Last time, I gave you the lowdown on NBC’s alien-themed show, FATHOM SURFACE. But as a scan of other Fall TV shows demonstrates, “we are not alone.” SURFACE is joined by CBS’s alien-themed THRESHOLD, and also ABC’s latest attempt to copy its success with LOST, the show we’ll be discussing here, the alien-themed INVASION. If aliens were something fashion designers could work with, they’d be the new black.

INVASION has a good pedigree—it’s the latest brainchild of Shaun Cassidy. Cassidy, who used to debunk mysteries alongside his brother Frank, has been responsible for some creepy TV shows of late, shows with varying degrees of success (COLD CASE, AMERICAN GOTHIC). If the pilot episode of INVASION is any indication, he might just be onto something here.

I’ll say this for the networks’ pilots—the production values on many of them are excellent. For every badly CGI’d pilot (ABC’s THE NIGHT STALKER), there are others that stack up against anything you’d see in theaters (only now these TV shows actually have less commercials). INVASION looked great. But how’d it play, especially when compared to SURFACE?

The show opens in the sky over Florida, with an airplane of hurricane-chasers entering the eye of a coming storm to measure its size. There, they see a huge burst of lights exit the ocean and shoot up into the sky. If this show was connected with SURFACE, it would've been that show's prequel, since that pilot episode featured hundreds of glowing lights falling from the sky into the ocean. But since it's not, we're not sure what's going on yet.

Back on the ground, we're introduced to the cast of characters, all of whom are preparing for the hurricane to hit. The thing that's notable about this show, and really, all of these Cassidy-produced shows, is the production value. I know networks tend to amp things up and spend a bit more on pilots to catch your attention, but even with that in mind, there's an awful lot of location shooting and stormy weather and other expensive and difficult-to-shoot moments in this first episode (a car door slamming fully backwards due to gale-force winds is an especially nice touch).

We meet Russell, a park ranger and divorced father of two (played by Eddie Cibrian, late of THIRD WATCH). He's re-married to a local reporter, Larkin (Lisa Sheridan), this part of Florida's "power couple." Larkin's preggers, but his other two kids, teenage son and younger daughter, are back at their rickity home in the middle of the 'glades. They're being babysat by Larkin's obnoxious and conspiracy-prone brother (THAT WAS THEN's Tyler Labine, who thankfully toned down his Jack Black tribute in the second half of the pilot).

During the storm, a few portentious things happen: Russell's daughter loses their cat in the heart of the storm, and chases after it. She happens to see hundreds of glowing orange lights shooting up from the water into the sky. Meanwhile, Russell's ex-wife, a surgeon who's married to the creepy Sherrif Tom (William Fichtner, the Peter Weller clone who played the creepy cop in GO, too), disappears in the swamps after an argument with Russell and their kids. She's found the next morning, after the storm, naked and laying out in the swamps (which gets the actress, Kari Matchett, my respect). She has no memory of the previous night's events... but her husband seems to know what happened. He knows more than he should, it seems, which is when it really hits us that this huge storm was possibly just a cover for... something.

Dave, Russell's brother-in-law, is constantly spouting off about strange goings-on at a deserted air force base, but Russell never listens to him until they find a body in the water. Well, a skeleton, anyway. This strange skeleton is what Dave calls an "EDE" -- an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. Russell is persuaded to head out to the swamps to take another look with Dave, and they find... something (I ain't out to spoil these pilots for you).

At the hospital the next day, when Russell is asking his ex about the storm and how she feels, her answers don't quite match up. And she has an oddly vacant air about her now. As if that's not enough to tell us that she's no longer quite right in the head, her husband Tom takes her to the swamps and adds to the "bodysnatcher" vibe by telling her that "the first days are the toughest, but she’ll be okay... baby steps."

The show doesn't really us anything to chew on beyond that, but I suppose that's enough. Typically, bodysnatcher shows never quite work out so well, and I certainly think I might get bored of the premise throughout an entire season. But that's not to say that this is what's going on here, or that this is all that's going on here. The show definitely deserves another look, even if I think I'd prefer it airing on a different night than LOST. After all, one can only take so many unexplained shows a night.

Next Time: Fox's PRISON BREAK