The BEST episodes of First Wave
Every episode of First Wave ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of First Wave!
In 1564 Nostradamus predicted the destruction of Earth in 3 terrifying waves. The First Wave is here! Cade Foster thought he had seen everything; then he learned of the secrets hidden within the quatrains of the ancient prophet Nostradamus, predictions of an alien invasion that would come in three waves and conquer the human race. The invaders would be known as the Gua, and their conquest was foretold.... Or was it? Cade, together with his allies Eddie, Joshua, Jordan, and the Resistance, wage an underground battle to protect Earth's future from the First Wave of the Gua invasion, and to seek out clues hidden in the ancient prophecies, clues that might mean the difference between survival and extinction for all humanity. Can disaster be averted? Can the future be rewritten? Can the Gua be stopped? For Cade Foster, surrender is not an option. He will either stop the Gua invasion or die trying.
#1 - Checkmate
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/10/2001
The Gua have struck hard. Mabus has entered the body of Jordan and taken over. The army of the Raven Nation has fallen. Its generals are dead, the survivors scattered. Even after everything we've worked for, I can't expect defeat. I choose to believe in the future. In spite of everything, we can still win this fight. I have to believe it. They're the words I posted right before we were attacked. The entire Airstream was taken down in a hail of bullets and I was suddenly on my way to a specially planned visitation with my one time partner and friend - Jordan Radcliffe. A woman we now call Mabus. I'd been hit in the attack on the trailer but a Gua Empiricist healed me. Couldn't figure it out, Mabus wanted me dead, so why were they fixing me up ... even I knew the truth -- I was on my way to hell. The answer came from the Guahead himself -- my journey had come full circle. He wanted to have the pleasure of breaking me. It was the conclusion of the same human will experiment that had sta
#2 - Melody
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 1/20/1999
Foster poses as a record executive to investigate a band whose music inspires violence. - - - Quatrain 30, Century 4: "Where iron chariots are forged / The sweet youth cries revolt over a bitter melody / The poisoned song taints mind and soul / Spread by air across the land' s tears washes away ties to Rome / Fear extracts vain sacrifice until the raging pyre of the deluge is quenched." Seemed like Nostradamus' "iron chariots" might've been a reference to Detroit, Michigan & the Motor City. A mob of teen-agers had made headlines when they assaulted two officers at an underground club. With both cops listed in critical condition, parents blamed a local band called Sonic War for inciting the violence. I knew if the aliens were involved, this was about a lot more than rock-n-roll. I posed as a record company executive on the lookout for the next big thing and approached Sonic War's manager, Preston Barry.
#3 - The Apostles
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/23/2000
Cade poses as a journalist to investigate a disappearance in a Wyoming town. - - - Quatrain 54, Century 7: ""Iron horses blaze a vengeful trail / The first of many to follow / Their method must be chartered / Or liberty will fall"". 19 million innocent humans killed on the first day of the Gua attack. That fact has rung in my ears and echoed in my heart everyday for the past year. It is a staggering concept. How far will I go to prevent it from happening? What price am I willing to pay? I faced my biggest challenge to date in Crestline, Wyoming. It was not a battle of strength, nor a battle of will. It was a battle of beliefs. But this time I fought other humans. I followed a lead about a town having trouble with some bikers. Seems this gang had been harassing citizens of Crestline by acting out vigilante justice. But for all the murders the Apostles committed, no one could produce any bodies. Imagine my surprise when they revealed themselves to be alien killers; they had read Eddie's
#4 - Prayer for the White Man
Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 4/9/2000
Foster poses as a journalist to investigate proposed casinos on native reserve land. - - - ""In the woods of Winchala / Amnis lights the flame of affliction / Elders set the course / To choose wrongly will mean woe"". This quatrain led me to the reservation of the Winchala, a small Native American tribe with a rich history. The landscape was calming, but something was definitely wrong. There was a lot of tension about the legalization of gambling on reservation lands. But why would the Gua infiltrate the Winchala reservation? And how could gambling fit into their plan? I arrived posing as a reporter for The Gaming Chronicles. I played a few hands at the black jack table and was able to spark up a conversation with a talkative dealer who filled me in on some of the details. Only one casino has already been built, but there was a proposal in the offing which would call for the construction of ninety more to be scattered across Winchala territories. The community's board of elders was onl
