Opinion: Why Falling Skies Failed As A Pilot

Touted as the “summer blockbuster TV series,” Falling Skies premiered in the UK on Tuesday and with interest piqued from Cape’s review and Surfing Sci-Fi entry, plus at a loss as what to watch, I decided to give it a crack; because, really, aliens? Yeah, they’re my thing. Plus it was on FX, and they never do you wrong. An hour later when the end credits rolled, I realised that I’d have been happier watching reruns of South Park on Comedy Central.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a bit of a TV snob, or that I hold the medium in such high regard, I don’t know, but there are some very evident problems with this fledgling new series that its fate is very much marked.

 

Off to a meh start

 
I’m all for jumping straight into the action as a way to springboard a series off on the right footing and dramatic pace as opposed to the usual “origin” story, but even this is a launch technique that’s becoming as generic as the latter. Not to mention, if you’re going with the hit-the-ground-running approach, then at least make what happens in the intro mildly exciting. Survivors running from an off-screen enemy and getting all caught up that did work, but it only lasted for less than a couple of minutes. The main problem for me is that what we’re given is absolutely the same thing we’ve seen countless times before and there’s no attempt at deviation or clever additions to the format. Also, I swear one guy actually walked away from a Skitter when under fire and got shot in the back. Oh, and can we please stop with the child drawings method of setting up why the world went to hell?

 

There’s no threat

So, an alien invading force wiping out major cities and culling the populous? Okay, sure, I can buy that. Said survivors of said alien invading force meandering about outside their shanty town complex when the mothership and countless other smaller vessels are darting about just over there? Not so much. That’s not to say that the entirety of the show should be confined to the inside of a bunker – then again, maybe it should, that’d help to ramp up the tension; audience don’t know what’s going on outside on the surface and actually what the aliens look like – but it just doesn’t add up. They’re loading ammo into cars and looking on at the mothership and enjoying the night air.

Then they’re walking about in broad daylight in groups of three-hundred, children playing while others load supply trucks. If anything, shouldn’t the kids be holed up at the very least seeing as the Skitters need them for some reason? And as for the Skitters, why aren’t they coming for them? In the daytime and in their numbers, it’s pretty easy pickings, right? Maybe the Skitters are preoccupied doing something significant that’s not even been alluded to, but if they need kids for whatever reason and put those freaky harness things on them which, by the way, really reminded me of the Skrills from Earth: Final Conflict, then why aren’t they out there combing the streets for them? Or, hey, gunning to that parking lot to the kid piñata, again, in broad bloody daylight?

It’s contradictory to what they’re so clearly trying to achieve. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why they’re able to more or less freely move and the fact that they can goes against even the thoughts of the novice post-apocalypse ponderer. Take The Walking Dead, there’s a reason why Rick and the others only venture out during the day as come night, the Walkers are more active due to the cooler air. Falling Skies should ask itself one question that a half dressed Vivica A. Fox asked Will Smith back in 1996:

 

 

Noah Wyle’s Tom Mason is the new Michael from LOST

Tom, mate, yeah you’ve lost one of your sons, yes his name is Ben, and yes you’ve lost him and yes his name is Ben. We get it. It’s sad. Kinda. It should be at any rate, but seriously? If it wasn’t clear that Tom’s abducted son (his name is Ben, by-the-by) would be intrinsic to his character and overall plot, it’s bloody evident by about twenty-minutes in. The names of his other sons, the eldest and youngest, I honestly couldn’t tell you without heading to the Googletubes, but his middle son, Ben, yeah, off the top of my head. Being told once is more than enough to set it up but it’s repeated over and over that it’s stuck in the forefront of your mind like some kind of brain leech. It’s almost as if they feel the need to constantly remind us because the plot-point is actually one of The Silence and as soon as Tom doesn’t mention Ben – his son who’s been taken and whose name is Ben – that we’re going to forget who he’s on about. Actually, that Silence analogy is pretty spot on for the pilot itself once all is said and done. I can’t make out whether it’s deliberate, an oversight or a line copied to the clipboard and slotted in with a ctrl+v when the writer thought they were actually copying in something else.

I’m almost sad that I won’t get to see the presumable “BEN!” screaming in later episodes. Oh, and Tom is a history professor, not that you wouldn’t know considering it’s also driven into us as much as his taken son Ben, who is taken and called Ben.

