Playing With / Aliens in Cardiff

Basic Trope: Extraordinary/supernatural things happen in a real but non-major city.

• Straight:
  • The world is endangered by a malicious coven of witches in Cusco, Peru.
  • The front lines of a shadow war to stop an Alien Invasion are being set in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
• Exaggerated: The fate of the universe is in the hands of the witches of a tiny town in Djibouti that we only know exists because Google Earth says so.
• Downplayed:
  • The coven only threatens Cusco, they're not that powerful or ambitious.
  • The danger comes from a medium-sized city, like Vienna, Austria.
  • The danger is not on New York City but on the outer reaches of Queens, which is still technically New York but far enough away that the coven doesn't needs to worry with attracting the immediate attention of any witch-hunters (who focus only on Manhattan, in any case).
  • The witch coven schemes to attack Chicago, Houston, Miami, Seattle, Columbus or Vancouver, Canada, which are some of the largest cities around and very important but statistically less seen in media (well, Vancouver is seen a lot, actually, just not as Vancouver).
  • The oddities occur in a not big, but also well-known location, such as Orlando, Florida.
• Justified:
  • Cusco isn't important enough to attract the attention they're trying to avoid.
  • Cusco itself is a Town with a Dark Secret.
  • The danger is from an Eldritch Abomination that outdates the existence of the human race. There just happens to be a town on top of it now.
  • There's something very important for the invaders buried underneath Cusco. No one else noticed it prior to their arrival, but there it is!
  • The aliens don't have any interest in a particular town or city, they just happened to land in Allentown.
  • Because of Blue-and-Orange Morality, there is something in or very near to Cusco that is important to the Monster of the Week but that it wouldn't get if it went to Washington D.C. (like Native American reservations or lots of sheep).
  • A historical event which is relevant to the plot had occurred in this town.
  • The aliens have unusual physiologies that demand them to land in a place that accommodates them, not mankind (water-breathers in the ocean or a location with big lakes/rivers, diamond-eaters in a location with lots of natural or artificially-made diamonds, radiation-eaters near nuclear reactors or nuclear waste disposal dumps, etc.)
  • Cusco provides a better parking spot for their space ship than their actual destination.
• Inverted:
  • Witches are causing trouble everywhere except Cusco, Peru. Why not there? Who knows?
  • The only safe spots on Earth are the "metro" cities (because of high pollution, too many witnesses, disrupted leylines because of road construction, who knows really?).
• Subverted: It soon becomes clear that the weird stuff going on is happening everywhere, and there's nothing special about where it was noticed first...
• Double Subverted: ...except it turns out Cusco was Where It All Began.
• Parodied:
  • The heroes' investigation reveals that every weird event of the past thirty years - alien invasions, monster attacks, Bigfoot sightings, you name it - had some connection to Cusco.
  • The "Cardiff" of the story is a tourist trap like the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (not the one in the World - that one's in Kansas), with the consequent Running Gag of characters being divided between hating it and liking it, overly-driven and potentially swindling tour guides and the temptation of souvenir purchasing.
  • Even the aliens wonder what the hell they're doing here.
• Zig Zagged: There are mysterious goings on all over the world; some in major cities, some in small towns, some in the middle of the ocean.
  • A Long Runner starts in a city that was of little significance before it rises to be a major city.
• Averted:
  • Nothing out of the ordinary happens outside of London, Shanghai or Hollywood California
  • Big Applesauce and Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe
• Enforced:
  • "Hey guys, the guys at HQ say they want the show to happen in the CEO's hometown." "But where the f**k is 'Cusco'?"
  • Cusco itself commissioned the work in order to entice tourism to the town.
  • Cusco had been treated as the Hufflepuff House for much of the show's runtime, and enough demand has prompted the creators to give it A Day in the Limelight.
  • The writers have literally blown up all the other interesting places on the map.
  • Creator Provincialism
  • The writers think that by focusing their alien invasion saga in a literal Middle-of-Nowhere Street, they can dodge some of the ordered Hollywood pitfalls (too much focus on Stuff Blowing Up over characters, Lowest Common Denominator humor, diva actors, etc).
  • The production just doesn't have the budget to film in a major metropolis.
