Everybody loves a good alien movie, but what about an alien series? If you were unaware of its existance last year, you have another chance to check out Falling Skies, the series produced by Steven Spielberg returning to television screens everywhere in June.
Falling Skies
Falling Skies had only ten episodes in its first season, but it captured the hearts of millions; winning the Critic’s Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series in 2011. It follows the lives of those affected by an alien takeover run by creatures nicknamed “skitters”. Noah Wyle leads the cast by playing Tom Mason, a university history teacher and a father of three who is helping a pack of survivors fight back.
The skitters have killed over 90% of the world’s population and are recruiting children between the ages of 8 and 16 to join their army and obey their every command by attaching harnesses to their spinal cords. One of Tom’s sons, Ben, has been captured by the skitters in the first season, and Tom spends most of it trying to rescue him. When he finally takes Ben away from the alien skitters, he is faced with the problem of trying to remove the harness, for up until this point, no one has been able to successfully remove a harness without inevitably killing the child under its control. Ben gets freed and survives, but is left with barbs along his spine as an unpleasant reminder of what he escaped from.
As the series continues, we are introduced to “mechs”, large robotic drones the skitters use to cause destruction, as well as another resistance group led by a felon we know as Pope. He unwillingly joins Tom’s survivors and contributes to the group by cooking for them, rallying them together when they doubt their abilities, and reluctantly sharing his knowledge of how to kill the skitters. He has also invented ammunition powerful enough to kill the mechs and proves to be a formidable ally when he wants to be.
