(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+)
EPISODE 4: “The Tunnel”
You can understand why humanity is sitting on a high at this episode opens since it’s blown seven alien ships out of the sky thanks to coordinated nuclear strikes – go Mitsuki Yamato (Shioli Kutsuna) and your weird alien conversing ways and eerily prescient sense of working out what others can’t or won’t – an act which seems to have stopped all of creepily murderous, ambulatory sabre-wielding, sea urchin-y alien attack dogs in their tracks and which could be the beginning of the end. Or as one unthinking French neurologist proclaims, it is THE END. Only it’s not – c’mon surely you saw that coming right? – and as our intrepid five kids make their way in a very un-Enid Blyton way to Paris to rescue a comatose Caspar (Billy Barratt), it’s becomes clear that far from being the final shot in the war, it may just be the beginning of another far more brutal and destructive phase of the war. Suffice to say, this is one time that counting your victorious chickens before they hatch may not be the best use of your time. Regardless of whether humanity is getting a little too over-excited about the state of play or not (they are, they really are), Jamila (India Brown), Monty (Paddy Holland), gifted younger sister Penny (Ruby Siddle), Alfie (Cache Vanderpuye) and Darwin (Louis Toghill) are determined to press forward to get across the Channel and even when they find their way blocked by cars and soldiers – the episode starts just before the great nuclear “victory” when everyone is still staring up at the sky waiting for the promised decisive strike – Jamila urges them to find another way in, something that may not be the wisest course of action since the reason the tunnel is closed is because there’s a missing train, a missing military recon team and thus likely lots of aliens making themselves at home in the Chunnel. Not the kind of place anyone in their right mind would enter but then Jamila is singularly focused and determined to get to Caspar come what may and so, possessed of the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad idea. But hey there is, and so, the kids are down in the depths just as the new aliens wake up, a wolfishly inspired model that isn’t hurt by fire or any of the other things humanity is throwing at them, and have to work hard, in-between some beautifully judged conversations including ones between Jamila and Monty who, it turns out, is not such a prick, after all. Okay, maybe he is but it’s because his parents fight and he can’t cope and all he can do is protect and love Penny which he does surprisingly and affectingly well. ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- The kids do make it to France – JUST – though not without Darwin getting scratched by a grasping alien thingy which cannot be a good thing if zombie films have taught us anything and are setting off to fight Caspar just as all hell breaks loose at the hospital he’s at with the aliens clearly wanting very much to get to him …
EPISODE 5: “A Voice From the Other Side”
So, back to Misuki, Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) and Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) this time who each have some major battles of their own to handle though it must be said Mitsuki and Aneesha likely have the tougher time of it this time around. Doubling down on the mystically thoughtful Contact / Arrival vibes that have sat happily alongside the more action-oriented elements of Invasion, episode five goes hard on the whole Mitsuki tries to save the world vibe as our would-be alien whisperer discovers, and yes this is more than a little unnerving, that her great dead?/alive? love Hinata (Rinko Kikuchi) may have had her consciousness sucked into the transparent, migraine-aura-tinged jelly mind of the invading forces. Certainly the small Japanese girl who appears to Mitsuki when she connects, without her glove (is that wise? It turns out, no, not that much really) seems to know lots of stuff that she shouldn’t be unless the aliens psychically dined on Hinata in some way. That’s creep and emotionally disturbing in a thousand different ways and the scene where Mitsuki does her best to connect with the aliens in a bid to find another chink in their armour only find they have found one in hers speaks to the exceptionally good way in which this series manage to be both big “B” blockbuster in is storytelling and visual ambitions while staying deep down in the very human trenches of the kind of frenzied emotional intimacy that marks people under a huge amount of existential pressure. It’s a tight rope to balance on but somehow Invasion manages it, giving us answers and some palpable steps forward while keeping things somewhat removed and messily human which is how a battle like this would be. It’s gift for the mystical and grounded intertwined comes to the fore in the strand featuring Trevante Cole and Rose (Nedra Marie Taylor) which sees some weird things going down on a farm including crows flying in an infinity loop, a very not comforting scarecrow and a missing farmer’s wife, all of whom have been seen in drawings done by Caspar which are not in Trevante’s possession. Again and again, Caspar’s nailed the truth of things that have come to pass and he looks more and more like the key to getting into the invaders’ heads and defeating them. While all that’s laudable and good, Aneesha just wants her kidnapped daughter back. Her disappearance looks like it’s the end result of hiding stuff and lying about things and so Aneesha finally has to admit that trusting people might just be how she, and the entire human race, for that matter, survives this hellish mess, assuming they can which is not a given as the episode ends.