#5 - All About Eddie
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired 12/22/1999
The aliens pursue Eddie at his high-school reunion. - - - I ain't Foster. But you probably know that right off the bat. That's right, Crazy Eddie here. I talked to Cade about taking over the journal this week seeing as I was the alien target du jour. You heard it here first – the Gua were gunning for the Nambu-lator. And it all started with a reunion. They say that high school is the practice run for the marathon of life, if that's the case, then what started out with a blazing burst of speed ended in the limpid lameness of loserdom. The terrible event that closed out my school years has haunted me to this day, a failure so profound I cast off my closest friends like obsolete software and never looked back. So I had some issues associated with my teen years. That's why I left the warm security of my trailer for the cold harsh reality of Heisenberg High. To reconnect with the people who were once my friends … and seek answers to the enigma that is my life. Just when I was about to los
#6 - Beneath The Black Sky
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 1/24/2001
Joshua said it best - we needed to understand the extent of Mabus' fist strike and the clock was counting down to the Second Wave. Checked out a lead that didn't pan out. Searched the woods in the dark, but it was a trap -- the Gua came after us - a fleet of assassins targeting us with laser tags. We split up, lost Joshua in the dark. Eddie fell behind me and then there was a blinding flash of light. And suddenly, I wasn't in Kansas anymore - it was some kind of void, howling snarls echoed throughout the place. Walls of crystal, maybe ice. Could hear Eddie calling for my help in the distance and then suddenly there was ""another me."" That same ""other Cade"" who rescued me from the Gua as a child - the first time they messed with my head. The quatrain which lead us to that discovery said ""When twice three years and twice again, find secret skill in darkest hour. 'Tween bless'd and cursed, a third will come, or worlds consumed in battles fire."" This other Cade appeared as my ""adult self"" t
#7 - The Decision
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 6/30/1999
The Gua convene a tribunal to debate whether to launch the second wave. - - - I'm on the road right now, heading west to investigate an e-mail that may be a tip to some alien activity. Eddie's driving the Caddy, I was napping in the trailer but I couldn't sleep. Thought I'd peck out a little journal entry to pass the time. Been thinking about where this war has taken me, how it's changed my life, and how it's changed all of us. Thought I was crazy. Then wished I was. Aliens. The Gua. They killed my wife, Hannah. Framed me for her murder. I've taken a personal vow to hunt them, to make them pay. Nostradamus thinks that makes me the "twice bless'd man," humanity's savior to stop the first wave of alien infiltration bent on destroying us all. I guess I believe him, but it's a lot to ask someone to bear that responsibility. I try not to think about it. All I know is that I'm the only one who can expose the Gua, and I'm going to take them down.
#8 - The Channel
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/6/2000
A young woman communicates directly with the spirit of Nostradamus. - - - Quatrain 4, Century 9: ""She will rise from the dead / With words of fortune on her lips"". The local newspapers say paramedics revived a waitress in Cranston, Rhode Island, after six minutes with no heart beat. She woke up speaking words of fortune, only those words belonged to an ancient prophet. I know Chloe Wells is reciting the lost quatrains of Nostradamus. The aliens must know it too. I have to find her – before they do. Arrived at Chloe's house to find a media circus led by glitzy news hound Arthur Hewitt, and a crowd holding vigil for their newly appointed savior. Seems that one of the first quatrains Chloe spoke struck a cord with the people of Cranston – a prediction of their mayor's death. Checked out the scene and the cameras caught me – just for a second, but when you're a wanted man every second counts. Nobody wants to be on America's Top Fugitives. Eddie and I had hidden the Nostradamus book as an
#9 - Blue Agave
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/2/1998
Contacting his late wife's best friend for help, Cade discovers that she and other members of an exclusive club are the subjects of an alien experiment that uses a parasitic blue worm to read people's memories.
