Line #23 Radio/WelcomeToOurVillagePleaseInvadeCarefully


1	Radio sitcom from Creator/TheBBC about an alien invasion in the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties. Geonin commander Uljabaan sets up a small-scale invasion to observe human beings ahead of a full invasion, placing the Buckinghamshire village of Cresdon Green under a force field with a PerceptionFilter to make the rest of the world forget its existence. So how do the residents of Cresdon Green respond? They [[StiffUpperLip keep calm and carry on]], naturally. [[FantasticallyIndifferent Nobody seems that bothered]] by the fact that they're cut off from the outside world, or by the prospect of Earth being taken over by aliens. Except for a small resistance movement...
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3	!!Tropes:
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5	* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Uljabaan and The Computer speak English, but the minions only speak their own alienese.
6	* AsYouKnow: Between Katrina and Richard, the background of the invasion is neatly summed up in the first scene of the pilot.
7	* ATankardOfMooseUrine: Ron the barkeep's "[[{{Pun}} Cabernet Sauvig-ron]]" wine[[note]]Ron heard that climate change was going to make southern England have the same temperature as the best French vineyard regions, and decided to get a jumpstart on the act by growing wine grapes in his garden[[/note]] in "Counterplot" is described by Richard as having a lethal effect on plant life, and Ron rebuts another character's assertion that the wine will cause internal bleeding by stating that [[NotHelpingYourCase it only exacerbates]] ''[[NotHelpingYourCase existing]]'' [[NotHelpingYourCase internal bleeding.]] The "wine" ends up being a false ChekhovsGun as a proffered solution to Uljabaan's plot in the episode.
8	* BackupTwin: When The Computer is destroyed by the LogicBomb described below, it is simply replaced with another one exactly the same. This Computer was already stated to have been one also, as a previous iteration was destroyed after having gone [[AiIsACrapshoot insane and murder-y]] was destroyed by Uljabaan.
9	* [[BigBrotherMentor Big Sister Mentor]]: Katrina seems to see herself as this to Lucy. She's not generally very good at it, though she does manage to coach Lucy through her A-Levels.
10	* ChewOutFakeOut: In "Counterplot", Katrina is alarmed when she finds out that Lucy was growing cannabis secretly in a garden allotment, and says that her father Richard, head of the Allotments Committee, would not be impressed by that. Richard immediately says he ''is'' impressed, only as England's climate and soil isn't ideal for growing a plant such as cannabis, so he was genuinely impressed that Lucy could pull it off at all.
11	* ComputerVirus: In "Ctrl-Alt-Del", we see one from The Computer's point of view.
12	* CunningLinguist: Lucy, possibly. She seems able to understand the minions' language and later passes an A-level in Spanish, suggesting HiddenDepths in this area.
13	* CuttingTheKnot: When Katrina and Lucy come up with a plan that involves breaking into the mansion Uljabaan has commandeered as his HQ, Lucy is sent to case the joint for possible ways in. She returns, and [[StatingTheSimpleSolution states the simple solution]]: break a window. Which is what they do.
14	* DeliciousDistraction: Uljabaan and his minions are extremely partial to SupremeChef Margaret's cakes. In "Counter Plot", she is able to distract the entire cohort of minions with a spread of cakes. These same cakes ultimately help foil Uljabaan's plot by becoming [[AppleOfDiscord cakes of discord]]. It also "works", though not in the way Katrina was hoping, in "Little Green Lights". She tries to get the invasion derailed by informing Uljabaan's superior that the "[[ImAHumanitarian human infant]]" he is eating is in reality essentially meat loaf wrapped in Parma ham, pissing him off enough to call the whole thing off. It backfires because the superior actually ''greatly prefers'' it to the stringy, gamy, fatty, and in one instance poisonous, genuine native infants he has eaten, and so has Uljabaan stay in Cresdon Green for another year to do more research, and having Lucy pack him a doggy bag.
15	* DisproportionateRetribution: Ron, the proprietor of the Rose and Crown pub, was told by Lucy's parents that if she is served any alcohol at the establishment, or potentially even sets foot within the pub, they'd burn it down. We learn in the pilot episode that this was no idle threat, as after badgering Ron to give her a cocktail, her parents do indeed burn the pub right down to its foundations.
16	* FauxAffablyEvil: Uljabaan, though there are occasional suggestions that he's really a PunchClockVillain who [[BecomingTheMask Became The Mask]] and is really AffablyEvil underneath.
17	* IdyllicEnglishVillage: Set in a village in Buckinghamshire.
18	* ImAHumanitarian: A Geonin tradition when commanding officers come to a conquered planet for the first time is to take a native infant, roast it and eat it at a massive banquet. Needless to say, Katrina and Margaret are not particularly keen on the idea. Neither is [[EvenEvilHasStandards Uljabaan]], and so he and Margaret concoct a fake baby for his superior to chow down on. Lucy is disgusted after having eaten one of the "baby's" fingers to find that the fingernail is celery, [[CrossesTheLineTwice only to learn that she may or may not have remembered that the "baby" was a fake]].
