First Impressions: Falling Skies

Since the initial rumblings about TNT’s new series Falling Skies and the upcoming Terra Nova, I’d been mixing them up until last night’s premier. Not having an opinion one way or the other (mostly because I couldn’t remember which one it was), the show captivated me within the first few minutes with it’s quick pace, generous budget, and befitting soundtrack that keep the momentum up and going through the two-hour pilot. The Steven Spielberg-produced project centers around the human aspect of life after an alien invasion, following the story of a history professor turned resistance fighter, Tom Mason (Noah Wyle), working to be taken seriously by the other fighters, and rescue his captured son.

It comes on strong, with an engaging set-up, as the few remaining children of the colony recall what happened to the world, and families both before and after the invasion. Then quickly jumping into the adult perspective, the 2^nd Massachusetts Resistance is introduced while making a supply run through a gauntlet of aliens, and army of robot enforcers. The motives and intelligence of the invading menace are lightly debated, but remain unclear to the survivors. What is known, is massive ships occupy the world’s largest cities, and the invaders are exterminating the human populous, sparing some but “harnessing” them for purposes not yet defined.

With welcomed attention to detail, the story follows a believable template of post-apocalyptic living, where the members of the colony are trying to survive while facing the lack of power, fresh water, and resources, even touching on the inclusion of teens as young as 13 as resistance fighters. In a humanizing touch, the characters live in an aura of near-cluelessness, fighting without knowing why or how, and seeming to share the belief that at some point, it will all just end, and sanity will be restored. Having started their journey in Massachusetts, the main group of characters has gotten as far as central Ohio, and quickly find there’s no sign of sanity there either.

The pilot is seemingly full of guilty pleasures for Sci-Fi nerds, and movie fans alike. From the concept to the final credits, it embodied elements of the best of ‘80’s filmmaking, frequently conjuring images reminiscent of Platoon and Red Dawn, (even the school in the final scenes looked almost identical to the schoolroom seen in the opening scenes of Red Dawn), and a quarter of the way through part two, there was even a slow-motion “Awesome Walk” as the crew headed out for a mission. The allusions didn’t stop there either, elements of classic war movies, like A Bridge Too Far and Play Dirty, mixed with modern Sci-Fi epics like Independence Day, created a distinct since of duality to the story, almost as if the characters were taking their cues from what they had seen in such films.

For the most part captivating and enjoyable, I could find only a couple of small problems. First, although conveniently forcing focus on the human characters, the CGI aliens and robots are not quite up to par. They make excellent use of sets, extras, and digital background environments, but the low-quality alien images come off as more of a distraction. I hope to see the series either cut back their role visually, or allow for more improved graphics.

I would have also liked to see some more familiar faces in the cast. It’s nice to see Noah Wyle back on tv again, and doing something for grown ups at that, (Three The Librarian movies, WTF?), but putting the entire series on his shoulders could prove disastrous. The preview for upcoming episodes did promise a hopefully regular appearance by Steven Webber, a “Where’s Waldo” of the tv world in his own right, so that’s something to look forward to.

The plot did seem stretched out, and at pilot’s end it was not yet clear where the story was going, if it was going to be a day-to-day survival scenario for 5 seasons, or if they would be building towards some kind of conclusion. If and how the cells of character interconnect is also something of a question mark at this point, but that being said, the series really stands on it’s own, which is not something that can often be expected by a Sci-Fi series.

Based on the strong debut, Falling Skies has a very sustainable future, and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes over the coming weeks and seasons. It has the over-all quality and interest to keep audiences coming back for more, especially as some of the questions begin to get answered, and the role of the characters becomes more defined. If the series doesn’t stray too far from the tone of the pilot, and can retain some of the quirky, fanboy spin added to an otherwise hackneyed premise, this series could be a fixture on tv screens for many years to come.

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