#10 - Joshua
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/4/1998
There's no quatrain for this journal entry. I guess Nostradamus didn't see every little mess I'd walk into. Too bad. I could've used the warning. I got spotted by a cop in Cascade County, Montana, while checking out a lead on possible alien activity. A deputy pegged me as a fugitive while I was eating my steak and eggs. I got away and made it to the woods, but the manhunt was on. A dozen sheriff's deputies, a couple bloodhounds, and a surveillance chopper breathing down my neck. I called Eddie on the cell phone. He told me to head west and he'd meet me. Eddie tipped me to tear up the underbrush to muck up the scent trail and confuse the dogs. It gave me enough time to make it to the river and evade the dogs. I thought I had shaken my pursuers. The leg chains thrown at my feet said different. I was caught. He had the uniform of a U.S. Marshall, but I knew otherwise. I recognized him as the alien hitman (or Acolyte) who took out Elton Beleye a little ways back.
#11 - Blind Witness
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 1/6/1999
Aliens conduct secret experiments in an abandoned hospital. - - - Quatrain 12, Century 5. "Where angels touch grace / One without sight sees the dark enemy / At the right hand of the twice-blessed man / The ally leads him to the summit." I'm fighting against an enemy nobody sees or wants to believe exists. I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure why I was doing this & waging a war that I seemed doomed to lose. I was thinking of giving up the fight. Nostradamus predicted I'd find an ally where angels touch grace. Eddie and I thought that might be a reference to Grace General Hospital in Los Angeles. I needed to find that ally. This desperate quest drove me to a desperate act & I faked insulin shock to get into the hospital to look around after hours. They put me in the 23-hour hold for observation. That night I stealthed my way through the empty corridors and picked up some O.R. scrubs to pose as a doctor.
#12 - Undesirables
Season 1 - Episode 16 - Aired 12/23/1998
"One man seeks a leap to the distant stars/ Through a rift on the Northwest Sea / A forbidden love finds a safe shore / And removes battle lines between foes." Eddie and I buried the Nostradamus book. Sealed it in a cooler, put it in a kevlar case, covered it with clay, and then dried the clay with a fire. That book has led us to all manner of Gua activity over these past few months & it's become invaluable to the crusade. But the aliens have targeted the book and seem intent on claiming it for their own. We're making sure the aliens are never gonna find it. And if Eddie or I ever get nabbed by the Gua, that book is our insurance policy. Consider it buried treasure. Eddie scanned all the quatrains into his database where they're encoded and secured. As we were doing all this, one quatrain caught my eye. Eddie called it a lucky guess, but it connected to theoretical physicist James Dutton, who lived on the "northwest sea" of Cape Charles, Washington.
#13 - Deluge
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 1/13/1999
Foster arrives in a town where it has been raining for two years. - - - Quatrain 64, Century 8. "The slayer flees to the shadow of Olympus / Where a mother' s tears wash away ties to Rome / Fear extracts vain sacrifice / Until the raging pyre of the deluge is quenched." The Olympus that Nostradamus foresaw was Olympia, Washington, where convicted mass murderer Glenn Harris had escaped from police custody three weeks earlier. I pegged Harris as the "slayer" from the quatrain, and figured "the shadow" of Olympia laid just to the east... in a small lumber town called Athlone. That's where I hoped a mass murderer would lead me to aliens. It rained incessantly in Athlone and I was soaked to the bone right away. I posed as a bounty hunter looking for Harris' reward. The sheriff denied knowing anything about the killer. When I told the sheriff I'd ask around town, he firmly explained that I wasn't welcome. The local bar wasn't much help either. Tough crowd with cold shoulders.
#14 - Requiem
Season 3 - Episode 17 - Aired 1/3/2001
Quatrain 26, Century 9: ""As the Apocalypse draws near the adherents are summoned. Down to the catacombs they flee, pursued by an enemy none can see."" We had to warn the Raven Nation. But they weren't about to believe anything they read online -- not something this important. Using information Jordan shared with only a trusted few I would send a top-level distress signal - it would trigger a failsafe plan. The Raven Nation would assemble. They'd be expecting war. Probably would've been easier news to deliver. Mabus was living inside Jordan, controlling her body and mind. There was no way of knowing what he planned to do. The Code 13 was sent. As part of Jordan's self-designed security measures the four top Generals of the RN didn't know each other. They didn't even know what the others looked like. The one thing they did know was the secret roster of militia in their zone. Four Generals with four separate cells, it was a brilliant way to make sure no one could cripple their ranks. But I
#15 - Breeding Ground
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/25/1998
Cade poses as a track coach to investigate reports of superhuman abilities in some of the students at a private school in New England.