Invasion streams on AppeTV+
EPISODE 9: “Long Ago, Not Far Away”
Who is the power behind the throne? Turns out, no surprise here, it’s Lady Demerzel (Laura Birn), one of the last surviving androids from the way back when Robot Wars – we discover just how far back when Demerzel admits to the first Kleon who discovers her in a hidden vault in the palace when he’s a child, that she’s an impressive 18,000 years old (that’s some part replacement servicing deal she has going there!) – who we find out in penultimate episode of Foundation‘s second season was bound into a Faustian deal with Empire when he wanted her to be free because he loved her, and he him, but couldn’t quite bring himself to trust her. In what is effectively an origin tale that explains who Denerzel is, but more importantly, just how long ago the Kleons became the architects of their own demise. 610 years ago to be precise. Turns out the whole clone debacle got going as a way for Kleon to give himself the kind of immortality that would allow him to stay close to Demerzel for eternity. I mean, true love and all that, and “awwwww cute”, but this twisted act of love, which involved Demerzel being programmed to love and serve in a way that was not free, set in train the current events of the episode where Day (Lee Pace) rather inadvisedly destroys Terminus with their own old Imperial ship Invictus thinking he is stomping out a cancer that will destroy the empire. While everyone around him from General Riose (Ben Daniels) to captured Foundationers Brother Constant (Isabella Laughland) and Hober Mallow (Dimitri Leonidas ) look on with ill-disguised horror as this act of murderously autocratic barbarism, Empire is giddy with psychopathic joy, his face lit up with a joy so brutally sourced it chills you to the core. So, who’s the cancer then? Seems it’s not the Foundations people who have rather cleverly been up to all kinds of clever behind-the-scene things that will put the first, second and possible final nails in the coffin of Empire and his morally bankrupt regime, all while doing their best to make the landing into a brand new non-imperials reality as cataclysm-free as possible. As an exploration of autocracy in its desperate dying gasps, this episode is unparalleled, underscoring how power can corrupt so badly that the perpetrator loses all semblance of of what is actually going on. Case in point too is Tellem Bond (Rachel House), leader of the mentalics on Ignis who is seconds away from taking over Gaal Doornick’s (Lou Llobell) body, as she taken over so many others before her, when Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey) crashes in and saves her mother from imprisonment within her own body. And ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) is very, very NOT dead and proves crucial in proving that Bond stays very much away from any other possible hosts for her enslaving consciousness in the future. It’s dramatic and full on but also nuanced and enormously thoughtful as we are made to realise once again that people, especially those with tons of power, are their own worst enemy, blinded by their own self-perceived greatness to such an extent that they don’t see retribution coming until it is far, FAR too late …
EPISODE 10: “Creation Myths”
As finales of excellent seasons go, it’s hard to go past the storytelling magnificence of this episode. While it draws a big and epic bow and delivers some major narrative twists and turns, it does so with one eye very much on the human collateral damage and how doing the greater good, or holding far too long onto your narcissistic self interest, can hurt people in some powerfully intimate ways. Reeling from the loss, so he thinks, of his husband Glawen Curr (Dino Fetscher) on Terminus – Glawen’s ship is knocked off course as the Invictus falls onto Terminus and he is on the planet when it implodes – General Riose defies Day’s order to destroy the seven worlds allied to Terminus, setting in chain a momentous train of events that sees the empire’s full fleet slowly destroyed one by one in an act of masterful planning by Seldon and Hober Mallow, Day thrown out an airlock in an act of wholly satisfying vengeance, and only Constant make it off the ship alive. That’s a lot of “f**k yous” in one episode and while it is massive and impressive in its scope, where it really hits home is in its smaller, quieter moments which Foundation, which has never been afraid to hit pause on pedal-to-the-metal narrative momentum to let the full human impact of something be fully felt, excels at. For instance, when Hober has to farewell Constant into the one person craft that will save her while thousands of others on the fleet ships die – as Riose observes that a lot of unnecessary death but it does mean billions more on the planets live so thee is purpose in their sacrifice – their final words to each other are achingly sad and desperately, harrowingly but beautifully intimate. Empire is all but falling in that moment – Demerzel is back on Tranter decanting clones and framing would-be brides of Empire for acts of treason they didn’t commit but it’s really just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic at this point – and yet this wondrously well-written and emotionally incisive show lets the full extent of their love, and soon to be loss, show and it deeply enriches this climactic scene in so many soul-searing ways as does the wine, the terrible wine, that Riose and Mallow share in their final moments. By the end, Constant and Glawen are both alive, and while how they are alive is miraculous and marvellous, as is who they are alive with, Foundation never loses sight of how the way things are has left some deep scarring damage in its wake. So too with Gaal and Hari, who in events that see Salvor ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- die, can only take comfort in the fact that her death means that the future can be changed and that upcoming events can go a different way than predicted. Again, while maths is at the heart of everything Seldon, and by extension, the Foundation does, humanity trumps it all and this gorgeous to look at, heart impacting show knows it in its very storytelling marrow, finishing off the season with a peak at a threat 152 years in the future which Seldon and Dornick, safe in their cryosleep chambers on Ignis, are racing up to meet in a third season that is going to be an absolute showstopper if this enthrallingly compelling episode is any guide.
Foundation streams on AppleTV+