Colony

Colony isn’t exactly dense with hope. But here in Season 2, it remains filled with great ideas that make it challenging television, in the best way.

Colony might not be particularly original, but it’s compelling nonetheless, delving into moral and ethical quandaries via complex and engaging characters.

The complexity is lacking. As a story of survival, though, Colony remains the sort of engrossing television that gets lost in the mix, due to all the other captivating television out there.

The setup leaves Holloway as a person torn between two bad choices--a spot in which the actor thrives--and the mystery of who now rules L.A. should be enough to keep you interested. [8/15 Jan 2016, p.99]

If it digs in to explore the conflicts inherent in collaboration, resistance and protection of family, this soapy saga might have legs.

It's a loaded situation solidly dramatized, but the storytelling often feels guarded in its telegraphed twists and pulled punches. [4-17 Jan 2015, p.15]

It wants to succeed as a bold, bracing new drama laden with rich mystery and moral turpitude; but as it stands, the show rarely displays any signs of creative intelligence--let alone dramatic life.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This series was instantly addictive for me, no wonder it won numerous awards in science fiction circles. Season 2 episode 1 should be mandatory teaching in intelligence, military and government circles. It is a masterclass on how to take over a civilization by accessing its internal databases, by securing key players through elimination or neutralization, by misleading potential enemies into self destruction before they even understand the threat they face. Above all just like every other fallen civilization, nothing is possible without internal collaborators, it is the enemy within that always opens the doors and enables the overwhelming victory of external enemies. The militarized impassable walls are the physical manifestation of divide and conquer. The sheer genius of the invasion is a precision decapitation of humanity’s will to fight and survive. Needless to say the special effects are world class. Alien, ship, creature and tech design are outstanding. I felt like I was immersed in a live action version of the venerable Half Life series from Valve. I would not be offended if some drone and walker designs were thus inspired. It's also interesting to see the dynamics and contrast of a well run versus abandoned ghetto, to see the contrast between the semblance of peace and security, and the total descent into rule of the strong and exploitation of the weak. Human nature is always a moment or catalyst away from showing its worst self. It’s the old interplay of ideologies and ideas, the struggle of dominating the public mind and perception. Like all occupations, both sides wrestle to control the narrative, guerilla tactics galore. To me the most telling lesson of this series is the epic scale of self defeat and betrayal that humanity is capable of. The elites in the series abandon humanity twice, once in the initial invasion and once again when opportunity for freedom presents itself. This is absolutely typical and looking at the historical wealth inequality of the world today, it is exactly how the elites will behave when a global catastrophe happens. However what hurts more is the global betrayal of foot soldiers who will of course casually claim they were following orders. This is the same mind control we have seen in **** Germany, Stalinist Russia, Cambodia, post soviet Serbia, Rwanda, modern Myanmar, present Uyghur region China, etc. The capacity for common men and women to ruthlessly slaughter their own, based on evil orders from higher up, remains a curse of humanity. In season 3 there is a twist regarding who is the real enemy, but Katie keeps the perspective clear and laser focused on the enemy within, which is always far worse than the enemy without. It is of course a real shame this amazing series was cancelled. I really hope it gets picked up again or rebooted on another network.

Season1 blaze in with dazzling scenes of intrigue, susepense and un-anwsered questions. Very paltible enemies and authoritarian rule along with some fairly good characters. 9 out of 10... Season2 derails into some side story that is lackluster and really only has 1-2 good epsiodes; rest of mostly stale drama. 5 out 10 Season3 is truly tragic; first 10 or epsiodes are just cringe inducing drama as the characters cry and whine. Just stale and shallow writing. Towards end of season some real story and plot points start building up again. Truly tragic as there was so much they could of done with this world but failed to take it really anywhere. 2 out of 10 Great base story and world created; the actual content and story is lackluster.

Perhaps it is unfair to opinionate on a series when you have only seen the pilot, but a pilot needs to be enticing and it wasn't for me: it was boring. I tried to figure out what it was that was boring, but it wasn't any particular thing, but rather several things combined. The first was the protagonist. He is a pretty guy living with his beautiful wife in a house with two pretty children. He is determined to find his third child who is lost in another part of town and was never heard from again. When trying to get to that other part of time the 'resistance' conveniently blows up the truck he is in and he, as sole survivor, gets captured by the police and then forcibly recruited into the police, because he is special. To find his third child he becomes an idiot and risks all, which, makes even less sense as the story progresses . For as we later learn that he is a special military FBI dude and in hiding as most got killed when the aliens took over. So not only does he willing endanger himself and his family but he has even more reasons not to do so. In fact, it makes no sense as it doesn't even get him nearer to his goal. But lucky for him he is wearing plot armor and the leader wants him to find the resistance and he doesn't get offed and nor is his family. Lucky guy! The leader is a henchman for the aliens, which is convenient for the story as you don't need to show them. He is played as an amicable guy who tries to do the convincing by talking, but in the mean time hinting at worse things if you were to go against his wishes. If this was a crime series set in Chicago he would be Al Capone. A cliche. At this point we have a pedestrian setup and nothing interesting has happened. I don't quite see the point of aliens as they otherwise have no presence in the pilot. They might as well be left out and nothing would have changed. And yes a pilot ought to at least hint at something. The series would be interesting if it mirrored current day events more and would cast the protagonist as a initially loyal cop who increasingly gets uncomfortable with the way things are going. Where do you stand as a policeman? You could make him an instructor with a military background, which would make him see that the police increasingly gets to be more and more like an occupation force as the training turned from policing to direct violence. (A good way would be to have police go through military training, which is that they have to run through a maze where cardboard figures popup and they have to shoot those figures. The subtle difference here is a shift: initially it might look the same: both have to establish that the pop up is an antagonist and not an innocent bystander, but were the police would aim to diffuse and arrest, the military aim to destroy.) Instead of splitting the city in parts you can start of with slowly building up go from more patrolling to curfews to lockdowns to searches to forcibly entries and the reactions: protests, resistance and revolution. A riot leads to a curfew, which leads to a demonstration, which leads to a crackdown, which leads to violent demonstrations. Slowly the city gets turned into a prison. The leader can be replaced by various politicians who have their own agendas. Perhaps there is a leader of sorts, a governor or a burgomeister(a mayor, but that name makes it more Germanic) You can still introduce the plot where he wants to find his son, but now he tries to do that initially via the official means and finding it gets him nowhere. He feels he is getting stonewalled. So you can then have him doing increasingly illegal things. Also it would be good to make him flawed. One way can he that he has a war injury(or ptsd) which is the reason he is an instructor. And perhaps he resents it. And perhaps a border officer or beat cop allows him to go to other parts, which is what he wants. So he fakes he is healthy, by say: using drugs or some other illegal means. The difference here is that in my vision he is average joe trying to do his best and getting drawn into situations willingly and unwillingly. Yes, he is different because he is a cop with a military background, but he is not so special as to get the attention of 'the leader'. In the pilot he is special: he is a good guy who has all the gifts: he is pretty, health, married with a pretty wife, he is skilled. So he gets the attention of the leader who says: hey you're so good that I want you to be part of my team, no matter what. Of course, I am bad at writing series. For the true aim of series is to create unending drama and fabricated conflicts that can last forever. I don't like drama.

The story line is interesting but meandering. The intended climax is just misplaced. The story line progresses without explaining the main details. The writing repeats itself creating a redundant plot. It's like the writers couldn't figure out which story line they liked better.. I'm gong to finish the show but right now I'm just fed up with the excessive story building.