Falling Skies: Is it Worth Your Time?

This logo seems vaguely familiar...

Anyone who watched the NBA Finals on TNT has heard about Falling Skies, roughly thirty percent of the commercials were for it (the other seventy percent were for Green Lantern).  I have to admit, every time I hear about a new sci-fi TV show, the little asthmatic nerd that lives inside me gets all excited because while most sci-fi shows fail miserably, those that succeed do so in spectacular fashion (Battlestar Galactica, Serenity).  So last Sunday night I decided to watch the two-hour series premiere.

Skies begins with an extremely abridged story of the alien invasion, but actually picks up six months later.  The aliens (referred to as Skitters because they look like this) stay true to a long, storied tradition of movie/TV extraterrestrials, by being gigantic dicks and killing everything in sight.  Every country’s military along with about 90% of the Earth’s population has been wiped out and aliens ships have docked over major cities.

The story centers on a group of several hundred survivors in the outskirts of Boston trying to survive by any means necessary.  The group is led by Captain Weaver (Will Patton of Remember the Titans fame), Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) is his second-in-command and the show’s main character.  Unfortunately, the show’s characters are overly familiar.  Every one with significant screen time seems to be copied and pasted from other stories.  Weaver is the hardnosed military commander who is insensitive to the needs of civilians.  Mason is the moral, everyman, just trying to keep his family together, while his older child is rebellious to the point of being stupid, and his youngest son is the innocent one.  The only character I would classify as truly interesting is John Pope (Colin Cunningham), the leader of a gang with questionable motives.

The girl on the right is the token love interest and her name is Moon Bloodgood

While many of its characters are flat and generic, Falling Skies actually does a good job developing some interesting plot points and intrigue for the rest of the season.  For example, one of the characters very briefly mentions how its odd that the Skitters have six legs while their mechanized robots only have two legs, usually when humans think of robots, theirs have two legs.  There is also a brief conversation about the true purpose of the alien ships over cities.  If handled correctly, the numerous “seeds” planted in the pilot could develop into interesting story lines.

If Falling Skies’ premise is at all interesting to you, I recommend you give it a chance.  It probably won’t be the next great sci-fi series but if the storylines are ably developed along with some color added to the characters, the first season (only 10 episodes, so not much of a time commitment) could be well worth your while. 

New episodes of Falling Skies premiere every Sunday @ 10/9c on TNT.