The Lord of the Flies-style segments about Casper and his schoolmates, along with Trevante’s desert wanderings, come closer to survival dramas than sci-fi. Much of the storytelling feels like deception and time-filler as well. There is an additional plot in the first episode featuring Sam Neill as a sheriff in small-town Oklahoma, although his billing as one of the show’s major stars is a frustrating misdirection. Mitsuki is the first character who gets to utter the word “aliens”, although it takes nearly five hours of running time for the show to get there. Meanwhile, in the only storyline directly connected to outer space, Japanese space agency communications officer Mitsuki Yamato (Shiori Kutsuna) attempts to figure out what caused the destruction of a Japanese space shuttle on a mission to the International Space Station.
Shy student Casper Morrow (Billy Barratt), who experiences seizures, may have a mental connection to the alien presence, much like Luke in the US, although the nature of that connection remains frustratingly unclear. Of course, as soon as the soldiers glimpse the mysterious vessel, they start shooting at it, so it is hard to feel bad for Trevante’s situation as he barrels ahead, rifle first, into a foreign country.Ī group of London schoolchildren take a trip to the countryside, where their bus is struck by more falling debris and tumbles into a ravine. In Afghanistan, soldier Trevante Cole (Shamier Anderson) is cut off from the rest of the US forces after a desert encounter with what may be an alien craft.