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Rating the Fall's Alien Invasion Series

by Jason Snell - November 23, 2005 7:40 PM

At the beginning of the season I decided that I would take up the task of watching all three of the new, similarly-themed alien-invasion TV series. As Thanksgiving rolls around and two of the three shows have received full-season orders, I've got some clear opinions about which of these series is mildly interesting and which is a straight-up loser.

First, to introduce the players. There's CBS's Threshold, an alien-invasion series that kicks off with a mysterious signal being received on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (Update: After this article was posted, Threshold was cancelled.) There's NBC's Suface, an alien-lifeform-invasion series that kicks off with mysterious sightings of sea life in the world's oceans. And there's ABC's Invasion, an alien-invasion series that kicks off with mysterious happenings in the swamps and lakes of Florida after a hurricane.

If you gave a creative-writing class a loose premise (spooky alien-invasion tale that begins in the water and spreads onto land), depending on the cleverness of the students you'd probably get a similar-yet-different spread of stories, which is what seems to be the case with these three series. Who gave out this particular assignment is still a mystery, but the pupils have turned in their papers and it's time for judgment.

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