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This Friday on “Invasion: Earth” ep. 4 “The Fall of Man”


Aired Friday 9:30 PM May 29, 1998 on BBC

Unable to convince his superiors of the existence of the NDs, Reece tries to trap one using Terell's craft as bait.

(From the tile, this episode seems to be a major game chamger. I expect nothing but the complete annihilation of mankind!)


STARRING

Maggie O'Neill
Dr. Amanda Tucker

Fred Ward
Major General David Reece

Phyllis Logan
Squadron Leader Helen Knox

Vincent Regan
Flt. Lieut. Chris Drake

Bob Barrett
Flt. Lt. Stewart

Laura Harling
Emily Tucker

Christopher Fairbank
Wing Commander Friday

Gerard Rooney
Sergeant Tuffley

Paul J. Medford
Nick Shay

Jonathan Dow
Flt Lieut Jim Radcliffe

John Shrapnel
Air Marshal Bentley

Hugh Ross
Dr. Vickers

Sheila Grier
Jenny Marchant

Barbara Horne
Doctor's Receptionist

Nicola Grier
Det. Sgt. Holland

Sara Kestelman
Group Captain Susan Preston

Anton Lesser
Lieut Charles Terrell

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Lesson to be learned from tonight’s episode: If you’re an alien intelligence that wants to make itself known, don’t land in England. Air Marshall Bentley sees evidence of an alien abductee, foreign alien material and an alien spacecraft and still thinks it’s just some foreign power that suddenly got a lot smarter. It reminds me of a Ray Bradbury story where a team from Earth lands on Mars and ends up being put in a Martian insane asylum. They show the head of the institution their spaceship, but he thinks it’s a figment of their imagination and shoots them all dead to prove it. When the spaceship remains, the Martian shoots himself thinking he’s gone insane, and the ship is hauled away as junk. Their treatment of the Echos in 1944 echoes the Bradbury story to a degree. Granted in his story, the Martians had the ability to create what appeared to solid objects with their minds – so the institution head’s conclusion was at least semi-understandable. But the English have no such excuse here. Terrell probably regrets now not accepting that T-shirt from the Echos saying, “I was abducted by aliens, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” That “souvenir” might have been accepted by Bentley as proof. Oh well, live and learn.

Poor Amanda. Something’s been done to her. Even when the scarring she did to herself is removed, it comes back. (I bet she wishes she’d made smaller slashes in her skin.) And halfway through the episode, she vomits. I don’t know if this hold with British TV, but on American TV that means one of two things – 1.) She’s pregnant. 2.) She thinks she’s pregnant, leading to hilarious consequences where she makes a complete fool of herself only to find out it was just a touch of food poisoning. The doctors were giving her an ultrasound, and saying that the alien matter was growing inside her; I can’t help but wonder if there’s something they’re not telling her. Still, at episode’s end, she looked better than the lady patient diagnosed with food poisoning but in reality a victim of…

Friday’s alien plot: Drive to medium-sized town, stand on reservoir, cut vital artery, jump in and bleed alien blood into the water supply. Clearly, the NDs want everyone on Earth to have diarrhea, then they can just swoop in and take us over while we’re all sitting on the porcelain throne. Diabolical!

The main crux of the story was an attempt to lure the NDs into materializing into a cage, dropping them into a steel box and capturing them. It almost seemed to work, until they blasted their way out of the cage and the box, killed three soldiers, and hopped back into the portal just before it closed. Then, to add insult to injury, they came back again and took poor Terrell with them. He pleaded for them to kill him, and Drake shot him. Personally, I wasn’t sure Drake actually killed him, but Reece seems convinced he did. Best line of the night regarded how smooth the plan was supposed to go. “A walk in the park. Yeah, Jurassic Park!”

