Colony (TV Series Review) or "The cruel irony of viewing figures being used as a measure of a show's success"

 

I am, of course, fashionably late to the "Colony" party but before I launch into any deep analysis of this show, it's fair to warn you that there WILL be spoilers ahead. So pause, get a cup of tea, and read on if you don't mind learning about a seriously tragic televisual event.

Not the show itself, nosirree, "Colony" came along when we'd just finished punishing ourselves by rewatching "Lost" (which was also produced by Carlton Cuse) and wanted something else to fill in the gap. A friend (who I really need to catch up with and give a really hard time to for recommending this) had bigged up Colony, it had my wife's favourite piece of eye candy from Lost in it (Josh Holloway, who also sat in the Executive Producer's seat for this show) and it had all sorts of sci-fi / mystery leanings like Lost did, so looked good to go. 

For 3 all too brief seasons, Colony looked like it had all the right elements to draw us in. It spent most of the first season alluding to what had happened to Earth after an alien invasion. Humans were rounded up into various colonies around the planet, walled in and watched over by aliens and their human collaborators. The first season developed the storylines around a resistance movement, let by the enigmatic Broussard, with the lead character Will Bowman's wife Katie also playing her part to subvert the effective herding of the human race as unwilling slaves to an alien master plan. 

Will begins the series as a detective, soon drawn into the resistance movement, setting up an interesting clash of loyalties between him and his wife. They have two kids at home (one younger, and being brainwashed into a cult celebrating a pseudo-religious event called "The Greatest Day", one older who surreptitiously sneaks out to aid the resistance on his own terms) and one missing, separated from the Bowmans during the initial invasion. 

As the first season progresses, we begin to see Will's character change allegiance as he realises that there's more to the alien master plan than first thought, and on a whim entire swathes of the population are eliminated. We also begin to learn that Will himself has a secret, a reason why he somehow manages to escape certain death at the hands of the alien peacekeeping forces and their lethal drones on more than one occasion. 

As Season 2 begins, there's a mixture of story developments that send "Colony" off along several story arcs simultaneously, further developing Alan Snyder's character (who you're never sure you can trust from one episode to the next, utterly brilliant acting from Peter Jacobs as Snyder) and his whole "Is he protecting us / complicit in killing us" vibe. 

Wait, you're going to do WHAT to me at the end of the show?

Half the time my wife and I ended up shouting at the screen as Katie Bowman seemingly puts her entire family and husband in danger again and again, sees her sister shot off to the mysterious "Factory" that the aliens have established on the moon, developing some sort of super weapon. As season 3 (the tragic final season, more on that in a moment) begins, we find out that the aliens themselves are under attack from a more powerful extraterrestrial force, Earth is where the battle will happen, and humanity is the disposable resource being placed in the way. 

As you'd expect from the producer of Lost (and half of the writers too), this show has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing, and though it took a long time to actually get going and become compelling viewing (most of the way through Season 1 in fact. But through seasons 2 and 3, we got totally hooked which is why the bit I'm about to tell you is all the more annoying...Again as I said before, spoilers ahead. 

"Colony" was pulled, cruelly just as the season finale for Season 3 aired. The network cited falling viewing figures, and Carlton Cuse's ongoing commitment to the Jack Ryan show for Amazon also began to get in the way. In 2018 the show finished on a cliffhanger that saw the family gearing up for the incoming alien onslaught, Will Bowman being shot into space as one of the Outliers (a selected bunch of humans singled out by the aliens for development as 'super soldiers' to help them thwart the OTHER incoming alien menace), and Snyder sitting pretty as the new Proctor in charge of 'model' Colony Seattle. 

For the show to end in such an unfinished and jarring way was seriously one of the biggest injustices in modern television history. In interviews both with Carlton Cuse and Josh Holloway, it's clear they both saw it as unfinished business - and three years on from the show's finale airing on US TV, it's still being discussed and still being petitioned for some sort of a revival via one of the popular streaming services. All those involved have moved on to other projects of course (Holloway himself is rocking a seriously horrible mullet in Yellowstone opposite Kevin Costner at the moment). The show was written and planned to run for another two seasons with a proper resolution / ending, but it never came to pass. Damn,

It sums up modern TV perfectly. Some shows outstay their welcome (I don't think anyone could deny that "Lost" ended poorly after so many promising elements in the first few seasons), some are cruelly cut down in their prime. I guess the moral of the story is be careful what you fall in love with, particularly if you're late to it and it's already been and gone in the fleeting blink of an eye. 

Dammit Colony, why did you have to end that way!