19	* ImStandingRightHere: In the opening scene, Katrina refers to the Geonins as malign, manipulative thugs without morals and her father tries to calm her down. This being radio, we don't realise that Uljabaan is in fact, sat right next to them.
20	* KidSidekick: Lucy (17) to Katrina (34).
21	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall:
22	** When Lucy uses The Computer to Skype the outside world, she finds nobody believes her story. The Computer says it would help but everyone would think it was just an actor putting on an alien computer voice.
23	** In another episode, Katrina and Lucy contemplate using one of the minions working on a secret construction project outside the force field to sneak a copy of the village newsletter to the outside world. They abandon the idea for various reasons, one of which is that even if they got the newsletter out there and read, the perception filter has made everyone forget about the village - so whoever picked it up and found their hidden message about the alien invasion would just think Cresdon Green was a fictional location made up for a sci-fi series.
24	* LogicBomb: The Computer can handle anything you throw at it... except [[UsefulNotes/CricketRules the Duckworth-Lewis Method]], which causes it to completely burn out.
25	* LoudOfWar: In "Taking Overs", Uljabaan finally stops an argument between Katrina and Margaret that is stealing the thunder from one of his public announcements by switching over from the village's PA system to the much, ''much'' more powerful PA system on his ship [[note]]the one used for menacing "surrender or be annihilated" ultimatums[[/note]]. When Richard shows up late and asks what he missed, Katrina says "[[DeadpanSnarker Only tinnitus...]]"
26	* TheResistance: Main characters Katrina and Lucy. The working title under which the show was originally announced was, yes, ''The Resistance''.
27	* RetCon: In the pilot, Katrina's dad Richard was the local vicar, but this was never mentioned again and it's suggested he has (or rather had) some kind of office job outside the village.
28	* SeriousBusiness: The residents of Cresdon Green may not object to being isolated from the outside world, or to the Geonin's plans to conquer Earth and enslave and/or kill all its people, but they ''do'' object to things like the aliens jumping the queue for an allotment, or (horror of horrors!) [[NotInMyBackYard building a wind turbine]].
29	** Alien invasion or not, cakes are Serious Business for Margaret - to the point where a disagreement about which cakes should be sold at the village fete descends into violence. Every year. Except for one, where to short-circuit the inevitable chaos, Margaret unilaterally took over all the baking duties just to have one year of peace from the ongoing "Parkin is a [[OopNorth Northern]] cake and so will not be sold here" donnybrook, that devolves into the force-feeding of the aforementioned pastry by one of the Village women to another.
30	** In the very first scene of the show, the village council will not allow the recent alien invasion to be discussed because it is not agenda, and must wait until "Any other business."
31	** Anything to do with Richard and Cricket in the episode "Taking Overs". He takes even the mere suggestion from his wife that they throw the game to be nice to Uljabaan as if she had just suggested human sacrifice, and at one point is shown to have SirSwearsALot tendencies (all covered through SoundEffectBleep) when even though he had an astounding at-bat, it wasn't good enough for him. He also tries to lie to Uljabaan about the regulation size of a cricket team just to mess with him.
32	** Margaret takes the Alexanders' pear tree as this, as she believed it was responsible for the town losing a "Best-Kept Town in England" competition due to the family not picking up the pears and letting them rot[[note]]in reality, the rest of the village was able to keep the inspectors off of that street, and instead blackballed Cresdon Green because Lucy dropped a dog turd on one of the inspector's heads as a prank[[/note]] and so concocted a plan with Lucy to [[BatmanGambit get Uljabaan to uproot the tree for them on the pretext that it was hiding something]].
33	** Also Margaret: Implying or outright stating she's wrong will have her calling down the wrath of the heavens upon you, as Uljabaan found out the hard way.
34	* TheStoner: Lucy's only ambitions in life seem to be getting high on as many licit and illicit substances as possible and becoming a helicopter pilot. She regularly succeeds at the first (getting drunk on a regular basis, even though she is banned from the village pub under threat of her parents burning it down if she is served, and also smoking marijuana that she secretly grew in an allotment she was tending for an elderly blind woman), but not so much at the second.
35	* TheSvengali: Katrina becomes one to Lucy in "Tempting Fete" as she progressively gets more micromanaging with Lucy's busking, to the point where she doesn't seem to be thinking about trying to propagandize the village against Ulijabaan so much as being able to ride on the coattails of whatever success an 18-year-old singing with an acoustic guitar to a captive audience in a small town cut off from the rest of the world and who's being paid in potato chips can garner. By the end of the episode, Kat has scheduled Lucy's performance at the village fete down to the microsecond, royally pissing her off, and causing her to create a song on the fly about Katrina called "Parasite."
36	* WunzaPlot: One's a teenager with no goals in life beyond getting intoxicated on a regular basis, one's a charity worker who's old enough to be the first one's mother (though she doesn't like people pointing it out). Together, they put up a comically ineffective resistance to their alien oppressors!

Context Radio / WelcomeToOurVillagePleaseInvadeCarefully