Invasion
(9/2005 - present)



Airs: Wednesdays 10:00pm (ABC)

DVD releases:

The Complete 1st Season (8/22/2006) [Buy It]

Premise:

For centuries man has searched the skies for signs of intelligent life… but to no avail.

What if the explanation lay in the fact that aliens were already here... already among us? And what if all of the natural disasters we have been experiencing of late were smokescreens designed to mask something far more ominous?

When yet another devastating hurricane threatens Florida, temporarily cutting off a small town at the edge of the Everglades, U.S. Park Ranger Russell Varon takes heroic measures to keep both the town's citizens and his family safe. In the middle of the violent storm, his young daughter is the only one to see small lights floating towards the water, seemingly unaffected by the vicious winds. At the time he thinks nothing of her claim, but begins to suspect that something may indeed be amiss when his missing ex-wife is found naked, with no memory of what happened during the storm.

As the tiny town struggles to recover while his nemesis, the Sheriff, quarantines the entire area, Varon begins to investigate the strange goings on, unwittingly beginning a fight for the survival of the human race.

Veteran Writer/Producer Shaun Cassidy (American Gothic, The Agency), and celebrated Director Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing, Sports Night, Tracey Takes On) bring you the suspenseful tale of a blended family that finds itself at the center of a conspiracy designed to mask an alien takeover that is happening one neighbor at a time. (From the Official ABC Press Release).

Official Website: Invasion

News: (05/15/06) - According to Variety, ABC has canceled Invasion. There remains a slim chance that it will be picked up by the CW network.

(05/12/06) - According to The Hollywood Reporter, if Invasion isn't on ABC's fall schedule, to be announced next week, then it may move to the new CW network.

(04/10/06) - Tyler Labine (Dave) talked to SCI FI Wire about his alien-invasion conspiracy theorist character and promised that many questions will be answered. "There's some different sides of Dave coming out here," Labine said. "Let me just say this: I can only be pushed so far. And I think I finally snap. It's in a very positive way, but I finally take some initiative and grow a bit stronger of a backbone. Let me just say some familial things push me to the edge."

"I have a lot of things coming up with Deputy Sirk, the one-armed deputy, and he's very strongly involved in my vindication."

The series will have "the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers," Labine said. "We are steamrolling towards the pinnacle of the show. The episodes we've shot have been so unbelievably well planned throughout the whole season. There's stuff coming up that I didn't even remember that we shot. And it's being tied in so cleverly. ... It was like things that you felt were insignificant or out of place early on, they weren't. They're being tied in all over the place, and we are shooting the finale right now. It's got a really, really huge cliffhanger shocker at the end."

Labine confirmed that the season finale will deal with another hurricane heading toward Homestead. There is no official word yet from ABC on a second season. ABC will have an official announcement in mid-May.

(10/21/05) - According to Variety, ABC has ordered up a full season of Invasion, giving the green light to another nine episodes. Invasion has been turning in solid numbers in its timeslot opposite CSI: NY and Law & Order. Unfortunately, Invasion is losing about half of its lead-in from Lost, but such rating dropoffs for shows behind megahit shows are not uncommon.

(09/23/05) - Invasion followed Lost with a 6.8 rating or 16.43 million viewers. That rating is the best series score in the hour for ABC in the five years it has aired dramas there.

Shaun Cassidy, creator and executive producer, told SCI FI Wire that the show's mysteries are really in its people. "I really view our show, at the core, as a family show ... and a blended-family show," Cassidy said. "The family trying to recover from divorce and remarriage is allegorical to the community trying to recover from the hurricane, and ultimately in the big picture maybe there's a species trying to recover. And if that's human or alien, that remains to be seen."

"The element of the invasion, ... the title harkens back to sci-fi movies of the '50s," Cassidy said. "But it really is also representative of the invasion of my household. ... Who is this new step-parent? Who is this baby that's coming into my body? You know, some of the scariest genre films again are the most grounded. Rosemary's Baby had a core fear that almost every parent can relate to. 'Is my baby all right?'"

"This isn't [Invasion of the] Body Snatchers. And a lot of people expect that, first because of the title, but also because of the genre. People are so educated because of pop culture. And in these kind of shows, 'Oh, I know an alien planet, and people have been taken, and blah, blah, blah, blah.' Well, maybe. Maybe not. And if it's maybe not, then some people are going to have [to] throw out their expectations and actually go along for the ride."

(07/29/05) - Creator Shaun Cassidy spoke to SCI FI Wire at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, California about Invasion. "I like dealing in sort of a heightened reality," Cassidy said. "It's fun. I like it to be grounded. I like it to have plausible deniability, and that's what I strive for. I don't want people to go, 'Oh, no, that couldn't happen.' There might be a moment or two where they go, 'I don't quite buy that,' but if you can actually support it and explain it, in time people might come around if you give them enough truth."

He was asked if the success of Lost helped him get the show on the air. "Studio men are salesmen, and they want to sell what they can sell," he said. "If the cop show is the order of the day, they'll go to who's written the cop shows. I've worked in this kind of stuff before, and I like it. Charles Dickens is my favorite writer, and he did serialized work. He'd send a little installment to the paper or to the magazine once a month and people would hang in because they like the characters. I get invested with characters."

Cassidy was also asked about the challenges of balancing serialized stories with more episodic ones to give the audience a sense of satisfaction at the end of each episode. "It's the biggest challenge, because you never know how much to give and how much to withhold," he said. "And we go through the script. Sometimes we throw everything in the script and we pare away, pare away. And again, you have to give room for the actors and the characters to have the moments. You can't just be doing plot things, following plot points. And the breathing room scenes can sometimes be the most interesting, especially if you have interesting characters and good actors, and we do."

(05/20/05) - ABC has ordered 13 episodes for fall 2005. They will air at 10:00pm after the hit show Lost.

Cast:

Eddie Cibrian as Russell Poole
Alexis Dziena as Kira Underlay
William Fichtner as Sheriff Tom Underlay
Ariel Gade as Rose Poole
Aisha Hinds as Mona Gomez
Tyler Labine as Dave Groves
Evan Peters as Jesse
Lisa Sheridan as Larkin Groves


Crew:

Shaun Cassidy - Creator, Executive Producer
Thomas Schlamme - Executive Producer


Episode List

Episode #Prod #Original
Air Date		 Episode Title
 
 
Season One
1. 1-121-Sep-2005 Pilot
2. 1-210128-Sep-2005 Lights Out
3. 1-310205-Oct-2005 Watershed
4. 1-410312-Oct-2005 Alpha Male
5. 1-510419-Oct-2005 Unnatural Selection
6. 1-610526-Oct-2005 The Hunt
7. 1-702-Nov-2005 Fish Story
8. 1-809-Nov-2005 The Cradle
9. 1-916-Nov-2005 The Dredge
10. 1-1030-Nov-2005 Origin of Species
11. 1-1111-Jan-2006 Us or Them
12. 1-1218-Jan-2006 Power
13. 1-1325-Jan-2006 Redemption
14. 1-1408-Feb-2006 All God's Creatures
15. 1-1515-Feb-2006 The Nest
16. 1-1608-Mar-2006 The Fittest
17. 1-1715-Mar-2006 The Key
18. 1-1819-Apr-2006 Re-Evolution
19. 1-1926-Apr-2006 The Son Also Rises
20. 1-2003-May-2006 Run and Gun
21. 1-2110-May-2006 Round Up
22. 1-2217-May-2006 The Last Wave Goodbye





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