#16 - Target 117
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/9/2000
Lucas is sent to Earth to test Cade Foster's warrior potential. - - - Quatrain 99, Century 1: ""Heed the call to the island of commerce / Cut be watchful of footsteps that lead unto battle / Look to the light to guide thee / The hacking blade has a double edge"" This quatrain had had me and Eddie baffled for some time until Eddie began receiving a series of e-mails at the Paranoid Times from a man named Harold Shanley who claimed to have escaped from an alien experiment. The poor guy sounded out of his mind; seems he became delusional enough to shoot his own kids. His descriptions took me back to my own nightmare. As much pain as I felt at losing Hannah, I'm sure his was 100 times greater. I knew I was the only one who could help him, and I also knew that any information he had could undoubtedly help me too. I had to find him before the Gua did. According to the origins of his sporadic e-mails, Shanley was making his way across the country, the most recent was from an Industrial Trade
#17 - Terminal City
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 1/31/2001
Final Omega Quatrain. Eddie called it the last chance. ""Into the void must go the Twice Bless'd Man. Seek the hammer, as the seeker has sought before. In the courage to end, find the beginning, or death and darkness befall mankind."" The hammer is the ultimate Gua weapon, able to move matter through a vortex in time and space. It could deliver an alien army to our doorstep in a heartbeat. Our only salvation was that the hammer had been lost in a vortex, beyond Mabus' grasp. Or so we thought. Joshua intercepted a Gua transport carrying a locator, a device meant to help the Gua locate the missing hammer. Our only hope was finding the weapon before Mabus did. Eddie and Joshua rigged a device to get me into the vortex; once inside, the locator would lock onto the energy of the hammer and guide me toward it. Downside: There was no way back. Only the hammer could bring me home. It was succeed or die. And if Mabus got there first, there wouldn't be much to come home to. Joshua asked me if I wa
#18 - Susperience
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/30/2000
Cade investigates a psychic research project in a seaside town. - - - Quatrain 23, Century 3: ""The two-sighted will meet death in sleep / Purged from the nightmare of a hidden enemy / Barricades protect spurious sleep / And the spectre is lanced with a common blade"". Found myself cruising along the coast to Prescott, Maine where a renowned group of psychics were burying one of their own. Rachel Cates had died mysteriously in her sleep. I usually think of hotlines and con artists whenever psychics are mentioned. But with all I'd seen in the past two years, it seemed possible the Gua had decided this was a group they couldn't afford to ignore. I'm no psychic, but I had a strong hunch there was an alien in my future. Posing as an investigator for Cates' insurance company I went to talk to Ellen, a clairvoyant, and part of the local universities illustrious paranormal studies department. Besides Ellen, the group also included a telekinetic and a man who could cast images that weren't the
#19 - The Aftertime
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 6/19/1999
A woman travels back in time to change history and save Cade from assassination. - - - Quatrain 81, Century 5: "Dusk will become dawn / And the man twice-bless'd will be resurrected / The follower will beckon him to the great war ahead' s tears washes away ties to Rome / Fear extracts vain sacrifice, until the raging pyre of the deluge is quenched." I had no idea what Nostradamus was talking about till we got a message on our Web site from someone claiming to be Joshua. He asked me to meet him in an abandoned lot in Cleveland, Ohio. Can't say I trusted him, but couldn't turn the meeting down either. I had to hear what Joshua had to say. He told me someone using the handle "Rover" had intercepted a Gua transmission and recorded it on disk. If this was another alien experiment I wasn't playing. I was already walking away when Joshua showed his real hand. It was a warning & the Gua would find the tape, and Rover would be killed.
