Summary
Invasion Season 3 continues to be unable of getting out of its own way in Episode 7, which is fairly dull and doesn’t commit to its more interesting ideas.
Invasion never does itself any favours, does it? After finally injecting some pace into Season 3 with the reveal that Infinitas were really an alien-worshipping death cult, it pumped the brakes immediately for an explanatory flashback episode nobody wanted. Here in Episode 7, “Outpost 17”, it returns to the present day but remains curiously unhurried, letting the interpersonal drama simmer as everyone tries to decide what to do next.
A slight problem with this – very few of these characters are likeable or interesting. The problem with most of the cast having something inexplicable to do with the alien threat is that they tend not to be interesting on their own terms, instead functioning more as avenues to better understand the core antagonists. There’s a lot of toing and froing here, and a brief feint in the direction of The Thing-style paranoid murder sprees that doesn’t come to fruition at all, but it’s telling that the most interesting takeaway from the entire episode is the last-minute introduction of a new, deadlier type of alien. The humans in this show are surplus to requirements.
The hook of “Outpost 17” is that titular military facility where everyone who escaped the Infinitas ambush ends up hunkering down. They’ve crash-landed in the middle of the Dead Zone with no supplies, no plan, and no real agreement on who’s in charge or who can be trusted, a situation worsened by the fact that Aneesha and Clark unknowingly led Infinitas right to them. This already complicated situation is immediately made more worrying by copious evidence that a massacre has recently taken place. There are corpses all over the gaff and containment walls reduced to rubble, and the only survivor in the vicinity decides to stab himself to death.
This is the whole business that’s reminiscent of The Thing. Not a great deal is made of it, though; it’s mostly just an excuse to very slowly introduce a new variety of alien who can turn the humans against each other by manipulating their memories and emotions. This is supposed to really resonate dramatically speaking since nobody’s really getting on, with Trevante pushing for Aneesha and Clark to be released, making the soldiers hostile, and nobody quite understanding Mitsuki or her fascination with the body cam footage that reveals what happened to the soldiers (and, you know, the small matter that she can communicate with the aliens.)
This briefly comes to a head when the alien signal sends everyone homicidal, but it ends as quickly as it began when Mitsuki cuts the noise off. She was also unaffected by it, which we know is due to the device that Nikhil implanted in her against her will, but everyone else assumes it’s because she’s an alien. Go figure.
Speaking of Nikhil, he’s one of the few people who is genuinely thrilled that Aneesha is released, since she’s someone whom he genuinely considers to be intellectually comparable to him (in classic Nikhil fashion, he can’t believe that someone of her intelligence isn’t already working for him). Together, they brainstorm an idea for what is essentially an EMP – it’s much more complicatedly explained than that, but let’s be real here – that will shut the loose Hunter-Killers off from the main alien network. That’s the theory, anyway.
This plan is complicated by a few things. One of them is Carolann, who is reporting back to Verna and Infinitas, who rendezvous with their scouts who have been living inside the Dead Zone since the mothership went down (question: How did Infinitas have these kinds of resources in place so quickly? Nobody really seems to have addressed that.) Carolann nicks a radio and sprints outside with it at one point, blowing herself up with a landmine – one of many that litter the place. Discounting the remarkable luck that nobody set one off before then, it also represents a bit of an opportunity, since Clark, in his element, taking the lead again, discovers some papers that outline a path through the mines that will allow them to navigate the Dead Zone fairly safely.
But none of this really accounts for the emotion-mangling breed of alien, the one that Mitsuki is confronted with after bolting with the EMP. This is where Invasion Season 3, Episode 7 ends, finally on a note of excitement after dragging its feet for the entire runtime. We’re only a couple of episodes removed from the end now, so here’s to hoping things start picking up.
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