Francis Ford Coppola Produced an X-Files Clone Where Aliens Got Addicted to Salt — and It Still Got 66 Episodes

With Ryan Coogler’s Hulu reboot of The X-Files having wrapped its pilot in Vancouver, it’s the perfect time to revisit the forgotten clone that tried to ride the original’s coattails.

By the mid-90s, every sci-fi show wanted to be The X-Files. The show had taken complete control of the zeitgeist: aliens, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal became embedded in pop culture at the turn of the millennium. Naturally, every network wanted its own X-Files, even if they didn’t fully understand what made the original show so special.

Even Canada tried their hand at The X-Files. The 1995 revival of The Outer Limits shot in Vancouver may be the show that most sci-fi fans remember from the time. However, you would have to be really, and I mean really, into ’90s sci-fi to even know about First Wave, a Canadian series, also shot in Vancouver, that premiered in 1998.

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What Is the First Wave TV Show About?

We can joke about First Wave’s lack of a cultural footprint all we want, but back then, this show was poised to become a multimedia juggernaut. Backed by none other than Francis Ford Coppola, First Wave had franchise ambitions, including a young-adult novel, First Wave: Subject 117. Late in the show’s run, producers commissioned a comic book tie-in, First Wave: Heart of a Killer (published by Andromeda Entertainment), no doubt betting on First Wave’s inevitable success. More on that success later.

The show focused on Cade Foster (played by Sebastian Spence), a former thief who gets framed for his wife’s murder. Who framed him, you might ask? Why aliens, of course! A species known as the “Gua” frames him after he remembers being one of 117 test subjects in their experiments to see whether humanity could fight back – and the show only gets wilder from there. Cade soon discovers that the prophecies of Nostradamus foretold an alien invasion arriving in three waves, and with the help of hacker and conspiracy theorist “Crazy” Eddie (Rob LaBelle), he sets out to stop it. Traci Lords joined the cast in season three.

Why Was First Wave Cancelled?

First Wave echoed shows from all across the sci-fi spectrum. While The X-Files and its alien/government conspiracies were the blueprint, you can see remnants of The Fugitive and a forgotten 1960s show called The Invaders. One 1999 review even compared it to UPN’s short-lived Nowhere Man, arguing that show was the better series. The whole “aliens live among us” angle was very popular in the ’90s, so it’s no surprise that First Wave mimicked the genre’s best. Creator Chris Brancato had even co-written an early version of the X-Files episode “Eve.”

The harsh truth about First Wave is that the show was essentially engineered to fail. The series ran for three seasons – and while that would be great for an indie show, First Wave wasn’t like most passion projects. The show was sold to the Sci-Fi Channel with a three-season guarantee; the network ultimately committed to 66 episodes of First Wave, regardless of the series’ success. A risky bet – and one that didn’t exactly pay off. The show wrapped in February 2001, cancelled once the order was filled due to disappointing ratings. (At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes has no Tomatometer score for First Wave, with only one critic review logged for Season 1.)

How the X-Files Clone Wave Sank First Wave

The late ’90s brought the wave of X-Files lookalikes to a boiling point. Suddenly, every sci-fi show dealt with conspiracies, aliens, shady government organizations… it was getting hard to tell which show was which. Even the “official” X-Files spin-offs, Millennium and The Lone Gunmen, went off the air.

X-Files saturation hurt First Wave the most. The show looked cheaper and never achieved the same narrative complexity as The X-Files. It also didn’t help that the show’s tone was all over the place. It wanted to be serious at times, and then it told you that the Gua got addicted to table salt.

First Wave was pushed too hard, too fast. Coppola and the other producers seemed convinced they had a hit on their hands. Instead of letting the show find its audience naturally, First Wave became the “industry plant” of the X-Files clones – and that’s the last thing you’d want to be in a fandom full of conspiracy nuts.

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First Wave isn’t currently showing on any major US subscription streaming service, but the series can be bought digitally on Google Play, and Season 1 received a DVD release in 2011.