• Lampshaded:
  • "But... why here? Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here!"
  • "Half a dozen aliens just landed in Ypsilanti. Do you know what that means?" "That the town's population just doubled?"
• Invoked: The Big Bad is staging a Thanatos Gambit, so he makes his plans around the corner from The Chosen One in his tiny backwater village.
• Exploited: One word - Tourism!
• Defied: The aliens land in Cusco, but realise no one is there and head to Washington D.C. instead.
• Discussed: "Why not, though? If witches can operate in a more famous city, there's nothing stopping them here."
• Conversed: "I know this show's made by BBC Wales, but really. Cardiff?"
• Deconstructed:
  • The witches' plans are allowed to go much farther than they should have, since nobody thinks of witches when they think of Cusco not even the nearest witchhunters (who just focus on Much More well known palces).
  • The event that takes place in Cusco brings it to national or worldwide prominence, thereby leaving this trope as the town loses its obscurity.
• Reconstructed:
  • Neighborhood watch notices the disappearances and call FBI to investigate. The FBI finds and quickly dispatches the problem.
  • The secrecy surrounding the event in Cusco is so carefully guarded that the town remains obscure after the course of events.
• Implied: A Meaningful Background Event (or Funny Background Event) in the house of the cast's Conspiracy Theorist is a map of the greater State of Pennsylvania with the typical "has so many unusual events recorded on it with pins and strings that it looks like modern art" apperance... and as a Genius Bonus for keen-eyed viewers, the greater bunch of pins is located near Allentown.
• Plotted A Good Waste:
  • The series spends so much time using the "monsters on the backroads of America" gimmick that when the cast mentions with incredible seriousness that they need to get to Allentown ASAP, we expect it to be some kind of Wham Episode... only that it turns out to be a comedy episode where no monsters appear and the reason they were so determined to get to the town was because they wanted to get a Super-Duper Big Mackkk Breakfast before the restaurant stopped serving for the day or something similar.
  • The story is ultimately an epic Generational Saga about how Cusco would rise to global prominence, with the Witch Coven as the inciting event that led to such.
• Played For Laughs:
  • The main theme of the series is that Cardiff/Cusco/wherever is a Quirky Town, with all of the "Hilarity Ensues" that comes with it.
  • The aliens invaded Scumbum, Florida and the result is that they are forced to run away by the Lower Class Louts that embody "Humans Are the Real Monsters" in all the ways that normally reach the news in that "wait a second, we are going to air this? It has to be a slow day" kind of way.
  • The aliens invade some Dying Town deep in Flyover Country or otherwise so out of the way that the cast, after they save the world, successfully turn the fact aliens actually landed here to turn it into a very successful tourist trap and revive it.
• Played For Drama:
  • After the fifth or sixth Monster of the Week rampage by the Eldritch Abomination Inscrutable Aliens, there is nothing nice about living in Allentown anymore: people evacuate (or are forcefully evacuated), property values plummmet at a meteoric rate (and it's also explained that if it was a mayor metropolitan area like New York it would have a chance to recover, but being the boondocks...), martial law is declared, The Men in Black implement their own version of the Day of the Jackboot (and will continue to do so until they finally understand why the aliens chose Allentown of all the places in the world), and overall it's made very clear that Cusco is well on its way to become a Dying Town... or even a full-blown Ghost Town.
  • If the aliens were invading Washington, D.C., it would be an Independence Day-style extravaganza with the best and brightest and most courageous leading the charge. But they are invading Cusco, and you can just feel the desperation.
  • The aliens invade a Dying Town somewhere forsaken by man and God and by the time the credits finally roll the town is most definitely dead, both because of everybody who was not killed leaving and because the struggle burned the whole place to the ground.
• Played For Horror: Cusco is the hero's Doomed Hometown. We get a nice thirty minutes of aliens goose-stepping through the streets and massacring innocent people with the impunity that comes from knowing the people who can provide an appropriate response won't arrive until it's too late because they didn't expected an assault on Cusco.

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Back to Aliens in Cardiff, once we figure out where that even is.

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