[Some Spoilers Below]
There’s so little good sci-fi on TV anymore (the “SyFy” channel lost me at the 10th anaconda movie they produced) that when a decent series comes along, you want to get up out of your Enterprise captain’s chair and cheer them on.
TNT’s Falling Skies has a heavyweight production team, a monster budget, and just the right mix of terror and wonder that all good sci-fi shows should have. It’s an ancient story line but why reinvent the wheel if it isn’t creaking?
The series begins in medias res with the aliens well on their way to wiping humans off the face of the earth. The beasts are suitably icky and, well, beastly — especially since they capture children as slave laborers, controlling them by putting an icky wormlike critter that attaches itself to the backs of the kids and makes them into automatons.
As you might expect, there is a resistance — poorly equipped and hardly a real soldier among them. The main character, Tom Mason (played by Noah Wylie), is an ex-military history professor whose knowledge of war doesn’t impress hard-bitten Captain Weaver (Will Patton), but whose respect he is gaining as his missions get ever more dangerous. Mason has a kid in one of the alien labor brigades and most of the first three episodes revolved around his efforts to get him back.
Mason became a hero in Episode Two when he actually captured an alien (called “Skitters”) alive. And herein lies the seeds of the show’s possible destruction. Mason’s putative love interest is Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood). While Dr. Michael Harris (Stephen Weber) is busy trying to dissect the creature, Anne wants to study the beast. Who knows, maybe it has feelings? Actually, she has a good idea — getting to know the enemy — but the way she goes about it is a little strange. She gives the beastie water. She talks nicey-nicely to it. She asks it what it wants from us. She actually protects it from Harris who sees a lab rat, while Anne sees…what? A kindred spirit? You get the feeling that she sees the Skitter as a minority.
Meanwhile, the Skitter doesn’t know what to think. Not enamored of Anne’s obvious anatomical gifts, he can’t ply her with nylons, perfume, and other stuff with which GI’s would bribe their guards in WW II movies. So he tries the next best thing: He makes a grab for her and tries to eat her.
Anne gets away but later, Harris isn’t so lucky. The Beastie grabs the doc as he is trying to prevent one of the Skitter’s former slaves from releasing it and makes literal mincemeat of him.
April and I gave this show about 40 minutes before deciding not to bother watching the rest. I didn’t really care for the actors and the dialogue. Premise is certainly good and it looks great but it doesn’t seem to have the soul and the substance. Though perhaps we’re spoiled because we recently just plowed through the new Battlestar Galactica.
My wife and I watched the entire series on Bluray (and then online through Netflix) last year. The first couple of seasons (and Razor) were brilliant. But I really was taken aback by the “terrorists are justified” plotline in … Season 3, I think? I still enjoyed the overall series, and the mechanisms used to reveal the missing 5 were wonderfully thought out. But I was still left with a bit of a bad taste at the end, when they went all luddite. It was too pat; too PC.
Oh, well. I don’t regret the time spent. Just wish they could have stayed true to the original themes and character studies the series started with. I think they could have still gotten to the end point, but the story development would have been much more satisfying to me.
BSG Season 3, a.k.a. “Battlestar Iraqtica”.
Frakking brilliant! Wish I’d thought of it.
…and from now on you DID???
The first episode was ok but it only went downhill from there.
The PC stuff started right away with the insurgencies always win speech.
Well, I saw it too. So many series start out with just a good entertaining thrill and then…..liberalism sneaks in on all sorts of baloney trays.White Collar is near that now. I hope Covert Affairs will not collapse nor Justified in maudlin liberalism. Today, libs in Hollywood told us proudly, that they did have a bias against conservatives and thought it was a battle against.,…….fascism. Yikes.
Justified is about the best thing around and like you, I sincerely hope they leave the main characters alone and not delve into the usual liberal political crap that ususally comes after a few episodes.
I like the raw, unfettered, and uncluttered characters on the show and the application of “street justice” to the most deserving of the bad guys. Hell, I like the character flaws of the hero and his ex-wife.
Great potential. Hope the PC crowd doesn’t screw it up.
