When most people in the US think of the programing that the BBC produces, historical dramas and slightly odd comedies are usually what spring to mind.  The British also have a long tradition of making popular science fiction shows on extremely tight budgets. Dr. Who, Space 1999, Thunderbirds, and Blake's 7 are just a few of the SF shows that have come from the UK over the years.  In the late 1990's, the BBC realized that they'd missed the ball though.  Imported American SF shows like the X-Files were very popular, but they hadn't made any in years.  So, riding the wave of popularity, 1998 saw two new BBC mini-series released: the excellent vampire story Ultraviolet, and, in cooperation with the Sci-Fi Channel, the hard SF program Invasion: Earth.  The former has been available on DVD for a few years, but the latter has just been released.
 
This mini-series starts off with an homage to another British SF series, Quatermass (Quatermass and the Pit in particular.)  During the Blitz in WWII, something odd is discovered in London.  An alien spacecraft of some sort is shot down, with an occupant.

Fast forward to the present day.  An unidentified object is spotted over the North Sea traveling at an unbelievable speed.  The RAF is scrambled, and Lieutenant Chris Drake (Vincent Regan) discovers an alien craft and shoots it down, but at the cost of his plane and crew.  At the same time plucky scientist Dr. Amanda Tucker (Maggie O'Neill ) and her assistant Nick Shay (Paul Shay) are monitoring a strange transmissions that are aimed into deep space, when it suddenly stops.  Amanda and Nick traipse up to the Scottish Highlands and run into Lt. Drake who is searching for the craft that he shot down.  They realize that they are looking for the same thing and team up.

Their search eventually leads them to Lt. Charles Terrell (Anton Lesser), the pilot of the alien ship.  He was the person who investigated the wreck in 1945.

Eventually Terrell reveals his story.  Managing to communicate with the alien he found during WWII, he was taken to their world and has lived there ever since.  The peaceful Echos with whom Terrell lived aren't the only alien race though.  There are also the NDs, a violent evil race that can travel through dimension and are at war with the Echos.  Now the NDs have set their sights on Earth.  They want to enslave humanity and use Earth's population as a source of serotonin.

The NATO commander in the area, Major Gen. David Reece (Fred Ward,) is aware of how serious the situation is but is having trouble convincing his superiors.  It's up to him and the men in his command to protect the Earth, but how can you fight someone who can open up a worm-hole where ever they want and snatch people anytime they care to.

This show is BBC attempting to do "Serious SF" and it almost works, but not quite.  The show has a firm grounding in reality, which is good.  This feels a lot like how an alien invasion could happen.  The series starts out strong, with some interesting ideas and a good number of mysteries, but it didn't end up going anywhere. By the halfway point I was wondering when the action was going to start and the plot get moving.  It turns out that the answer is 'never.'

That's one of the problems with the show, there are very few action scenes.  Now I usually don't mind that in a movie, some of my favorite films have very little happening in them.  (Gerry for example.)  With this show however every time momentum started to build they'd cut to the horrid love subplot or let someone give a soliloquy on their thoughts about how to defeat the aliens.

There were some really interesting scenes.  Just about all of the shots that took place inside the alien 'ships' were eerie and dark.  The problem was they didn't follow it up.  There was a lot of action promised, a huge battle between the Echos and NDs for example, but that never happened.

Okay, so it's slow in places, the pacing stinks and there isn't much action.  It still had its moments, and during the first four episodes I was willing to forgive the show's failings because the premise was interesting and the realistic progression of events was a nice change of pace.  By the fifth episode though, I realized that nothing was really going to happen, but I still had enough interest to see how the show ended.

I won't give it away, but the ending was horrid.  That's because the show doesn't really end, there just isn't any more of it.  I'm sure the ending was sold as being edgy and unique, but I thought it was a major league cop-out.  If I invest 4 ½ hours of my time to a mini-series, I want an ending.  I don't care if the good guys or bad guys win, it doesn't have to be a typical Hollywood happy ending, but I'd like some closure.  This series doesn't have that, and the end of the final episode really leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The six 45-minute episodes that make up this mini-series are presented on a pair of thinpak DVD cases which are housed in a slipcase.

Audio:

The stereo soundtrack was good but not spectacular.  There was a fair amount of range, but more bass would have helped, especially in the alien ship scenes.  The dialog was easy to understand even with the accents.  There wasn't any distortion or other major audio defects.  There are not any subtitles.

Video:

This series is presented with the unusual aspect ratio of 1.4:1.  The discs are not anamorphically enhanced, and I could not find any reference to the original aspect ratio.  I don't really know what to make of that.

The image was fairly mediocre.  The picture really didn't jump out at you like it does on really nice discs.  There was a lot of mosquito noise throughout the production, and aliasing was present too.  The colors were a little muted but that wasn't a big problem.

Extras:

There are three text based extras on the second disc: some production notes (mainly a production time table) a list of major alien invasion films, and actor biographies.

Final Thoughts:

This mini-series had a lot of potential, but it just never lived up to it.  The premise was good and the way they tried to stay close to reality were big pluses in my book, but they just didn't know how to get the plot moving.  If they had cut out about two hours the show would have been much better.  As it is, the plot advances in jerks and fits but never delivers the excitement that it promises.  On top of that, the ending of the series is just awful.  Most people will probably think they'd wasted 4½ hours of their lives after seeing the way that it ends (or more appropriately the way it doesn't end) and they should probably avoid this, but SF fans might want to rent it.  The good aspects make it worth that.