First Wave: This is how Sci-Fi should be done

"First Wave"

We were like you once. There’s a time for peace and inner-growth, but we became complacent; and when the invasion force landed, they took us down. One rebel led us to freedom. That’s when we took the name Gua; it means “power to overcome”. Over the centuries, science and industry achieved perfect focus. We created a military machine to ensure our freedom, permanently... We’re here because we’ll never be victims again.”

— Joshua Bridges, episode 109, “Joshua”

Back in the nineties, every network had its own "X-Files" clone. Two of these series stood out among their peers for their originality and their creep-factor. Francis Ford Coppola's "First Wave" starred Sebastian Spence of "Battlestar Galactica," as Cade Foster, a reformed thief of the run from alien invaders who, as part of a complex psychological experiment, framed him for the murder of his wife. Guided by prophecies from a lost book of Nostradamus and joined every week by conspiracy theorist hacker and cyber-journalist "Crazy Eddie" (Rob LaBelle), Cade roamed the country, hiding from cops and tracking down alien experiments each week with the ultimate goal of stopping the invasion..

"First Wave" might seem formulaic at first: each week, Foster finds himself foiling another plot by the aliens to figure out what makes humans tick and how best to enslave us. But the scope of the show was far from episodic. Foster's status as an outlaw distinguished his fight for justice from that of Fox Mulder, who worked primarily within the system to convince nonbelievers of an impending alien invasion. The show had many quirks which made it unique: the aliens did not use spaceships; instead, they sent their consciousness through wormholes in small, encoded metal spheres that could be downloaded into cloned "husks." The aliens, called the Gua, were never seen in their true form. They showed up in the form of cloned humanoid bodies that disintegrated violently upon death, turning into orange slime and then ash. Their culture was fascistic, ruled by a single leader, who divided the Gua into castes: Empiricist scientists, Osmosist spies, and Acolyte warriors. An Acolyte named Joshua (Roger Cross) with doubts about the invasion occasionally provided Foster with information and eventually joined him as an ally. In the third season, Traci Lords joined the cast as Jordan Radcliffe, leader of Raven Nation, a secret army dedicated to the defeat of the Gua.

Despite the similarities to "The X-Files" (an impending invasion by aliens in human form who spontaneously dissolve when killed), "First Wave" distinguished itself through marvelous scripting and continuity, and the outlaw status of its hero, Cade Foster. Foster became more and more obsessed with revenge against the aliens as the series progressed. Unfortunately, "First Wave" was cancelled after three seasons, without a resolution to the alien invasion plot. The final episode saw Foster, Eddie, Jordan and Joshua imprisoned in a mental asylum that very effectively bent the audience's concept of reality. In its three years, "First Wave" tackled time travel, mind control, psychic powers and ancient prophecy all within the context of the invasion. A chilling and dark series, "First Wave" presented a late-nineties world living in obliviousness of its impending doom. Cade Foster drifted, week after week, through dreary towns at the edge of nowhere where dark forces conspired against the human domination of this planet, aided by the apathy, greed and lust of our own darkest impulses. The aliens inhabited beautiful human husks and were enamored by their ability to manipulate us with sex, but as a collectivist species, on their own they lacked human willpower. The idea that they had once been a peaceful and spiritual people was elaborated by the character of Joshua, a reflective and reluctant conqueror who eventually turned against his own people to fight against the invasion.

I highly recommend this series to anyone who likes intelligent science fiction. Fans of "The X-Files" will no doubt find the intense, paranoia-driven and arc-based plot lines appealing. The show's use of allusion to other science fiction is effective, especially in an early episode where Cade infiltrates a group of people who have been hypnotized into recalling graphic alien abductions by a seductive Gua agent. The alien abduction experiences are false, a smokescreen for the psychological experiments that make this series truly creepy. As Eddie puts it, "Reptilians and Insectoids, typical tabloid aliens." The Gua are smart invaders. They know human culture, they know our media tropes, and they're willing to use them against us. "First Wave" is currently available on DVD.