If only they brought back Firefly… I have watched a lot of sci-fi, but few can compare to the characters, storyline, and themes of Firefly. Captain Kirk and Han Solo didn’t have Mal’s charm or wit. Zoe was a great foil for Mal in a way Spock could never be, and fit better than Riker and Picard. And Wash? Show me a pilot in any series that was more entertaining, or an inspiration to all nerds that they can land a hottie! Ok, I like Bones more than Simon Tam, but Simon had a great mix of intelligence and strength. Sure Troi was hot, Yoda and Obi wan were wise, but Rev. Book’s “Special Hell” lecture put him in a league of his own. Inara wasn’t just a whore – her dialogues with Mal were a great discussion on the value of the individual. Jayne had the greatest gun in sci-fi history – Vera! And he was a great comic foil. Unlike other series, the one with the most abilities, River, wasn’t a messiah that single-handedly saves the day. She had her part, just like everyone else. And Kaylee… could you ask for a lovelier engineer?
Amen!
What a lotta Liberal fans who call themselves “Browncoats” dun realize is that, Mal is-
Anti-big government:
“You think following the rules will buy you a nice life, even if the rules make you a slave.”
“That’s what governments are for… get in a man’s way.”
Bonus quote:
“People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.” -River
Pro-gun rights:
“Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back!”
“You got the right same as anyone to… live and try to kill people.”
A Capitalist:
“Now I did a job; and got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character. So let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job… and then I get paid.”
They idolize him, without even realizing that they and their OTHER idol (the one in the White House) represent EXACTLY what Mal was fighting against.
And considering the absolute wealth of great quotes we got out of that magnificent few episodes, can you imagine what we might’ve had, if Firefly had never been cancelled? =*[.]*=
Perhaps that’s why Fox scuppered it the way they did.
Yeah, but Mitch Rapp is coming to the big screen.
You may – or may not – be interested to know that Nathan Fillion, who played Mal in Firefly/Serenity is Canadian. So is Kiefer Sutherland, who played Jack Bauer in 24. (In fact, he is the grandson of the founder of the main socialist party in Canada.)
The actors personal views don’t always match the views of the characters they play on TV
“That’s the last time you call Inara a whore” (paraphrasing her words to Mal in the pilot episode), whereas the madam in the “Heart of Gold” episode *was* a whore. Absolutely terrific series (some called it a “space western”) which I discovered only after it was cancelled. No, Firefly will not return; the story wrapped up with the Serenity movie. It’s also interesting to contrast the Federation of Planets (UN?) of the liberal 1960s Star Trek to the authoritarian Alliance fighting those who just want to be left alone (and deemed “outlaws”) of Firefly.
Two other sci-fi series I enjoy: the very quirky “Eureka” and the more dramatic “Warehouse 13″.
Ah, yes, Eureka and Warehouse 13. Both are terrific shows that deal well enough with their very limited budgets by being quirky and interesting. Even Syfy’s Haven is a decent show. None of them have been overly PC, but then they don’t take themselves too seriously like BSG ended up doing.
This is the thing to learn about the brilliance of writers like Joss Whedon: don’t take yourself too seriously. They deal with things seriously from time to time, but always leave room for self-deprecation. If you don’t do this, you end up like BSG: heavy handed political statements that don’t actually explore issues, but instead pontificate and offer trite PC slogans.
My thoughts, exactly! And “Serenity” must be near the top of any list of Top Ten Libertarian Movies (although I’m always hard-pressed to name ten….)
Browncoats rule!
Best series of all time … Babylon 5 (save the last season – you can ignore that one). You had to watch every episode, even the occasional goofy ones. There was always something important that might not turn back up again for months or even years.
B5 best TV Sci Fi hands down. Including the goofy episodes. I refused to buy season 5.
Although I found “Firefly” after it was cancelled also, I’ve become a big fan (Hey, I’m from Alabama, what can I say?).
What a great series. Good plots, quirky characters, high snark, clearly defined good guys and bad guys, what’s not to like?
Which helps explain its untimely demise. It was just too good. Although I did see an interview with Nathan Fillion recently where he was asked if he’d do a revival series. “In a heartbeat,” was his paraphrased reply.
Shiny.
Your not wrong. Anything that has value must have that value destroyed by the progressives.
Why watch any of this crap? Even if you don’t think the series is left-wing, your money (or the money of advertisers) goes to people who are.
Forget television and movies, unless you want to support the Communists, Fascists and Islamists.
It’s not even a matter of boycotting this garbage; a boycott means you think you can get people to change their behavior. But Hollywood is run by religious fanatics who will never give in to us. They would die first.
You must simply write this stuff off, and get it out of your life. You will be better off.
(Sorry, Roger….)
Bingo.
This column, and the majority of the comments about it, show why we are losing this war.
When most of your own team are such spoiled brats they can’t deny their little pleasures long enough to choke off the enemies life blood, there’s really no hope of winning.
