With the success of Lost on ABC in 2004, the 2005 television season saw several similar shows hit the air waves.  CBS had Threshold, NBC broadcast Surface and even ABC tried to capture lightning is a bottle a second time with Invasion.  This latter series had a lot going for it.  It was preceded by Lost giving it a huge built-in audience, had an interesting premise, and a talented production team behind it.  Yet the show never found an audience.  Losing viewers every week, the program was put on hiatus twice during its one and only season and was cancelled after its final episode, which ends in a cliffhanger, was aired.  A small but devoted group of fans tried to get the show resurrected but to no avail.  The entire series of 22 episodes is now being released on DVD and the show seems to play much better in this format than on weekly TV.

In the aftermath of a hurricane, a small Florida town has more trouble than just rebuilding their homes and restoring the utilities.  Something odd has happened to the community.  A number of people disappeared during the storm only to turn up the next day after spending the night in the water, totally nude, and with no memories of what happened.  Park Ranger Russell Varon (Eddie Cibrian) notices that his ex-wife, Dr. Mariel Underlay (Kari Matchett) has changed after her night in the swamp, but her current husband, Sheriff Tom Underlay (William Fichtner) doesn't seem to think that there's anything wrong.  Then again, he went through a similar trauma years ago and seems to be the only one who knows what's happening to the town.  Varon's young daughter, Rose, saw some eerie lights land in the swamp the night of the hurricane, and there is some strange luminous creatures in the water that are definitely not friendly.  These events convince Varon's goofy brother-in-law Dave (Tyler Labine) that all these things are the result of a EBE, Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.  With more and more people start disappearing and then acting very odd when the return, the rational and pragmatic Ranger is starting to think there might be something to Dave's theory.

After watching this series, it's easy to see why it lost viewers every week: it starts off slow.  I mean really slow.  A three-toed sloth would want them to speed it up.  The plot unfolds at a glacial pace.  At the end of the first disc of four episodes, viewers haven't learned anything that wasn't evident at the end of the pilot.  The first half dozen installments seem to mainly deal with Russell and his bitchy ex-wife arguing over visitation rights.  Yes, something happened in the water that changed Mariel.  She now gets hypnotized looking at running water and loves to take baths.  The third or fourth time they show these events makes you want to yell "Yes!  We get it!  Tell us something we don't know!"  With a show named Invasion viewers are expecting something to happen in the first episodes like, oh, I don't know....maybe an ALIEN INVASION!  People aren't tuning in to a show called Invasion to see if the Sheriff's daughter is as much of a slut as she seems to be (she is) and how the mixing of two families is going along.  If I had been watching this show on a weekly basis I'm sure I wouldn't have continued watching after the second or third episode.

It's a good thing that I waited for the DVD set, because that would have been a mistake.  It does take the show much longer than it should to get going, but once it does, this turns out to be a pretty good program.  Around episode 9 things start to pick up and the mystery, that had been stuck in neutral for about the first third of the season, starts getting deeper and more interesting.  The pieces start fitting into place and what's going on becomes more clear, and more immediate.  It's almost like the show's creator's said "Okay, we'll give you a program that you'll enjoy, but you have to earn it.  You have to sit through the boring part first."

Even after the story picks up, the program isn't perfect.  It tends to veer off into soap opera territory a bit too much dealing with the personal friction between the main characters, but that is minimized to some extent.  The acting wasn't nearly as good as it could have been either.  William Fichtner only hits one note is his portrayal of a small town sheriff, and Kari Matchett is fairly unconvincing in her role as chief of staff at a hospital.  Eddie Cibrian does much better as Russell and Lisa Sheridan gave the best lead performance as Russell's new wife.  Tyler Labine only had a supporting role, but every time he was on the screen the show was entertaining.  He played the looney conspiracy buff with uncanny accuracy.

All 22 episodes of Invasion are presented in this set.  The shows are spread across six single sided DVDs, which come in a fold out case.  I'm not a big fan of these fold out books, it takes much too much room to unfold them, but this one is worse than most.  The discs come two to a page, with the top disc partially overlapping the lower one.  It's really a pain to take a disc out in order to access the one beneath.  If they had packaged these in double disc thinpak cases, the series would have taken up about the same amount of room, but it would have been much easier to access the shows.

This show comes with a stereo surround mix that is fits the show well but isn't outstanding.  A 5.1 Dolby Digital mix would have sounded better and allowed more use of the soundstage.  As it is, light background music and a few effects are the only things that come out of the rears.  The lower ends could have been punched up a little more too.  Aside from that, the audio was clear and the dialog easy to understand.  Audio defects such as distortion and hiss were absent.

Video:

The anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) image looks good.  There are many scenes film in the dark swamp and the details are clear in these scenes without being so bright that it loses the eerie atmosphere.  The lines are tight and the colors are nice.  They work with an earthy set of tones, and these are reproduced well.  Digitally the show also looks good, with compression artifacts being very minimal, though there is a fair amount of digital noise in large areas of one color.

Extras:

There are a fair amount of extras included in this set.  Many, but not all of the shows have deleted scenes, and the sixth disc has a gag reel that lasts for about ten minutes and was fairly amusing.  The most interesting item was Inside the Mind of Shaun Cassidy.  This 23-minute featurette has interviews with the series creator (yes, the teen heart-throb from years ago) and the cast talking about their vision for the show, how it was constructed, and what it has in common with the other shows that Cassidy has put on the air.

Final Thoughts:

This show was flawed by a slow start and a generally sedate pace.  Things really don't start to get interesting until the 8 or 9th episode, and that's a lot of time to devote to a show before it starts paying off.  If you're willing to put the time into though, you'll be rewarded.  Well, mostly.  The show was cancelled just when things were getting really interesting, so the program isn't wrapped up nicely, or even much at all.  The last episode does end in a cliffhanger that is a bit irritating.  The lack of a commentary track is also a bummer, I would have enjoyed hearing what some of the actors had to say about the show.  When all is said and done, I'm glad I watched this show.  If you don't mind the lack of a neatly wrapped up ending and are willing to invest several hours in the show before it starts to pay off, I think you'll be happy that you did.  For those people, this set is recommended.