Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers**

[Caliburn24]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

Finally got around to watching the two hour finale. They were easily the two best hours of the show so far.

But I think the show is writing itself into a corner. To make sense of what is happening we're going to need to learn a LOT about the aliens in the next season. And I don't think the show has the budget or a creative enough writing staff to pull it off satisfyingly.

If they focus on Tom with the aliens it will be interesting. If they keep Tom largely off-screen and just focus on the Earth-bound elements of the 2nd Mass. the show becomes a boring waiting game until Tom comes back.

The problem is kind of like Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The aim of that movie and this show is to show normal people caught in a classic science fiction situation. We're not going to be destroying alien motherships with Will Smith, we're going to be in ratty basements hiding with our kid.

And if the writing is there, the characters, and the acting we can care about what Tom Cruise and his kids do. But even by the end of a short movie we're starting to want to see the really important stuff happening just over the ridge. With Falling Skies stretched over far more hours I find myself getting far more impatient.

The pieces are there for a much more entertaining season two, I just don't think they'll be put together properly.

 

[Sindatur]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

They dont have the skinny necks any more. The overlords were completely redesigned after all the VFX were completed. All their shots were redone with the new fish-faced versions. It's a completely new digital model and the FX team started went back to square one for every shot where we see one of them. If any of the long-necked versions made it into the aired episodes, it was probably a cost-cutting measure for shots they figured theaudience would never notice. (As I understand it, the new shots cost quite a bit as it was.)

The work was completed quite recently, only a few weeks before the episodes in question aired, which is why the long necks were used in all the online clips.

Thanks Gep, much better to know which way to lean, I'm fine with the retcon, just wanted it verified.

 

[hyzmarca]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

I expect the overlords to remain villains - this show needs an irredeemable villain species that cannot be negotiated with -

That doesn't really work.

If the skinnies are irredeemable villains who can't be negotiated when then the whole ting must inevitably come to a bad end. There is simply no way a bunch of rednecks huddling in a school can defeat a force with orbital superiority.

A history teacher and an outlaw overthrowing an interstellar empire is ultimately less plausible than defeated but defiant humans compromising with the victors and pretending that they've won something.

What it really needs is complexity, which they're doing a good job of adding on as time goes by. The simple post apocotolyptic humans fighting for survival plotline can't last very long simply because the enemy is so vastly superior.
Falling Skies isn't the Walking Dead, where you can drag on the zombie apocalypse for multiple seasons.

Falling Skies isn't even the American Revolution, despite the parallels Tom attempts to make. It's the Westward Expansion, it's the Trail of Tears, and we're the Indians. They even have a parallel to "Americanization" and boarding schools with the captured children and the harnesses.

You'll notice that the Native America's haven't taken their land back.

It's impossible to recover from a curbstomp like that, and certainly impossible to win against such a vastly superior foe.
This isn't really a show about fighting back, despite what the resistance thinks. It's one about surviving the destruction of your society by an unstoppable invader. There is no choice there but compromise.

Maintaining a plot of good humans vs. evil aliens would annihilate suspension of disbelief in the long term. Worse, it would become tedious.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

That's not necessarily true. I've already suggested that the aliens are refugees who blew all their major resources in the first attack. We don't know really what they've got or how desperate they are-- or how much they have riding on those terraforming towers, or whatever they are.

 

[46379.1]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

If they focus on Tom with the aliens it will be interesting. If they keep Tom largely off-screen and just focus on the Earth-bound elements of the 2nd Mass. the show becomes a boring waiting game until Tom comes back.

That won't happen, Noah Wyle is the star if the show.

 

[OsmiumJohnnycake]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

If they focus on Tom with the aliens it will be interesting. If they keep Tom largely off-screen and just focus on the Earth-bound elements of the 2nd Mass. the show becomes a boring waiting game until Tom comes back.

That won't happen, Noah Wyle is the star if the show.

Well they could be really annoying and have Tom return but refuse to talk about what happened and tell people they just have to trust him. Or better yet, he could return and not remember until the s2 finale!

 

[Sephiroth]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

If they focus on Tom with the aliens it will be interesting. If they keep Tom largely off-screen and just focus on the Earth-bound elements of the 2nd Mass. the show becomes a boring waiting game until Tom comes back.

That won't happen, Noah Wyle is the star if the show.

Well they could be really annoying and have Tom return but refuse to talk about what happened and tell people they just have to trust him. Or better yet, he could return and not remember until the s2 finale!

S2 is to start 7 years later set in space with humanity working with the aliens to fight a faceless enemy in 17th century style ship-to ship combat with no explanation of what happened in between those 7 years

 

[AviTrek]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

On basic and premium cable, yes. But Falling Skies' 5-6M viewership level wouldn't allow it to survive on broadcast,

That would depend on the network and the timeslot expectations. Fringe, for example, was renewed with a lot less viewers than that.

Fringe was renewed because the license fee was cut in order to reach syndication numbers. If Season 1 of Fringe got 5-6M viewers it would have been cancelled.

 

[Vendikarr]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

The Hypnotically Swirling Black Hole Made by Those Idiots at CERN

Just call this one "Collider!"

