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 - 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
#4 - 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
#5 - 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
#6 - 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
#7 - 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
#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 - Red Flag
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/2/2000
Foster attempts to uncover an alien plot to infiltrate the military. - - - ""The town will not ring its cracked bell / For the hero has gone astray / The crimson banner lures the one and the many / With each victory so will victory undo"". Special Forces Colonel John Russell died suddenly of extreme internal temperatures – literally boiled to death. His first lieutenant, Alex Harkin, disappeared immediately after. Suspected of being a ""deep cover"" spy, Harkin was due to face inquiry before his hasty exit. Twice-decorated for heroism, Harkin was the winner of the Red Flag, an award given to the best of the best in the military. The crimson banner and the hero gone astray are both mentioned in the Nostradamus quatrain. I wanted to know how the Red Flag and the aliens were connected, so Eddie and I cooked up some triple-A credentials and I became Matin Sloane – super-soldier – one of five contenders for this year's competition. Off the bus, I met a military hard-ass named Major Birch, my
#10 - 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
#11 - The Purge
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 4/16/2000
An attempt on the life of the minister causes chaos at an assembly of alien dignitaries. - - - There is a potentially dangerous storm brewing deep within the ranks of the Gua forces. Though my concerns grow more dire each day, I, Joshua, must admit to feeling a certain degree of relief – to finally know that I am not alone in my conclusions, that others both here and at home are similarly doubting the validity of our mission here on Earth. Decades ago, during the earliest days of the infiltration, we were a unified force, certain that patience and careful planning were all that would be required to defeat the human race. I used to believe that. But now I find myself riddled with doubt. Now I know enough to question not only the tactics but the very objectives of our leadership. Yet even as I write here, the most powerful and respected of our leaders continue to maintain that Earth and its inhabitants are well within our control, utterly unprepared to defend themselves against a full-
#12 - 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
#13 - Ohio Players
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 6/25/2000
Cade Foster investigates the possibility of alien experiments on football players. - - - ""Here the good river runs north / Young fortunes are reversed in mock battle / Enslavement takes myriad focus / The key to them all is control"". The Ohio River runs north on the eastern border of the state. In the Iroquois language Ohio means ""good river."" Sounded like a good place to start looking for a Gua experiment. Eddie checked for anything unusual in the region and came up with what looked like anything but. The Fairvale Falcons – a high school football team with a winning streak that the pros would love to claim – 11 and 0. It was an amazing turn around for a team that's been in last place for nine years running. And it got me thinking. Could high school football be the mock battle Nostradamus was referring to? If so, the Fairvale Falcons have thrilled the state as they reversed their fortunes. As unlikely as it seemed, it fit. Had to check it out. Every dog may have its day, but I've lea
#14 - Night Falls
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/8/1999
The aliens try to trick Foster into revealing the location of a lost book of Nostradamus' quatrains. - - - ""Three rivers amidst iron wrought / Barren ground shall be sowed once more / The hunter and hunted are one/ When shadows descend on the twice-blessed man"". Followed up on an e-mail to this Web site which led me to the iron city of Pittsburgh searching for possible alien activity. I thought Nostradamus' mention of barren ground might have been the Soames medical facility, which had been closed for years – wrong move. Made a mistake this time, a big one. The cops were after me. Got caught at the facility, chased out. Down a fire escape, over a fence, they weren't messing around, took a bullet in the side. Figured the Gua had probably joined the hunt too. I was running out of time. Had to think fast. Taking a hostage was a desperate move, knew it would happen some day and dreaded it. Couldn't take any chances. No way I'd make it on foot. That's how I came to take Lena Hansen hostag
#15 - 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
#16 - Wednesday's Child
Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/22/2000
Quatrain 15, Century 5. ""The message precedes the messenger, a sudden link to darkness. Betwixt the glare and the chasm, the child is freed with shadows behind."" The Paranoid Times gets thousands of hits a week, all from the growing contingent of believers who know that aliens threaten our world. Most of these e-mails voice support, but when one tipped us to a Gua bomb set outside a United States Federal Office, we had to check it out. That e-mail saved hundreds of human lives, but who sent it? A disgruntled alien, a human with knowledge of Gua plans? The e-mail was traced to a residential address. With backup courtesy of Jordan's Raven Nation, I set out to see if our mysterious cyber-tipper was truly a friend ... or possibly a foe. Posing as Timothy Murray, a Compustar Internet Service employee I met Anne Berman, Aunt and guardian to Emily the intense little girl who lived at the house and the only one to ever use the computer. Made no headway, Anne said Emily was sick and she wasn'
#17 - 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
#18 - 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
#19 - 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
#20 - 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.
