broadcast based on the incident… for some reason.

(sigh) Okay. We’ll just go with it. Actually, it’s kind of cool that they did the shout out to the radio show. They just went about it all wrong. Presumably, the TV show version of the radio show differs from the actual broadcast. It would be pretty weird if a radio show made up from whole cloth in 1938 mirrored almost perfectly events that would unfold in reality fifteen years later. Also, the actual broadcast opens with the words, “The Columbia Broadcasting System and affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘The War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.” Are we to assume that in the TV series there was also another advanced Martian scouting mission in Britain in 1897 and then H.G. Wells wrote a novel loosely based on the incident and that the events of his novel by an astonishing coincidence also foreshadowed the events of 1953? I’m getting a headache. Moving on.

At the Anniversary celebration, the team encounters a group of militia men who battled the Martians in the 1938 incident. Blackwood is intrigued by the fact that these men vividly remember their encounter. Once again we revisit the notion that the Martians may have some power to suppress human memories of the 1953 invasion. Suzanne once again posits her mass repression theory, but Blackwood (correctly) balks at it. I’m glad they actually seem to be going somewhere with this plot point instead of just glossing it over, and I’m glad they seem to be leaning in the direction of Blackwood’s hypothesis. It just makes so much more sense.

Martians disguised as bikers show up, determined to recover one of the war machines lost in the 1938 conflict. They find it buried in the wilderness not far from the festivities and begin excavating it. At one point, some of the Martians decide to go foraging and chow down on a flower garden belonging to one of the militia men, Francis (played by Jeff Corey, who will be well-known to sci-fi fans, having played Plasus in the Star Trek episode “The Cloud Minders,” as well as Zed in the Roger Corman cult classic Battle Beyond the Stars, as well as many other memorable roles in his lengthy filmography). Francis immediately knows that they’re Martians because he recalls Martians feeding on his flowers in 1938. Yes, the Martians eat flowers. In the original novel, the Martians fed on human blood. Here they eat… flowers. Jesus, that’s dumb.

So Francis tells Blackwood and Ironhorse that he’s seen Martians eating his flowers, and instead of believing him they decide he’s just jumping at shadows. Fucking brilliant. Meanwhile, instead of working, Suzanne is spending some quality time with her daughter. Yes, she brought her daughter. To an event commemorating what they know to have been an actual Martian invasion. And it never occurred to them that this might draw the attention of the Martian forces currently working on Earth? And then, after Francis warns them that there are, in fact, Martians lurking about, Suzanne lets her daughter wander off? What the shit, people?!

The Martians finish excavating the war machine, but it won’t power up. So instead they remove the heat ray and rig it to the top of… a car. Budget saver! Blackwood and Ironhorse rush to meet the alien threat while Suzanne tries to get her daughter to safety by… going toward the danger. Wow, she is the worst mom ever. Anyway, the Martians are blasting everything in sight so Blackwood rigs up a bunch of mirrors and reflects the beam back at the Martians, vaporizing them. Yes, the terrifying Martian heat ray that leveled whole cities in 1953 is defeated by… some mirrors. Holy goddamn fuck.

The pilot episode beautifully recreated the original Martian heat ray special effect, but this episode instead gives us a chintzy digital beam effect like what you’d see in an old Doctor Who episode. I’m not knocking Doctor Who, but after what they gave us in the pilot, it’s really damn disappointing.

This episode is, frankly, a mess. Their heart was in the right place, but they really needed to go about it differently. Also, they shit on their own continuity. Initially, the Martians were easily identifiable. Aside from the blotches that would appear on their skin, they always acted very alien. But now all of a sudden when they possess humans they can suddenly act the way those humans are supposed to act. So when they possess bikers, they act like bikers. If they possess cops, they act like cops. One of them even possesses Francis’s friend and is able to fool Francis. So do the Martians get the memories of the people they’re possessing? Why couldn’t they do that before? It’s a really sloppy and arbitrary shift.

