When the first round of alien contact ends with ninety percent of humanity dead, it’s going to be a long, uphill battle from there.
What They Say:
Episode Synopsis: Ragtag survivors and resistance fighters struggle to endure following a catastrophic alien attack in this drama executive produced by Steven Spielberg. First up: Bookish Boston professor Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) helps lead a regiment of citizen soldiers against the extraterrestrial invaders, whose purpose remains a mystery. Yet Mason’s primary objective is to protect his three sons, one of whom is taken captive by the aliens.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
When word came down that Steven Spielberg was getting involved with a series on TNT called Falling Skies, all I could think about was the 90’s animated series from DreamWorks called Invasion America. The show didn’t register well with me, particularly since I was very disillusioned with American animation and storytelling techniques at that point and because it wasn’t all that interesting. Now Spielberg is back with DreamWorks TV to bring a new ten episode series to TNT about aliens invading and the people that survive and fight back. While genre television has been doing quite well on premium networks, it’s been tough on the primetime channels and is seeing some good successes on the cable networks, notably with last years Walking Dead. So it’s no surprise that TNT will try to get back into it, though the last science fiction oriented series I remember them working on was Crusade. And that turned out horrible because of TNT’s involvement.
Falling Skies starts off wrong from the very beginning as the very brief summary of how the world has gone to hell is done through some kids crayon drawings. This is the chance for the money shots, to show the big moments that defined the end of humanity as we learn that some ninety percent of the population has been eradicated. Six months later, those who have survived are doing what they can and the show turns its focus to a group of several hundred survivors operating outside of Boston, Massachusetts. They’re living fairly well with a few military men that have survived and are doing what they can to keep the group fed and away from the aliens that have no names nor have made any kind of contact with humanity in general. Their sole purpose has been extermination in the eyes of the survivors. While a massive base sits wedged into Boston itself, various ships fly overhead, armored bipedal units patrol the area looking for resistance members to kill and humans that are captured have creatures bound to their spines that causes them to lose their identity. And they die painfully if said creature is removed of course.
With some nine hundred survivors in this group, the plan to spread out to find new food stores and check existing caches has them splitting into three groups of three hundred. Each group has two hundred civilians and a hundred fighters to help make sure they stay protected. Moving on foot with some vehicles, we get to follow one group that has Noah Wylie as Tom Mason, a history professor that’s serving as second in command and something of a conscience for the group commander. Tom’s got it rough, but he’s doing what must be done while retaining his humanity as he has two sons to watch over while his third has gone missing, though they soon discover that he’s been captured and has a binder attached to him. While he wants to go after him, he keeps to his promise to do right by those that he’s been assigned to protect.
Over the course of the premiere, which had two episodes together rather than a proper two hour story, we see the human side of the survivors as there’s some friction between the fighters and the “eaters” as they’re often called, people who don’t fight and in the eyes of the fighters contribute nothing. There’s little in the way of complaint by the survivors outside of some minor grousing by one of the kids, but even that’s fairly understandable as a coping mechanism. Mostly, everyone is resigned to doing what it takes to survive, but they’ll take opportunities for their own goals when they come up as well. But the duty to other survivors to help them along the way is currently trumping other feelings. At least within this group. The second episode highlights a group of men who have taken to killing the aliens on a regular basis in a way that others haven’t been able to, and they’re getting a thrill from it since they were pretty much the bad guys of humanity before, the criminal element that thrived on such events within their own race.
Mankind doesn’t change much even in the face of such destruction of the species around them and they cling to certain things. The military men there have turned the survivors into militiamen of sorts and keep to rankings and the biggest threat that can be faced at times are other men. The aliens that are there are definitely dangerous though and seemingly pop out of nowhere when you least expect it. They have an interesting design to them, being six legged creatures, but they fall into a familiar trap that most alien designs do. They option to go with more of a monocultural identity, where they all essentially look alike, makes it easy to put together in the computer graphics side and with the props, but it removes a sense of realism about it. It’d be like only seeing clones of one particular human running around as an alien invader. It reduces the impact of it. Curiously, the armored suit units that hey have are bipedal in nature and it’s something that’s commented on as a curiosity that you hope will be explored.
What dominates these two episodes though is something that does make sense and doesn’t. We see the very large group making progress from where they started out as they go towards Acton which is a good few miles away to say the least, and there’s actions going on towards other towns that are sort of in the area (well, at least if you’re in a big state – here everything that isn’t in the town you’re in is considered a distance away). So seeing everyone traveling light, hunting up food and only having a few days worth at a time seems about right considering the scavenging going on by the survivors of the obvious big stores of goods. But at the same time, you’ve got a few hundred people walking around and aliens all over the place, surely they’d be seen. Or extrapolated for what they’re doing. Or just sheer luck to come across them all. It’s a big world, but there’s still some sixty million people out there. They’re going to be easy to pick off.
What hurts the show the most is that it all comes across as fairly relaxed. Not mellow per se, but everyone is worn down and just going through the motions. I do appreciate the sheer number of extras here that gives it a good feeling of what it’d be like rather than what we usually get with just a handful of survivors that are all regular actors, but because they’re basically faceless extras, they’re all just sort of there and it kills the sense of urgency for survival at the same time. This does allow for them to draw from the crowd any time they need to for someone to become important (quick, get them a redshirt) but there are plenty of other ways to do that. Even worse is that most of the lead characters are pretty laid back as well. Even when Tom finds out about his son, he doesn’t just grab his gun and get ready to go, he finishes what he has to do and puts it off without blinking an eye in order to deal with other things. It’s commendable, and in some ways realistic, but it feels out of place from a parental point of view.
In Summary:
Falling Skies has a certain amount of potential, but at this point it’s all stock storytelling going on here. None of the characters are that interesting and they pretty much avoid doing flashbacks to what their lives were like before, which slows down humanizing them more since all we see them as are survivors of some apocalypse that doesn’t really seem to have changed anything. Yeah, there’s less people and Noah Wylie is sporting a beard since his electric razor isn’t usable anymore, but the world is otherwise the same, just a little dirtier and quieter. You can see a lot of survivors really being thrilled by this, finding just enough to survive, stay out of the way and curl up with some good books or a long nap. And that’s what the episode induces, the need to go and nap because it’s pretty empty on compelling storytelling. It really hurt going into this after watching A Game Of Thrones as well. Seeing how much that series does in a single episode and then seeing how this one doesn’t even get an ounce of the same kind of progress made in a two hour premiere really shows the emptiness of it all. I don’t hold out much hope for it but I’m curious to see if it’ll even survive its entire ten episode run. There may be surprises ahead, but they needed something to really hook you here. And crayon drawings at the start certainly wasn’t it.
Grade: C-