 

[hyzmarca]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

That's not necessarily true. I've already suggested that the aliens are refugees who blew all their major resources in the first attack. We don't know really what they've got or how desperate they are-- or how much they have riding on those terraforming towers, or whatever they are.

Space rocks are free and abundant. If you've got an interstellar spacecraft then you've got a practically infinite supply of ammunition in the asteroid belt. You want run out of rocks to hurl until long after the Earth is uninhabitable.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

On basic and premium cable, yes. But Falling Skies' 5-6M viewership level wouldn't allow it to survive on broadcast,

That would depend on the network and the timeslot expectations. Fringe, for example, was renewed with a lot less viewers than that.

Fringe was renewed because the license fee was cut in order to reach syndication numbers. If Season 1 of Fringe got 5-6M viewers it would have been cancelled.

And Friday night has become the place where shows are shunted off to die, or debut to low expectations if the show looks like it will appeal to only a modest, cultish audience (ie, Grimm). The ratings are inherently low, but networks have to put something there.

But I think the show is writing itself into a corner. To make sense of what is happening we're going to need to learn a LOT about the aliens in the next season.

The explanation doesn't have to be very complex: the overlords are an alien race that goes through the galaxy raiding other worlds, stealing adolescents to harness, which grows exoskeletons on them and brainwashes them, to serve as the overlords' foot soldiers.

The skitters come from a planet of six-legged creatures who were the overlords' previous victims. There probably have been more. The harnessed humans will be shipped off to the next world on the overlords' hit list to fight as "skitters" there (but I don't think they'll grow extra legs, just an exoskeleton - the harnesses don't change a species' inherent shape.)

The overlords also scout planets for likely talent, anyone who has shown unusual adaptability and ingenuity in fighting back. That's why they're interested in Tom. They want to recruit him, and anyone he might recommend from the 2nd Mass, for their upcoming invasion of Proxima Centauri. To make this point clearer, there may be skitters without exoskeletons on the alien structure, who aren't brainwashed like the others and serve as an officer caste or strategic thinkers.

That's a pretty simple story that covers everything we've seen. It's just a variation of the Borg, but more piratey and less robotic. The overlords can't be reasoned with, because they're space pirates and invading worlds, stripping them of resources, and enslaving/recruiting some of their population, is simply what they do.

Maybe they had another culture way back in the mists of time, but they've long since abandoned it. They are culturally nomadic (maybe Mongol hordes would be a better metaphor?) and have no home planet. Maybe their home planet became uninhabitable a long time ago, kicking off this big cultural change?

My bet is that next season, we get scenes from inside the alien structure, with a few overlords and a lot of skitters. We'll see a lot of the skitters from a non-military perspective. Harnessed human kids can interpret. The overlords might take a policy of total honesty with Tom, if what they're offering is to take on a few human recruits like him, in exchange for laying off Earth. That will simplify communicating the backstory to the audience.

If the skinnies are irredeemable villains who can't be negotiated when then the whole ting must inevitably come to a bad end. There is simply no way a bunch of rednecks huddling in a school can defeat a force with orbital superiority.

The key is the skitters. If they're also brainwashed slaves, and the overlords depend on them to fight their battles, they are the wild card that can upend the balance of power. Anne need to figure out a way to un-harness and un-brainwash the skitters, too.

 

[Sindatur]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

Hmmm...what with the Harness inside the Skitter, I wonder if there's anything left of it's original body to remove the Harness from. the entire Skitter seems to have grown over the original body, and it may have consumed the original body for nurishment as it grew/changed.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

I don't think the harness was "inside" the skitter. I think the exoskeleton grew around the skitter body and the harness, and will do the same with the harnessed kids. That keeps the harness intact and protects the body from enemy fire. The skitters are probably just as soft and fleshy as humans.

There may be other explanations, but mine allows the story to go on indefinitely, by casting only the overlords as the true "enemy," and gives the 2nd Mass a shot at victory by presenting the possibility of skitters as allies. If the skitters can't be rehabilitated, then there's no plausible way the humans can fight back. But if none of the aliens are the enemy, then we lose the us-vs-them dynamic that is essential to keeping the narrative drive.

This story doesn't work if it's about accommodating the aliens, or humans just struggling to survive. That might work on some dark and dismal HBO show, but TNT's audience is too mainstream for that. In the end, the strong ratings are based on people wanting to watch the spunky humans kick alien butt. Then the challenge becomes, keeping the situation just complex enough that the butt-kicking doesn't become repetitive, but not so complex that you lose the show's military appeal.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Re: Falling Skies: "Mutiny/Eight Hours" Discussion/Comments **Spoilers

That's not necessarily true. I've already suggested that the aliens are refugees who blew all their major resources in the first attack. We don't know really what they've got or how desperate they are-- or how much they have riding on those terraforming towers, or whatever they are.

Space rocks are free and abundant. If you've got an interstellar spacecraft then you've got a practically infinite supply of ammunition in the asteroid belt. You want run out of rocks to hurl until long after the Earth is uninhabitable.

But we don't even know if they can leave orbit. We don't even know if they're in orbit.