Oh, well. At least we got to see a heat ray.

Norton’s computer flags a news segment about nuclear waste being hauled by trucks. The team gets in touch with the reporter covering the story, which leads them to the town of Beeton, which is supposed to be a ghost town. Instead, they find it full of people wandering about the streets saying “To Life Immortal.” In other words, it’s crawling with aliens. They poke around a bit, the reporter and her cameraman get nabbed, and we finally learn why people were acting like zombies in the previous episode — the aliens are rounding people up and zapping them with electrodes so that they have a supply of compliant host bodies. This would have been useful to know in the previous episode (I wonder if they were broadcast out of order). Having seen all they need to see, they decide to hit the road, but of course the aliens get wise and they have to fight their way out of town. They come back with the military, but the aliens have skidaddled. And the reporter goes on TV to assure the public that all is well. The aliens now have their very own PR person.

From an entertainment perspective, it’s fairly run-of-the-mill. Not spectacular, but not utterly boring either. It’s your basic cheesy, bad sci-fi action. There are some cool shots of the aliens popping out of their steel drums. There’s a genuinely effective horror set piece when a secretary, who seemed totally normal, surprises her boss when an alien hand pops out of her belly to gouge his eyes out. Oh, and Ironhorse gets to throw a tomahawk at an alien’s face. 

The best science fiction has something to say. Star Trek is an optimistic look at a future where humanity has learned to stop fighting and work together. V is a commentary on fascism. And the original War of the Worlds shone a light on human — particularly British — hubris and complacency. H.G. Wells saw that his countrymen felt a little too secure in their own global superiority. He wanted to knock them down a peg and show that it was possible for someone else to be superior. The British would experience that for real a few decades later when Nazi air raids reduced whole British neighborhoods to rubble.

Really, it’s interesting to note that much of the technology Wells describes in his novel would be a reality by the middle of the 20th century. In the novel, the Martian war machines are not unlike the tanks of today — virtually unstoppable metal monsters. The Martians also use chemical weapons, which would become a reality just 17 years later, in World War I. But the signature weapon of the Martians, the heat ray, pales in destructive capacity when compared to the real horror of the atom bomb. 

So in a way, the terrifying Martian invasion imagined by Wells became a reality. And really, that’s what science fiction is all about — imagining what might be possible so we can prepare for its eventual reality. That, or metaphorical examination of things that really exist. Or a combination of both.

Unless, of course, you’re just trying to entertain people. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and even the original Star Wars are simple adventure stories with no ulterior motive. But those are sweeping epics on a massive scale, and Star Wars manages to infuse its characters with internal lives with which the audience can identify on an emotional level. War of the Worlds the TV series, however, is just some stuff that’s happening. It’s low-rent stuff and none of it is particularly original. It’s not the first TV show to be confined to mediocrity by a limited budged, nor would it be the last, but it is what it is.

It also occurs to me that maybe instead of doing a War of the Worlds TV show, they should have done an Invasion of the Body Snatchers TV show. The premise of the original War of the Worlds is a massive alien invasion that engulfs the world. An unstoppable enemy steamrolls right over our defenses, leaving the survivors to flee for their lives. The original novel even provides the premise for a continuing series when the narrator meets an artilleryman with plans for a resistance movement. But the TV show is about a subversive alien threat that wants to take over human bodies. Replace the steel drums with alien seed pods and you’ve pretty much got an Invasion of the Body Snatchers TV show. And since the invasion in the original film was low-key, you could have the element of the general public not knowing about the threat without stretching credibility. Heck, you could even get Kevin McCarthy back to fill the Ann Robinson role. Considering his mental state at the end of the film, it’s easy to imagine him winding up in an insane asylum. I almost wonder if that wasn’t the original plan, but then somebody decided that the War of the Worlds title would be a bigger draw.

I dunno. They did what they did and there it is. On to the next episode then.