Well, I was worried a bit about this show and I still am. It certainly could veer off into PC land at any moment. But, I’ll stick with it for now. My big PC concern is in how they’ll present military vets. I caught a whiff of Vietnam style “combat vets are druggies” toward the end of the last episode. Did you notice that?
Falling Skies can’t hold a candle to the revived and now canceled V series. I think it was too close to the t(ea)ruth, allegorically speaking, and the Hollywood elites had to axe it.
As for SyFy, I do like Warehouse 13. It’s a little off the wall and cheesy sometimes but not infected with PC.
And, yes, Firefly was great!
Yawn!
I kept sticking with Jack Bauer (despite the fact that Americans always seemed to be the really bad guys) until the bad guys were invading the White House from the Potomac. Well, the White House had already been swiped by people who hate America in real life, so I didn’t see the point anymore.
I stopped watching Hollywood’s “modern” version of SF years ago. For the most part, it’s either fantasy passing itself off as “science” fiction (Star Wars), or mystically-overdosed “enlightened” directors and actors engaged in extended contemplations of their own navels (Clooney’s version of “Solaris”, aka “2002; A Space Oddity”).
The major difference between modern “Hollywood SF” and the older, pre-PC version is that much of the older stuff (1950s) was written by actual SF writers, and what wasn’t was written by screenwriters who were at least familiar with the genre, i.e., they had actually read a few SF magazines like Astounding, etc. When you ran across a film or TV show written by a hack who didn’t know Bode’s Law from a bathroom loofah, it was immediately and painfully obvious.
I’m not talking about minor bloopers like the fundamental error in chemistry in the plot of “Spaceways”, but stuff like the complete collapse of “Robot Monster”; both were released in 1953, and are at opposite ends of the IQ range plotwise. “Spaceways” was written by Paul Tabori, a professional SF writer; “Robot Monster” was written by a contract screenwriter on the studio staff. The difference is obvious when you watch both movies; “Spaceways” is, in spite of the blooper, reasonably sound scientifically and dramatically; “Robot Monster” is about as coherent as the Foothills Division drunk tank on Saturday night, and about as entertaining as a root canal sans Novocaine. (BTW, while “Spaceways” had a higher budget than “Robot Monster”, it wasn’t all THAT much higher, and it was made in the UK where production cost more to boot, rather than at Bronson Cavern outside of LA, where all you had to do was keep all the cowboy actors from the TV Westerns “out of shot”.)
When you add the modern Hollywood mania to be “More PC Than Anybody” to the mix, the result is about as much like actual SF as chalk is like cheese. (Both can be yellow, or white, and occasionally crumbly, but only one is actually edible.) And large budgets do not guarantee success; the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise version of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” being a conspicuous example, being little more that a typical modern-urban-family-angst vehicle with the mainly irrelevant addition of expensive SFX.
At the same time it was made, a made-for-TV version based word-for-word on Wells’ novel and set in 1898, made on a low budget, was produced in Canada. Spielberg and Paramount went to court to block it being shown, even on Canadian TV. I’ve seen it on DVD, and I’m not surprised; it was an accurate, respectful, and well-done adaptation of the book, even allowing for being shot on a budget about equal to what Paramount and Spielberg spent on lunch every day. It just wasn’t “up to date” philosophically, is all. The characters were less concerned with their family strife than they were about not being eaten by the Martians. (How dare they be so, so… practical!)
But “practicality” is what SF is all about. that’s why it’s called “science fiction”, and not something else.
A good illustration of the Hollywood attitude, to close with; at least one video chain (which I won’t name) no longer has a “science fiction” category on its sales racks. They still have “horror”, “action”, “romance”, etc., but no “SF”. When I asked the manager at the local outlet why, he grandly explained that “science fiction” wasn’t really a genre’ anymore, it was just other types of movies with some “weird stuff” added, and so wasn’t worth having a shelf section to itself. (But they do have a section for “reality shows”.)
This pretty much sums up modern-day Hollywood’s definition of SF. And no, I don’t shop at that video outlet anymore.
clear ether
eon
Sharply written, extremely informative. Have you ever considered writing your own science-fiction blog?
Thanks for the kudos. I’ve had a couple of articles published (under my real name) in online SF/monster mags. As for an SF blog, check out “1000 Misspent Hours And Counting” by El Santo. He does better that I can. Funnier, too.
cheers
eon
Not a good idea. Most SF films from the 50s had nothing to do with SF literature either in terms of adaptations or writers. Maybe a dozen of over 150 SF films released in the 50s were based on original stories from SF literature and most of those ignored the original material, prominent examples being “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “The Thing From Another World” of which virtually nothing of the original stories survived and the few others barely paid lip service.
