Invasion – Season 1 Episode 5 “Going Home” Recap & Review

Going Home

Episode 5 of Invasion Season 1 begins with Trev out in the desert. With a gun in hand, he drives back to base and begins looking around. The place is deserted and realizing he’s the only one there, grabs his knife, a gun and a picture of his wife. Heading out again, he makes his way to the comms tent to try and radio for back-up. In doing so though, Trev uncovers a document about an emergency evacuation and an unknown entity.

Meanwhile, Aneesha volunteers herself for a trip to the store. They need supplies but Luke is worried. However, Aneesha reassures him that she’ll be fine. Given she shows up alone, two soldiers arrive and begin questioning why she’s there. When they learn she’s a doctor, Aneesha is convinced to go with them to help with the piling casualties.

Bundled onto the back of this Essex County Ambulance, Aneesha is introduced to David Barton and sets up an alias for herself, under the name of Amanda.

When she shows up, Aneesa teams up with David to do surgery. Only, Aneesha notices something in the open wound of her victim, something that seems to be moving. It appears to be an alien parasite, as she pulls it out and saves this person’s life.

Meanwhile, our kids in England end up finding a whole stack of chocolates aboard an abandoned truck. While they all scoff their faces, Casper heads over to the front and manages to access thee radio. An emergency broadcast is being repeated but shrill ringing sends all the kids grabbing their ears in pain.

After ripping the radio out, Casper and Monty have a bit of a heart to heart before Jamila convinces them all to head home rather than sticking around the truck. However, half the kids decide to stay, given they have shelter and food.

Over in Japan, Mitsuki returns to JASA and confronts her superiors. She plays the audio recording before learning the truth. There are linguists operating within JASA, trying desperately to uncover what this transmission means. It’s also clear that it’s being kept quiet from the general public for the time being to avoid mass hysteria.

Listening to the transmission, Mitsuki realizes that this is language without sound – in other words, aliens. JASA are partnering with other allied space stations to try to figure this out but Mitsuki is not happy. She knows this means thee situation surrounding the Hoshi capsule will be overlooked in favour of this larger incident occurring worldwide.

Well, she’s gently encouraged to jump protocol, handed her superior’s badge and told not let anyone stop her from learning what’s really going on.

As the episode comes to a close, the President of the USA communicates with the world, telling them that the worldwide issues are connected. She tells them everyone watching that they’re not alone, declaring a state of martial law. As the broadcast begins glitching out, the episode comes to a close.

The Episode Review

Invasion returns with another slow-paced chapter, one that takes a good 30 minutes before things even pick up. Now, I’m all for a slow burn but here we don’t really learn anything we didn’t already know about these characters. I’d imagine as a binge-watch this may fare better but honestly, Invasion doesn’t do itself any favours with its drip-fed release of one episode a week.

These four different stories are clearly going to intersect soon and merge but right now they’re still running parallel. With a 30 minute chapter up next (Apple have been kind enough to send over the rest of the season for us ahead of time) then it seems like Invasion is gearing up for a much more dramatic episode, but we’ll have to wait and see on that front as, at the time of writing, I haven’t watched further.

Thankfully next week will pick things up a bit, especially with the world now aware of the alien threat.