So things are still looking bleak for humanity: we don’t have an ND to find a weapon against, they’ve launched a biological attack on us, and they look pretty hard to defeat. At least Nick Shay may have found a way to find out how to locate an alien portal before it fully forms. We have two weeks to find out how this all plays out. I’m giving this one 7 nasty skin scratches that won’t go away.

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Best line of the night regarded how smooth the plan was supposed to go. “A walk in the park. Yeah, Jurassic Park!”


Agreed. In fact, you beat me to saying it. Awesome line! Best laugh I've had all evening.

___________

I'd've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

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I'd say the best piece of information I got was what nDs stands for, but that wasn't even in the episode. (Thanks, brimfin!) The other pieces of information was that the English drink water directly from the tap, which means great trust in the local water department, and that they pronounce "tissue" like T-C-U. Who would've guessed? By the way, when that pus came out of Amanda's scratch, I was having dinner. Disgusting! And it didn't help that she kept removing her bandage to just look at it. nobody is interested in your blood scarred flesh, lady!

As for the rest, I'm just wondering. Why "The Fall of Man"? Did anybody fall and I didn't see it? Is it because the dead possessed soldier fell on the lake after cutting his arm? Is it meant to be the time that comes before the "winter of man" instead? Because honestly man didn't fall this week, and even though we've witnessed another defeat for Team Humans, it was just part of a continuing process, so I don't get whey the dramatic title.

I agree with brimfin the refusal to admit they are dealing with aliens. Which resonates with what I said last week about stupid superiors. Don't they have DNA tests to prove the dead alien was alien and the tissue in Amanda's arm was alien? Or was that possible in 1998?

So the military tried to prove Schrodinger's theory about quantum felines, but with alien. however nD had other plans and made a mockery of the humans' attempt to capture it. I was just thinking, since the nDs navigate through a myriad of dimensions and just appear and reappear, couldn't the captured alien just vanish fro the metal box? Maybe it could but wanted to teach us a lesson instead. Just one question: what did Reese intended to do once the nD was captured inside the box? How could he prove his skeptical boss that there was, in fact, an alien there? Afer all, until we've opened the box we can't prove whether the proverbial cat is dead or alive. In that case, even if there's a cat in it.

Oh, so they sent the little girl away. Good, because she wasn't doing anything anymore and was just dead weight.

Best quote of the night:
"Whatever they are paying you, it's not enough."
"Speaking of which..." (Too late, the man who signs the checks is gone.)

This episode gets 7 terribly failed attempts to capture a deadly alien.

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Well, now we know what the escaped Army officer was up to. Great way to spread that horrible nD tissue to an entire local population so they can then spread it farther... Much more feasible than to think he could get very far by peeing in irrigation ditches.

Now we get to the drama of Amanda having her good sulk and taking it out on Drake. A bit cliche, but one that didn't get to be a cliche for nothing. All too common in reality not to be included in our fiction as well.

Gotta admire the American general. They got their butts kicked bad and he's all for how to try again differently the next day. Not even allowing everyone time to lick their sores. (Except for Amanda, of course, because..Eww!)

My favorite episode so far this series. I'll give it 8 samples of alien pus.

___________

I'd've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

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by bob-402-252005 » Not even allowing everyone time to lick their sores. (Except for Amanda, of course, because..Eww!)

Yeah, EWWWW! Definitely the worst image so far.

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The Fall of Man.....Obviously a clever play on the Guy falling off the damn....He's a man FALLING into the reservoir to destroy mankind.

I am having an impossible time with the military not believing. It's just silly, all you have is a freak - a lunitic - and twisted metal....really? that's all you have...really?

Looks like my old girl amanda may be preggers after all....nailed it. women who are abducted in movies, always come back preggers, it's the law.

Well, at least we outsmarted the ND's long enough to momentarily capture one but of course when their brains failed them brute force bailed them out. Those ND's are a force of nature I tell you.

It looks as though we now have an entire town rocking alien dna in the water...should have gotten that Britta filter at the store, for lack of a 4 pound filter you are now all aliens DOH!!!

