Falling Skies

The TNT drama Falling Skies follows the remaining survivors of an alien attack that has left mankind decimated. While similarly themed sci-fi fare either deal with the actual invasion, such as Independence Day and War of the Worlds, or high-level governmental conspiracies regarding the aliens, like The X-Files and Dark Skies, Falling Skies begins months after the enemy has already taken control of the planet. In this sense the series is not so much about the aliens as it is the perseverance of human beings. Such themes as family, faith and finding a way to survive in a world turned upside-down are often contained within each episode. That is not to say that Falling Skies does not include its fair share of action, as firefights between the small handful of refugees and the alien invaders continually break out during the narrative as well. In the end, however, Falling Skies is a sci-fi drama that is as much about the drama as it is the science fiction, much like the best of its genre.

—alterna-tv.com

Falling Skies is a Humanistic Sci-Fi Drama

Although there have been numerous science fiction television shows through the years, very few have centered on the pretext of an alien invasion. The most famous was also the most successful, the classic FOX drama The X-Files. The series was a combination, however, of standalone episodes in which FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigated a wide variety of supernatural occurrences, and mythological installments involving a government conspiracy regarding a pending alien occupation. Then there was the short-lived 1996 NBC drama Dark Skies, which again focused on a secret war between the human race and an alien species intent on domination against the backdrop of actual 1960s historical events.

It took executive producer Steven Spielberg and the year 2011 until another original alien invasion show hit the airwaves, the TNT series Falling Skies. The drama is more direct with its narrative in that by the time the pilot episode begins, the aliens have already completed their takeover of planet Earth. There is also a lack of conspiratorial cover-up in Falling Skies—the aliens came, the United States and other nations believed their intentions to be peaceful and the aliens in turn launched an attack that wiped out a large portion of the world’s population. The aliens also stayed, using mechanical robots to roam cities while kidnapping children and implanting them with a spinal “harness” to control both their minds and actions.

Small groups of stragglers survived the initial attack, however, and have formed military units of “fighters” and “civilians.” In this sense, Falling Skies is more akin to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica of the Syfy channel than either The X-Files or Dark Skies. In the hands of executive producer Ronald D. Moore, that updated version of the 1978 original is less of a cheesy response to the then raging Star Wars craze and more of a psychological analysis of survival when a species is pushed to the brink of extinction. Falling Skies inevitably has the same quality in that the series isn’t so much about a defiant battle against a superior alien race but an examination of surviving against all odds, protecting one’s family, not losing faith and finding a way to eventually fight back.

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Graphic Novel Introduces the World of Falling Skies

The TNT sci-fi drama Falling Skies is the story of an alien invasion that does not actually feature a literal invasion. Instead the narrative begins a good six to seven months after the aliens have arrived and annihilated most of mankind, and focuses on a handful of survivors who have come together in an area outside Boston, Massachusetts. While a few of these characters have military background, the majority are just normal citizens who suddenly find themselves fighting for their very survival.

Because of the starting point for Falling Skies the television series, there is obviously a great deal of backstory that has not found its way onto the small screen. Executive producer Steven Spielberg, creator Bob Rodat and co-executive producer Mark Verheiden thus came up with the idea of crafting a prequel online webcomic and releasing it in short installments as Falling Skies drew closer to its official premier on TNT in June 2011. The webcomic was later collected into graphic novel form by Dark Horse Comics and the five chapters fill in numerous blanks pertaining to main characters Tom Mason, Anne Glass and Captain Weaver.

Those blanks, however, do not include the actual alien invasion. “You will be able to see where they were before the show starts,” Mark Verheiden explained to Comics Alliance in November 2010 in regards to the Falling Skies comic. “There will be some hints as to what the invasion will be like for these people. One of the conceits of the show, one of the things we don’t do, is that you don’t see the invasion happen. There are no flashbacks. During the invasion the military was taken out, mass communication was taken out. Things were taken out so the characters have their own take on what the invasion was like for them and we reference that a bit more and we also see how the characters meet-up.”

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