Falling Skies: It Only Took Three Seasons To Actually Get Good!

I’m easily roped in to give almost any televised sci-fi property at least a passing glance, and I do love alien invasion stories, especially ones where the aliens pretty much trash Earth and force mankind to pull itself up from the ashes. So you can imagine how excited I was when Falling Skies was announced for TNT. Throw in the facts that this was promised to provide a more realistic look at an alien invasion, that it was conceived and written by Robert Rodat (the mind behind Saving Private Ryan), and that it was being pushed by no less than Steven Spielberg. Now I was hoping for something special.
Boy was I wrong.

Well, maybe …

Falling Skies premiered with impressive audience numbers – no small feat for cable – and it actually managed to maintain a solid share of those viewers. And, much like AMC’s The Walking Dead, the characters have been put through their pacing, sometimes being on-the-run from aliens still intent on doing them harm, though some elements of the invaders’ agenda remain a bit unclear. Still, in two seasons, the writers have managed to sprinkle the show’s mythology out liberally amongst its ‘usual suspects’ of characters, which primarily centers on former history professor Tom Mason (played by Noah Wyle), his three sons, and those they encounter most.

Most of the writing in the first and second season was fairly predictable (I hesitate using that word ‘saccharin’ I’ve used in my columns before) for a show principally about survival of the American family: the aliens show up, the humans take it on the lamb, and it’s all pretty well tied up 45 minutes later. There have been some elements injected to give the stories greater depth or shelf-life – human kids are ‘harnessed’ by alien devices so we’re racing to understand and remove the technology; various resistance groups mean one small army might come into conflict with another small army; etc. – but, all-in-all, much of Falling Skies’ first two seasons felt like unfulfilled promises.

Much of the disappointment for me centered on too much predictability with the Mason family cast of characters. Noah Wyle is affable enough as a series’ lead, but he was written too nice, too neat, too (dare I say it?) mainstream American to give him in real depth as a father much less a teacher. His sons clearly loved dear ol’ dad, so … erm … no conflict there. The necessary wrinkle was that son Ben (played by Connor Jessup) was one of the kids caught and harnessed by the aliens, but substituting legitimate family drama with sci-fi tech needs a moral core for it to have a hook for the audience: sadly, Ben seemed only gifted with special abilities thanks to the harness and much of these gifts have been used to aid the survivors in their missions, so it all felt superhero-lite instead of a truly visionary look at some new apocalypse spectacle.
In fact, so far as those first two seasons, my favorite character has been the sorely underused John Pope, a heavily-tattooed and angry ex-convict whose contributions to the group fluctuate between begrudging cooperation and downright treason. But the stories involving him have tended to cast him as either the ‘rebel without a cause’ or the one who gets his comeuppance by the hour’s end.

Thank God for season three.

Season two ended with what advertising led audiences to believe would be a game-changer. Mason and the survivors finally found a haven – what’s left of the U.S. eastern seaboard’s population has gathering in Charleston, SC, but not everything is all hunky-dory. But realizing ‘something stinks in Denmark,’ Mason and friends are about to give up on those who remain and take to the wild once more … when an all-new ship descends from the night sky and an all-new alien being steps from the craft.

Fade to black …

Was this newcomer a menace? Was it an ally? Was it an overlord showing up to finally chow-down on human skin and bones, or was he here to deliver mankind from the ashes? Fans had to wait until Season 3 premiered on June 9th to get some answers, and what they learned was that the promos leading up to last season’s finale were true: the game had changed.

Now, in fairness to those of you still catching up (and I’m still an episode behind), I won’t spoil anything. What I will say is that injecting yet a third alien species into the mix – along with their still somewhat unfolding plan – has given Falling Skies a new lease on life. Initially, I wondered if it was an act of desperation, and I’m glad to learn that it’s instead been a huge plus to the writing. The friendships and alliances firmly cemented throughout the previous adventures are suddenly tested under all new circumstances, and what all of this may mean for mankind as well as just the Mason family remains curiously out of reach. But isn’t it strange that, by serving up yet another alien face, the writers have managed to show us something new in each of the human characters?

And even my favorite character – John Pope – has been fleshed out some more. The previous seasons’ work ended up painting the dissident (played terrifically by Colin Cunningham) pretty much into a corner – he was the bad boy with an attitude who was always going to do what’s best for him and what’s worst for everybody else. But June 30’s episode gave Cunningham some real meat: he and his longtime rival, Tom, survive a plane crash and have to brave it on their own in the wild with only their smarts and a few weapons to keep ‘em alive … and Pope? He ain’t all that bright! Still, the script by Jordan Rosenberg expanded Pope’s background and really put a face on why he is the way he is, and Cunningham dished out a few sublime moments.

If you had previous given up on Falling Skies, you might want to tune in again. It’s feeling more and more like Chicken Little has finally find a home!