The Tunnel

This series started out okay and showed promise but the writing and characters are just so punishing that all one wishes for is total annihilation of the complete cast. This vomit inducing episode revolves around the most annoying, cliched bunch of English kids ever put to screen. Kinda like Enid Blyton characters v Aliens. Hugely improbable! One saving grace I guess, was no inclusion in this episode of the horrible mother and her two execrable kids, especially the son. I just want the Aliens to eat them all. In summary, the plot has been lost and honestly, I just don't care anymore for the awful story, hugely irritating characters and finishing whatever is left of this pointless series.

After the prior episode Fireworks being one of the best episodes with actual sci-fi themes, we're back to pretty much another useless episode filled entirely with the kids, walking or driving or arguing. I get that they play a role, somehow, but to devote an entire episode of their boring excursions and the constant blah blah blah is annoying, lazy writing, and a waste of the viewers time, as we're not here to watch a Disney series. It's like the writers who wrote this episode didn't even see the previous one and at least add some context and follow-up content from the previous events. There maybe was a total of 5 minutes of relevant alien sci-fi that could've been added to the previous or next episode, instead of giving the viewers all this nonsense and boring filler. The executive producers need to slap some sense into these writers before they lose all their viewership, especially if this is the best they can come up with after a 2 year hiatus.

I can't help but feel this show will inevitably go down as a waste of time, money, and effort and most importantly - potential.

Regardless of the sheer stupidity of the characters due to a plot that barely moves forward and sloppy writing, the characters themselves have depth and great potential. However, at the end of the day, you can't help but feel they just come out as raw and trivial and it's almost fully down to lazy writing and the fact they exist in a plot which takes 5 episodes to actually have something happen.

This is best demonstrated in the previous episode where things actually happened and it was actually entertaining. Characters ended up fulfilling their potential and utilised the whole season and a bit of character building where the plot actually progressing had been sacrificed. But no, we're back with another filler episode where you could've condensed the entire episode into 10 minutes worth of an episode.

As mentioned in my review of episode 3, It was very likely that we'd get the kids on a road trip in episode 4 and that's exactly what we got after the remake of Independence Day we saw in episode 3.

The problem with this sub-story is it isn't much more serious in tone and urgency than an episode of Dr Who, which is trademark cheesy and tongue-in-cheek. This would be ok if that was the intention, but sadly it's not and we're left then with just abject disappointment and frustration at the naff acting and daft writing. For example, the little girl warns that the aliens are coming and that is what happens. When she warns again, her brother decides to kneel down and counsel her on how everything will be alright instead of running with her to safety. It's reminiscent of 1980's TV sci-fi where nobody ran until the monster was three feet from devouring them, but that was mainly due to a need to capture everything in one frame in those days. This episode of Invasion is similarly last minute and it's insultingly dumb and silly.

The acting of this group of kids is pretty curtailed by bad writing and I'm sure they could have done better with better lines and more intelligent exploration of the way kids resolve issues of bullying. But no, instead the writers decide that the bully be conveyed as a victim because a kid is wary of him and that kid then gets accused of being a bully to the bully because he hasn't instantly forgiven the evil little tyke for years of verbal, physical and mental psychopathy. And it's at moments like those that the writing really stinks as it's just trying to alter what went before and recast the bully as a different character. It doesn't work and is awful writing and imagination.

What's worse is the fact that most of this series of Invasion so far is practically the same as series 1: road trips, sleuthing, the odd encounter with aliens where nobody important really gets hurt ... the menace just isn't there. So, it's padded beyond reason again but even worse, it's imbecilic and churlish in plot and character development.

Why the aliens have now developed permanent legs instead of sprouting an appendage as needed is unclear, but hey, I guess that they didn't think they needed permanent legs on the first series. Such imaginative creations would leave your jaw hanging low if you fit into the target audience for this rubbish, which I suspect is the clueless. Luckily, that's not most of us and there is some quite justifiable annoyance at this episode and the repetitive nature of the writing when compared to series one.

They also seem to have given up on the science and taken it into a paranormal angle which I guess removes the need for logic, lucid thought and explanation.

Dismally bad.

Episode is proof if it were ever needed that you should never make a movie with kid lead actors.

This episode is shockingly bad, no need to worry about the alien monsters, there would be plenty humans who would love to see this lot vanish in a mysterious incident!

Acting is borderline rubbish, storyline is something from Enid Blyton than an alien invasion sci-fi story.

Overall series premise isn't all bad, but the famous 5 (or 6 or whatever it is) kids add nothing to the story whatsoever beyond they are irritating beyond belief and they've been written in for tokenism.

I mean the young girl has specs which have zero prescription, which means there a prop but for what reason, there is no reason as far as I can see!