Epix War of the Worlds ended last night with and quite honestly I had high hopes for this show as I am a fan of H.G. Wells and I thought we would finally get an interesting adaptation of this sci-fi story, instead what we got was a dull mix of boring characters and robot dogs with zero explanation to the viewer as to what is really going on.

So these are the main characters.

The Blind Girl

Emily (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a blind girl that depends completely on her mother, the alien brain waves give her the gift of sight (it is never explained how this happens) and suddenly she decides her mother is annoying and rebels by sleeping with the first guy she sees with no emotional connection or relationship development whatsoever.

The Weird Scientist

Bill (Gabriel Byrne) is a brilliant neuroscientist who discovers that the aliens are planning something big and after saving his ex-wife (who he used to stalk by the way) by throwing her into an elevator, (yeap) his only obsession is to get back with her, never mind the billions of dead people, the killer robot dogs walking around hunting survivors or the fact that the entire world just came to a screeching halt, no this guy wants to play house with his ex-wife.

I don’t know, maybe use this character to develop the story a little bit and provide the audience with some useful information as to what is going on? nah, too much work I guess.

The Refugee

Kariem (Bayo Gbadamosi) is another wasted character, after surviving by accident he gets stabbed in the gut with a 5-inch blade, he is bleeding to death but then he just walks around like nothing happened a couple of days later, no medical care, no antibiotics.

Maybe they could have made this character the hero with a backstory who protects the rest of the group with his skills and give him some meaningful purpose. No, this guy just stands on the roof for hours, completely exposed staring at the buildings, he also sleeps with blind girl in the most awkward sex scene filmed since cameras were invented. Who directed this?

The Walking Scientist

Catherine (Léa Drucker) seems to be the most useful character of the whole show, she’s smart and intuitive and is puts the pieces together on how frequencies affect the aliens to be able to defeat them, yet the show runners have her walking back and forth from the observatory to the city and back to the observatory and then back into the city… I mean, wouldn’t you like the smartest person in your group to be completely safe inside a concrete building protected by soldiers while she figures out a solution?

The Killer Robot Dogs

These amazing killer robot dogs are so stealthy you can hear them coming from a mile away because their mechanical joints make so much noise they could wake up an entire neighborhood, they are agile and stealthy when the script needs them to be and slow and loud when the show’s budget is running low on funds, there is no explanation as to what they are, how they work or what they want, but they don’t hurt blind girl for some reason and it is never explained why. Good job robots!

The Logic

Bodies in this universe do not decompose, there are no maggots nor flies, no one locks or barricades doors, everyone forgets that just a few seconds ago there were murdering robot dogs chasing them and they just step outside and walk like they are shopping at the mall.

The killer robot dogs safely carry newborn babies miles away even when they have no physical way of doing so, no one shows despair or questions what is going on because their personal dramas are more important than aliens taking over the world I guess.

The Story

The entire first season could be summarized like this:

Meaningless CGI balls crash on earth and then the sky lights up and almost everyone’s dead, among the survivors there is this blind girl who can now see and there are robot dogs killing survivors, blind girl seems to have an unexplained connection to robot dogs and at the end she finds one of the aliens who looks like a human and they both have the same circular tattoo. THE END.

The entire first season could have been told in just two episodes if they didn’t spend SO MUCH TIME on “slow artistic shots” that add nothing to the story. The show builds up tension but then leaves you hanging because there is no sense of urgency or dread that these characters are in any real danger, they run and escape, this goes on for the entire season. The final scene (which is supposed to be a cliffhanger) has no meaning whatsoever since we are never told the meaning of the tattoo or why blind girl can pet the killer robot dogs. One season was enough and I am done with it.

Final Score: 2/5

One point for building up tension perfectly on the first 3 episodes and another point for not injecting any politics.

We are on lockdown, I just want good entertainment.