#20 - Lost Souls
Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired 4/23/2000
Foster investigates an alien experiment that caused people to be trapped alive in underground tombs. - - - ""A maiden cut aloft from humanity / Locked in a coffin of stone / Her resurrection a clue for the man twice-blessed / Till the fate of her soul has been sealed"". Our boy Eddie was able to link this quatrain with a wildly bizarre story he picked up in the Paranormal News Group. While building a connector deep within the New York City subway system, a group of workers discovered the extraordinarily well-preserved body of a woman. She had apparently been entombed within a concrete wall that was built over 50 years before. And, believe it or not, that's not the weirdest part. The strangest aspect to the story is that the woman was found alive. Authorities were able to identity the woman as one Francesca Dutton, an accomplished travel writer who was reported missing way back in 1945. Eddie worked his usual magic and managed to work up a false identity for me. I would undertake my inv
#21 - Second Wave
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 12/30/1998
Quatrain 34, Century 2. "A vision of destruction appears near the throne / And the struggle to reign supreme begins / An approaching storm unchecked / To test the mettle of all men." The Paranoid Times Web site is set up to warn people of imminent danger we face from the alien race that has infiltrated this planet. People are starting to take notice. One e-mail came from a Sheldon Lamott, who said he had pictures of a UFO floating above Columbia, Maryland, just 20 miles outside Washington, DC. I was skeptical the photos were legit & in my experience, spaceships weren't the Gua's style. But this seemed to relate to a quatrain Eddie found, so I checked it out. Met Sheldon and his wife Pauline at their suburban home. I figured out what the tension was between Sheldon and his wife when Sheldon showed me his UFO pix in the basement darkroom. There were other photos & not of UFOs, but of Pauline's tryst with their neighbour, Boyd Hackett.
#22 - Deepthroat
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/16/2000
Cade works to expose a U.S. Senator who is thwarting government funded space exploration. - - - Quatrain 42, Century 5: ""When the sun bursts forth at night / The life of a starwatcher is lost / But the truth revealed in the heavens / Is carried to a high magistrate"". Eddie's friend Vincente Miranda, an astronomer in Ohio, was shot to death shortly after witnessing a meteor burst out of a wormhole just outside our atmosphere. He instantly understood the implications of what this could mean. While he explained his findings to Eddie over the phone, he put the critical photographs and charts in a package to be over-nighted to U.S. Senator Sterling Preston. Lucky for us it wasn't clearly labeled. The Gua who rubbed him out destroyed everything having to do with the discovery, but he didn't think to go through the outgoing mail. The package was sent, delivered and signed for. Of all the places I wanted to go hunt down evidence, the nation's capital was at the bottom of my list. Only the t
#23 - The Vessel
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 12/27/2000
Quatrain 41, Century 4. ""At the inception of the millennium / machines of the new age deliver devastation in war. / From a throne under 13 faceless warriors / the invader king wields power."" ""Inception OS"" is an operating system used by almost every computer in the country — ""the machines of the new age."" Max Stareman is president of the software empire who planned to release the program to a massive media and consumer blitz. If Inception software was the weapon that ""delivered devastation"" then we had to stop it. And first we had to get to Max Stareman. Eddie figured tapping into Stareman's home base computer qualified him as nuts and who was I to argue — Eddie'd always called himself ""crazy,"" my plan helped validate the name. Way I saw it, the world's top computer programmers worked for Stareman, and any one of them could've been Gua — even the billionaire himself. Wondered what the Gua wanted with an operating system anyway? Eddie figured the answer was easy: control. Most of the wo
#24 - Marker 262
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/11/1998
"Their doom was sealed at the gate / steel chariots vanished in still clear nigh / Glorious terrain left undefended / 'till the river changes course". What did this Nostradamus quatrain have to do with Ash Grove, Missouri, a small Midwestern town that billed itself as "Hot Rod Heaven?" Crazy Eddie heard the news of the mysterious disappearance of one Jason Coleman, drag-racer and car mechanic, who vanished as he crossed the finish line. Was the disappearance of Jason Coleman and his Corvette part of an alien experiment? With some bogus credentials from the Transportation Safety Board, I was gonna find out. Gentlemen, start your engines. Met the hot-rod gang that Jason ran with. Rodder Tommy Cranston drove against Jason the night he disappeared, said he figured Jason got scared and took off after the race. Darcy, Tommy's girl, directed me to Jason's house. She said she had a bad feeling about Jason's vanishing act.
#25 - Motel California
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/18/1998
Investigating a small California inn, Cade becomes one of the subjects of an alien experiment that makes the guests' dreams come alive so that they can no longer tell what is real and what is merely a beguiling illusion.