#21 - 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.
#22 - Subject 117
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/9/1998
"On the seventh dawn of the seventh day / A twice blessed man will roam the fields / Doomed to shadows with his brethren / Or savior to all who walk the ground." My name is Cade Foster (Kincaid Lawrence Foster). Picture the life you wish you had. I had it. A beautiful wife, a great career, money, friends, all of it. And then just as quickly, it was gone. I used to be a thief. I was considered by the cops to be the best break and entry man in Cook County in my day. They couldn't touch me. But I realized that was a fool's life when I met Hannah, so I did an about face and went legit, and left it all behind. Maybe I finally stumbled onto what I could never find behind all those broken safes: a real life, a reason for being... And then it all began to unravel. My bank accounts were drained overnight. I started having vivid and gruesome hallucinations that would hit me outta nowhere. I was fired from my job at a security firm when they found out about my colorful past on the other side of t
#23 - Elixir
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/7/1998
Quatrain 13. "The younger woman shall surmount the old before the lusty hearts of many men / The precious drops quench the thirst of time before the ugly truth shall take its toll." Crazy Eddie tied this quatrain into the bizarre events of May 16 in Kalkaska, Michigan. Customers say a beautiful young woman goes from 22 to 102 while doing the shimmy-shake at a local bar. She was later identified as Miss Margaret Grant, resident of a local retirement home in town. Decided to start there. Eddie said records indicated that this woman had a nephew in Anchorage, Alaska. It was time to say goodbye to Cade Foster, and hello to Ben Grant. The home's administrator, Sarah, was quick to write off the stories of Margaret's death to the local drunks in the bar. I made myself acquainted with Margaret's friends, Patricia and Leonard, to see if they had any insight into the recent death. They were less than forthcoming, even secretive, but I was able to squeeze Leonard for some information. He pointed
#24 - Speaking in Tongues
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/14/1998
Quatrain 11. Century 2. "The Starborn one will fly into the hearts of many." A reading from the alien testament: ""The Almighty Force looked down from above. They surveyed the galaxy, and what they found was Earth. And the Almighty Force said, "Behold, the children of men...they are impure. They are imperfect. They are weak. We must establish our Kingdom on Earth. The children of men will welcome us with arms open wide." So the Almighty Force cast one of their own in the image of man. So the divine shepherd did come down from the stars to lead the lambs to the Aftertime..." And he was called Elton Beleye. Word was out this rock star preacher claimed extra-terrestrial ancestry. Said he wanted to lead the hearts and minds of humanity towards an alien eternity. Sounded like hell on Earth to me. This is my reality. They are studying us. Testing us. Waiting to strike. But I'm not gonna clear my name without proof they're here, living among us. A blood test, a DNA sample...something.
#25 - Lungfish
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/21/1998
Quatrain 32, Century 9: "The fish that travels land and sea will be cast up on shore by a great wave / And pestilence from the sky will drive multitudes into the ocean." I seek them. I hunt them. I will stop them. Since my crusade began, I've destroyed an alien cloning lab, ruined their disinformation campaign to discredit alien existence, and taken down a cult that sought an alien salvation. But the trail was growing cold. For three weeks, Crazy Eddie had been studying Nostradamus quatrains to lead us to the aliens. The only lead he found was a newspaper clip about a farm in Indiana claiming to have a large mouth bass that breathed on land. It seemed to fit with the quatrain. Eddie thought I was wasting my time going after a fish, but I had him make up some snappy credentials for me as a tabloid reporter for the World Standard News anyway. I thought it was time to go fishing. I met Esther and her little brother Cody on their farm and inquired about the fish.