Falling Skies, Season 2 (2012)

 

The men and women of the 2nd Massachusetts Militia continue the struggle to survive in a world now dominated by alien invaders.  They are at least learning more about their enemy.  Having long assumed the six-legged "Skitters" were behind the invaders, they have now learned that the Skitters are themselves a slave race, held in bondage by the same cybernetic "harness" devices they use on human teenagers.  Another species known as the "Overlords" are the real power, and some of the Skitters are just as keen to fight against them as the humans are.

Of course, trust doesn't come easily between such different species, particularly when the only means of communication is for a Skitter to speak through a previously-harnessed human.  That's a bit creepy.  And of course there are plenty of humans who don't know what the 2nd Mass knows, and wouldn't want to believe it even if they did.

Falling Skies is a show that frustrates me a little.  It has a decent cast and production values, and its heart seems to be more or less in the right place, but its a bit formulaic and too prone to taking the easy narrative option.  It continually sets itself up to examine the challenges of a desperate fight for survival, and the choices and compromises you might make in such a situation, but it's never quite convincing.  Main character Tom Weaver is always going to do The Right Thing, and it's always going to work out okay to do so.

It also continues to irritate me that for someone who is supposed to be a Professor of American History, Tom Weaver appears utterly blind to major elements of his own nation's past.  Specifically, anything that would make his nation look bad.  When the Overlords offer him a deal that is literally "How about you live on designated reservations like your government forced the native peoples to do?", he instead draws a comparison with Nazi death camps.  It's not a wholly inaccurate comparison, but it is far from the most accurate, and to be any good at his job, Weaver would know that.

Falling Skies is decent enough SF drama, but it plays it too safe and comes across a bit too smug, for me to recommend it.