A great man once told me (wlcebtg) They all turn on you eventually and Amanda is no different, she has turned on her cowboy pilot blaming him for all her troubles. perhaps she would like the ND world of no men better hmmmmmm.

All in all so so episode I'll give it 5 flimsy traps on the IE scale.

http://codenamestone.blogspot.com/

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This Friday on “Invasion: Earth” ep. 4 “The Fall of Man”

Another awesome episode loved that coffee cup the soldier had on his desk. Amanda is carrying a possible bug baby man if that child comes to term it’s going to be an ugly one. The most important thing I learned from this episode is next time they try to catch a ND they need a much bigger box. The little bugger made short work of their trap. This dude who jumped into the reservoir just goes to show how our water supply can be so easily compromised buy Alien attack but what can you do. The most valuable thing I learned is we don’t stand a chance against the ND how can you fight something that can pop in and out of dimensions.

Giving this one an eight on the ND flesh scale. By the way what the purpose of the Echos?

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Another awesome episode loved that coffee cup the soldier had on his desk.


Reminded me of a similar cream container I've seen before. When you pour cream into your coffee from that one, it came out of the nipple.

___________

I'd've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

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loved that coffee cup the soldier had on his desk.


Yeah I forgot about that...booooby cup hee hee

http://codenamestone.blogspot.com/

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Caught my eye. It's just another day.

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Was going to post yesterday, but we had a hellacious rainstorm (6.25 in / 16 cm in just a few hours) that caused the worst flooding I've ever seen. Almost couldn't get home. At least none of the water appeared to be contaminated with alien blood, pus or whatever.

You've all pretty well covered my comments. I'm right with you, madp, wondering why they thought a dimension-hopping critter could be contained. And also wondering what they were going to do with it.

This episode owes a lot to Jurassic Park. Not only the best line of the series, but the critter breaking out of the container reminded me of the velociraptor shipment gone awry at the beginning of the first film.

Charmed, I don't think Amanda's going to be giving birth to some kind of wasp. (Although, since she's British, perhaps a WASP, but we needn't go there.) It was clear to me that they were talking about some kind of metamorphosis. Maybe we can skip Jurassic Park and look at The Fly (1986) instead.

Terrell is history (I think--I agree it wasn't clear that he actually was killed), and that's a good thing. I was getting tired of hearing him just insist that "they can't be beaten" over and over.

We've got a long way to go in just two more episodes. I hope this has a real ending.

I'm not big on blood, pus and diarrhea (thus, I'm an engineer, not a doctor, as many people have inquired about over the years) and I'm even less happy about large insects. Lots of cringing this week.

I'll give this one a 6 pack of beer, or a half-dozen reasons never to drink water from the tap.

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Glad you made it home O.K. saw on the weather this morning you had a ton of rain. Send some south we can't catch a break here.

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by dtmuller » Almost couldn't get home. At least none of the water appeared to be contaminated with alien blood, pus or whatever.

I'm sure these are just preliminary conclusions.

(thus, I'm an engineer, not a doctor, as many people have inquired about over the years)

You should say it like this: "Damn you, Jim. I'm an engineer, not a doctor!" But I'm sure as far as engineering goes, you're the real McCoy.

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madp: You should say it like this: "Damn you, Jim. I'm an engineer, not a doctor!"
Back in the '90s, my manager was named Jim, so this is very appropriate. But my line--which I still use--was, "I'm an engineer, not a magician."

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What about a miracle. They don't want a solution they need a miracle. Once I worried about uA these days it nA when we move to pA's I'm done.

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This episode owes a lot to Jurassic Park. Not only the best line of the series, but the critter breaking out of the container reminded me of the velociraptor shipment gone awry at the beginning of the first film.


Hmmm your right never thought about that.....Shoot her!!!Shoot her!!!

http://codenamestone.blogspot.com/

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Clever girl!

___________

I'd've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

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