TV Review: Colony (Season 2, Episode 1)
6th July 2017
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Colony is back for a new season, but the opening episode is not what I expected from a season premiere - especially after how things were left in last season’s finale.
No-one would expect any less from a show like this, which never seems to serve the expected or overdone. Instead of diving back into the action after the last episode left the Bowmans’ lives in pieces and family members torn apart from one another, the story jumps back to pre-occupation Los Angeles - back when their lives were normal and content.
‘Eleven. Thirteen’ is full of soft, understated moments that develop our perspectives of the core characters we thought we knew, and ropes the viewer in intimately close. Considering the world is unravelling and reshaping itself as the first stages of alien invasion develop, this feat is impressive and perfectly executed.
If Colony had been following the beaten path of dystopian-themed sci-fi TV shows, this episode would have been the series’ pilot episode. Instead, in the first season, the writers were smart enough to thrust the viewers into the thick of the occupation world, enabling us to experience the confusion, the fear, and the loss that the characters felt without a cold, linear, and frankly predictable transition from normal modern life to a present-day, alien-invaded world.
Having watched season one unfold in all its mysterious and nebulous glory, the viewers are invested in the Bowmans; we care for and are curious about what the characters’ lives looked like pre-arrival. The new perspective lent by ‘Eleven. Thirteen’ give the characters new depths and a new context, presenting a before and after picture of how the events that shape their present have transformed them into the conflicted antiheroes we know and love.

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