FIRST WAVE Begins Season Two on Sci Fi Channel

By: Dan Cziraky
Date: Saturday, January 08, 2000

On-the-run Cade Foster (Sebastian Spence) starts his second year battling the invading Gua aliens by facing their greatest warrior, Lucas (Sable). With her consciousness deposited into a human husk with 60% more alien DNA, Lucas is instructed to test every aspect of Foster's warrior potential before eliminating him. Lured to a remote island, Foster and his computer-hacker ally Crazy Eddie (Rob LaBelle) are stalked by the sexy huntress. A former pupil of human sympathizer Joshua (Roger Cross), Lucas also tests her feminine wiles on her past instructor, hoping to test her alien-enhanced senses in more than just battle.

The Sci-Fi Channel's FIRST WAVE moves from its Friday night spot (a.k.a. Sci-Fi Prime) to Sundays at 7 & 10 p.m. (Eastern Time) this season. Created by former X-FILES writer Chris Brancato and executive-produced by Francis Ford Coppola and Larry Sugar (DEAD MAN'S GUN, SO WEIRD), the series has been a hit-and-miss blend of THE FUGITIVE, X-FILES, and UFO. Accused of murdering his wife but actually framed by the Gua (an alien race from a dying planet hoping to invade Earth), Foster uses the prophecies of Nostradamus as his guide, as he is the long-dead prophet's 'twice-blessed man' who holds the key to our planet's salvation. Foster thwarts the Gua's invasion as best he can, and has gained an uneasy ally in Joshua, who believes humans aren't the useless inferiors his race's High Command have deemed us to be.

The second season premiere episode, 'Target 117,' starts promisingly, as Foster arrives on Cosgrove Island to meet with another on-the-run alien test subject framed for the murder of his family. A Nostradamus quatrain warns him of an upcoming battle, and how he can use a double-edged sword to his advantage. When Foster loses his cell phone connection with Crazy Eddie, he forges ahead. Eddie determines that the meeting is a trap and journeys to the island himself, forgeting to bring his bag of high-tech goodies. The Gua send Lucas to Earth, where the warrior's mind is implanted into a human husk that is a drop-dead gorgeous blonde bombshell. She struts around in a barely there costume for a few moments, making goo-goo eyes at Joshua, then straps on her black leather trenchcoat and stilletto heels. After killing the human that Foster came to meet, she skulks around the docks, playing cat-and-mouse games with Foster and Eddie. The tension soon melts away as the plot degenerates into a pat game of hide and seek, with very little actual battle going on. Joshua breaks protocol and warns Foster that the outcome of this 'experiment' will determine whether or not the Gua advance to the Second Wave of invasion.
Realizing that Lucas' enhanced senses are the double-edged sword in the prophecy, Foster and Eddie set a trap for the cocky warrior. If you saw LETHAL WEAPON 2, you already know how it ends. There's not much new here, and not a whole heck of a lot for Sable's fans to enjoy, either. In fact, her short-living Sci-Fi Channel promo spot, spoofing ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN ('I am sci-fi!') was a better showcase of her enormous ... uh, talents ... than this lackluster FIRST WAVE episode.