“Pilot” is episode one of season one of Colony.
The episode opens in a house in Los Angeles. A man is preparing eggs for two children, when he drops one on the floor. His reaction seems to be over the top for a broken egg. A woman, presumably his wife, enters. She looks at a photo on the fridge, one with one more child on it than there are in the room. The boy goes outside and picks some fruit from a tree. There is a coil of barbed wire on the fence. Which is not normal. The man, Will, tells his wife he’s going to work.
He works at a garage, and an armoured vehicle passes by outside; the soldiers in it are wearing an unfamiliar uniform with red helmets. An announcement over the radio mentions new transportation passes, and the men working ask each other what they are going to do when it’s over. They’re fitting some odd technology inside the vehicles. One man says his brother was sent to a factory. That’s apparently the worst thing, families being separated.
Will heads out somewhere in a van; it’s one of the few vehicles on the road. Most are on bicycles. He arrives somewhere, and a man says that he has his Santa Monica paperwork, and not to worry. He is the man, Spider’s, 38th. The two are put in a freezer and covered in ice. Will is apparently heading to Santa Monica to find his son. They were separated during the Arrival – and that definitely sounds like it’s capitalised.
The freezer is in a container on the back of a truck, which heads to a large wall. A very, very large wall, albeit one with some blast marks. Inside the wall, armed men in the odd uniforms have the LA drivers leave their vehicles, and Santa Monica drivers replace them. The truck is scanned, but Will and the Spider aren’t spotted. Their truck is heading out when the one behind it explodes, overturning theirs. Will climbs out of the vehicle, to be surrounded by armed men and some sort of drones.
Will’s wife, Katie, is heading somewhere on a bike. She pauses at a wall covered with photos of the missing. She arrives somewhere, where they apparently have insulin. In exchange, she has a bottle of spirits. However, the insulin is off. The woman Katie was trading with refuses to return the booze, so Katie draws a gun. Which worries everyone there; apparently if the drones spot a person with a gun, they will kill everyone.
Will is in a detainment facility of some sort. Katie tells a woman, Madeline, that the insulin didn’t pan out. It seems it’s hard to get now. When he is late home, Katie heads out again, close to curfew. She heads to see Carlos, from where Will works, who says that Will headed out on a delivery. Then sirens sound and drones come out; Katie has to hide under an armoured vehicle to escape one.
The next day, she heads to see someone, Broussard. She tells him that Will is missing. He says that guys like him and Will knew they had to go to ground after the Arrival, but there was always a chance that, one day, their resumes would catch up with them. Broussard suggests that Katie check the hospital and he will make some calls.
At the hospital, Katie finds out about the explosion – supposedly a gas leak but someone else says it was the Resistance. Whilst she’s there, and the staff are distracted, Katie steals some insulin. Will isn’t there. Outside, she calls Broussard, asking about a party and if someone was on the guest list. No, he wasn’t invited, but he went anyway. He had a better time than most, but was picked up by someone else. This would appear to be code about the bombing that resulted in Will being caught.
In the detainment facility, someone is looking for Will Bowman. Will has been going by the name Sullivan, but it seems that they know who he is. As with all occupations, and this is definitely an occupation, some live far, far better than others. Alan Snyder, the proxy governor, knows that Will is a former Army Ranger and FBI agent specialising in hunting fugitives. He has a proposition; find the leader of the insurgency, or Will’s family will be sent to the factory.
Lots of unanswered questions so far. It appears that, at some point, aliens invaded. How much of the world they took control of isn’t said. Nor is what they are after, although they are after something. They have superior technology and collaborators – the red-hatted soldiers are their enforcement arm. There is a Resistance, but Will isn’t a member of it. Will is in a bad position; help the collaborators or see his family sent somewhere that is apparently not a good place to be.