The third episode of War of the Worlds, “Thy Kingdom Come,” would be unremarkable if not for one key element: Ann Robinson reprises the role of Sylvia Van Buren. I figured I was sitting down to just another episode of bad ’80s television, but when her name flashed across the screen it brought a huge smile to my face.

I’m reminded a bit of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which Ricardo Montalban reprised the role of Khan after many years, except it wasn’t really the original character. The off-screen events of the intervening years had molded him into a very different person than the one we met in “Space Seed.” So it is with Sylvia Van Buren in this episode. Following the events of the 1953 film, Sylvia and Clayton Forrester continued to research the alien menace, worried that another attack might be imminent. Following Forrester’s death, Sylvia continued the research, but no one wanted to hear what she was saying. They wanted her silenced. So some genius committed her to an insane asylum, where she was subjected to electro-shock therapy, leaving her in a fractured mental state. It was a delight to see Ann Robinson back, but distressing to see what had become of the character.

That said, Robinson turns in an even more compelling performance than the one she delivered in ’53. Her eyes dart wildly about and her face contorts into that mask of terror we all remember from the original film, but then she’ll be suddenly calm, sitting upright, her voice low and sly, like she knows something no one else does — which is true. As our heroes struggle to figure out what the aliens are up to, she’s the one who cracks the code, realizing the prism-like Martian iris is what’s needed to see the pattern in a video signal. It’s great stuff.

The rest of the episode, however… hoo boy. We open with a group of Martians disguised as Trump supporters. Having used up these bodies, they soon jump into the bodies of a prison hockey team, figuring they’ll ditch their captors once they get to Canada, where a cache of their brethren are being held. But once there, instead of doing what they were supposed to do, they decide to play hockey. Cause, you know, it’s Canada. Naturally, while playing hockey, they have to rip someone’s arm off, cause why not? And then of course the one who ripped someone’s arm off gets shot and melts on camera so our heroes can see it on TV and know where the aliens are. Brilliant. 

Now down a man due to their incompetence, the aliens decide to hop bodies again, this time possessing a family on a road trip. Mom, Dad, and Grandma are all aliens now, but for some inexplicable reason they leave little Bobby alone. Not only that, but they take him along. And try to act like everything’s normal for his benefit. The alien leader even scolds a subordinate for speaking in their native language. “Speak as they do!” he orders. “For Bobby’s sake.” … WHAT?! Why didn’t they just kill him? Or leave him behind? I figured there was some narrative reason for keeping him around, but no. Once the aliens get where they’re going, they order him to stay put while they wade into the lake where the other Martians are being kept. Naturally Bobby runs away and we never see him again. What the shit is that all about?! Why even have him in the story?!

Meanwhile, our heroes have been arrested for being American… or something… and refuse to tell the authorities the actual legitimate reason they’re here or show them their actual legitimate identifications which would prove it. Instead, Blackwood has to hypnotize the guard so they can escape. Seriously? If this were Doctor Who, which is a ridiculous show and owns that shit, I might buy it. But this show is played straight, so it comes across as utterly ridiculous.

That brings us to the episode’s climax. Why are the steel drums which contain the aliens left to rust at the bottom of a lake instead of being kept in a warehouse or something? Clearly, this was just a budget-saving move so they wouldn’t have to fill a warehouse with a bunch of steel drums. Instead we just see some underwater lights. Sure. Whatever. But where did the aliens suddenly get all the bodies to possess? That’s never established. And the people just all obediently wade into the water like zombies for the Martians to take over. What’s even going on in this scene?

So our heroes take all the aliens out by blowing up an electrical tower and toppling it into the lake, frying them all. Yeah, okay, whatever. But then the bodies of all the aliens are just floating in the lake the next morning. Haven’t we established that they melt when they die? A little consistency would be nice.

Oh, and Philip Akin drops the phony Jamaican accent for this episode. Thank God. And having done so, turns out he can actually act after all. 

All-in-all it was entertaining and I had fun, but it wasn’t as good as the previous episode.