watch again

Don't worry; no one understands what in the bloody hell Season 2 was actually about. I hear some people think that they might have missed something, but you actually didn't. What happened is that Paramount pulled the excuse that the show had piss poor ratings out of their ass to justify handing that show's reign over to Frank Mancuso Jr. Frankie never really watched Season 1 and based much of his perception of the first season only on a few episodes. His new version had nothing to do with the first because the man didn't even bother to explore the show he was going to be running. Thus, everything built up in the first season, including, but not limited to: backstory, character personalities, plot, and mythology were written over, making pretty much everything based in Season 2 was dredged up from Mancuso's own skull. One of his bright ideas was to lower the show to standard science fiction cliches by remaking it as a post-apocalyptic cyber-punk future, with the aliens cloning and using standard laser weapons. It's disconnection to the first season was one thing, but the killing off of the fan's favourite characters was the first fumble in a season full of weak plots (most of them were just watered-down versions of those in the first season), one-dimensional social commentary, humourless and witless writing, boring characters, and even un-engaging villians. Not to mention the poorest continuity treatment I have ever seen. The worst thing is that the dramatic shift in virtually everything between seasons onscreen was never explained, making it just for the sake of doing it.

Now you can see why fans would rather think that "The Second Invasion" was the result of a bunch of alien possessions at Paramount in order to sabatoge the show so that their existence, plots, and nature would stop being revealed to the public.

As for actually seeing the show, there are three choices:
1) The show has been known to appear on TV since it ended it's original syndicated run, even though the gore has been snipped out. However, I'm not aware of the show being aired anywhere on TV right now (trust me, if it were, I would drop everything to watch those episodes again and again!). I think the Sci-Fi Channel used to play it constantly, from what I have heard, but I know that they put a stop to that years ago.

2) A DVD release is a truly desired treat among fans, but despite shows both old and new, good and bad being released, War of the Worlds doesn't seem to be in the line of succession for this (apparently there's a lot of crap studios want to throw out on DVD). You can go to tvshowsondvd.com to vote for it and add a glimmer of hope to this dream. Even bare-bones would suffice - though loads of extras would put a massive smile on my face.

3) The last option is to check out eBay and buy either a VCD or VHS set. Given how some of these can sport poor audio and picture quality, it may not seem that worth it, but for now it seems like the only oppertunity most fans have. There's a Yahoo group that offers to trade U.S. TV shows. If you want to give it a chance, I can post the link, and maybe someone in the group has the entire series, and you can take them away for a lot cheaper. But as I tell all people interested in getting a hold of the show, please don't put a lot of value on the line for Season 2. Trust me, once the curiosity wears off, you'll realize that it wasn't worth a high price. You only get three watchable episode of the 20-episode season.

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Formless, faithless, and free.