 

Frakking Skit-lon-ator

So maybe I’m being a bit of a git with this one, but the Skitters’ Mechs looked a blatant poor man’s Cylon-come-Predator to not just me, but a mate who said the exact same to me while bitching talking the day after. The Predator bit especially with the three-beam-laser-targeting thing. See?

 

 

Tom’s youngest son who is not called Ben

Cape mentioned in his review of the pilot about the “how [much] the little things tend to mean when you’re in a tough situation,” and I don’t dispute, I agree. Where I do have a problem with this is not in the sentiment, but in the execution and believability. Tom’s youngest makes with the pouty face because it’s his birthday and he wants a party. I’m sure that this is some commentary that despite the end of the world, kids will be kids and it’s some shining beacon of the purity and wonders of childhood as an antithesis to what the Skitters want them for, but really, with everything going on, the kid expects a party? Seriously? Seriously. It just seemed kind of selfish and ignorant. Shouldn’t he be grateful enough that he hasn’t got one of those creepy buggers on his back? I don’t want to appear harsh but again, believability. With everything the kid has seen and experienced since the invasion, surely he’d have grown up a bit and realised that a birthday party or getting to the next safe area and being alive is one hell of a no-brainer.

Then there’s his wish. There’s nothing wrong with it honestly, albeit naïve, but it was so predicable that I actually mouthed it out word for word. Plus, nice character moment aside where towards the end his older brother (not Ben) saves the day with a present of one of those weird skateboard things which made for some awkward product placement, everyone literally stops and stares at him skating up and down. Everyone. There are smiles and an uplifting score and countless shots of people smiling. It just didn’t sit right. You could argue that why didn’t everyone stop and smile at the kids playing in the car lot, but that’s not it (even though it kinda is.) The moment felt contrived and syrupy and, again, just didn’t sit right. I mean, everyone stopping, taking time out of what must be a frightfully horrific situation to stop and stare and smile out of cover. This isn’t to say that they should abandon their humanity, but it creates a moment that just seems unbelievable.

 

 

It’s all wooden

The acting is wooden as buggery. The only one to do a decent turn is Will Patton as Captain Weaver. The rest of the cast we’re expected to care for without even getting to know them when they’ve done absolutely nothing to warrant and inspire such feeling in us. Delivery of dialogue is as expected and there’s no attempt for the actors to put their own spin on it, but then that’s not entirely their fault considering what they’ve given to work with. The script goes out of its way to make the characters go out of their way to provide obligatory background while talking between each other. It irks with its disjointed and forceful aplomb that it both breaks the fourth wall and beggars belief how Spielberg could put his name to this. Oh, and the blonde biker scout takes away my award of jumping ship at the drop of a hat that has already hit the floor before you could say that sentence because it’s made of lead. She fearfully tells the others that there are loads of Skitters and Mechs surrounding a group of captured children including Ben, and then in the very next breath which actually sounded like it was cut with no natural pause, she says that she’ll go with to rescue him. That left me scratching my head even more so than the pediatrician doctor turned field-medic who tells Tom that she’s looking on the bright side – that if the invasion hadn’t have happened, she’d be “dealing with flu shots and neurotic mothers” and says it with such gaiety and a smile. You know, even though her husband and son were killed.

 
If you look hard enough, you can see that Falling Skies includes and plays to all the Spielberg staples – the swelling music (which reminded me a lot of the Doctor Who score, and just didn’t work or reflect the supposed drama of the situation, maybe because there was a lack of running down corridors), the kid thing, the drawings, the big family moments, the feeling sorry for an alien as they watch one die. But the sum of all its part just don’t marry in the way you’d have hoped, especially with his name linked to it, and the pilot feels more a step back for the genre and out-of-place with modern sci-fi.

Hokeyness aside, the overall premise does have a lot of potential, but you can’t quite get over the feeling that it’s trying to hit above its intended gritty weight.

This is one example of how not to do a pilot. There’s a fundamental lack of substance to engage the viewer and while it may be a somewhat realistic vision of a world where parents and teachers and average Joe’s have to take up arms, it fails to give you anything to invest in or care about, and what it does give you feels terribly forced upon.

Perhaps it gets better, but when you consider that a pilot is supposed to set-up and be a portfolio of what the series is, can be and supposed to be the hook and line to your sinker, ultimately its (and my own) major grievance is that you come away feeling that there’s nothing to go back to that world for. Maybe the Skitters will see that too eventually.