In fact, not one single fan-based SF novel was brought to the screen in that decade. There is nothing from the SF vocabulary of the old Astounding magazine that found it’s way into 50s SF film. Paul Tabori? Who’s that – nobody in SF literary terms. 50s SF films were written by men almost entirely disconnected from SF literature and fandom and owe almost nothing to them and those films certainly cannot be characterized as being written in anything but a minor way by SF writers.
TV SF from the 50s and into the future is another story entirely.
“Hollywood SF”, as he puts it, has actually done a much better job in bringing original fan based SF literature to the screen. “Star Wars”, although it’s story borrows more from comic strips or serials than anything else, has all the trappings of SF literature in the world the characters swim in. There are no aerodynamic rocket ships and the language barrier is addressed and things look like people actually use them and there is much more; generally speaking, the window dressing borrowed heavily from literary SF and it comes close to being the mainstream public’s first brush with a true SF literary vocabulary.
While original SF screenplays continued to heavily outnumber adaptations from literature, some of those original films have been brilliant like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “The Fifth Element,” “Serenity,” and “Gattaca”. Adaptations have done very well sometimes as in the case of “Blade Runner,” “The Thing,” and “Children of Dune.”; none of them can be considered PC.
No “kudos” from me; the information is off the mark and uninformed.
I agree that a few recent productions have been adequate, but as I stated, most of them were fantasy masquerading as SF. This is where i file “CE3K” and “Fifth Element”. “Gattaca”, I hate to tell you, stunk; it wasn’t good SF, or even good drama.
As for the lack of SF films of the Fifties written by or adapted from the work of actual SF writers;
Destination Moon (1949-50)- Based on “Rocketship Galileo” by Robert A. Heinlein; script co-written by Heinlein.
Project Moonbase (1953)- also written by Heinlein.
War of the World (1953)- from the novel by H.G. Wells, of course.
This Island Earth (1956) Based on the novel by Raymond F. Jones. (Jones wrote the screen treatment.)
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)- based on “The Foghorn” by Ray Bradbury; screen treatment by Bradbury.
It Came From Outer Space (1953)- again, based on an original story idea by, and screen treatment by Bradbury.
Tarantula (1956)- Based on the story “No Food For Thought” by Robert M. Fresco (frequent contributor to “Astounding”, staff writer on “Science Fiction Theater”)
The Thing From Another World (1951)- Based on the story “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell (editor of “astounding”, published under his pen-name “Don A. Stuart”.)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)- based on the story “Farewell To The Master” by Harry Bates.
Invasion Of The Saucer Men (1957)- based on “The Cosmic Frame” by Paul W. Fairman.
Donovan’s Brain (1953)- From the 1940 novel by Curt Siodmak.
This is just a sampling, as I don’t want to monopolize the thread. But I think you get the point.
cheers
eon
I’m aware of all of those: Destination Moon is gutted of anything like Heinlein who wrote the disappeared novella from the screenplay as is Project Moonbase as is Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. They are not in any way adaptations. Starship Troopers later on had Heinlein’s name but not his story. It is also not an adaptation in any real sense of the word but more so than the above examples.
Tarantula? Really? Who’s Robert Fresco – again, in literary SF, no one. The Golden Age of SF had nothing to do with giant spiders. Even the dregs of the bedsheet pulps of the late 20s did better.
This Island Earth has nothing to do with what was happening in SF, it’s culled from Thrilling Wonder Stories and couldn’t even make Astounding although Jones regularly wrote shorts there. Compare something like that to Asimov’s Foundation series or The Naked Sun or Caves of Steel.
Again, It Came From Outer Space? Really? What in the world does that have to do with SF from literature? It’s a monster movie, aimed at drive-in theaters. There’s no input from Bradury’s vision as a writer in it.
I mentioned The Thing, gutted – Day the Earth Stood Still, gutted Bates story which was nothing to start out with which is an exact analogue to Bates own SF career.
Siodmak, not published in SF pulps and only marginally an SF writer. That story was published in Black Mask.
Yours is not really a sampling at all but most everything. Add 2 Verne films, The Twonky ( from a short story by Kuttner and Moore, very much SF fan based authors but disappeared into a hole), Orwell’s 1984 and When Worlds Collide (mainstream SF from the early 30s) and that pretty much does it. The statement remains, SF writers cannot in any real sense be attached to the vast majority of films from the 50s and what few were either had their work gutted or had a writing credit that in no way reflected their own work. What’s the total, 10% but with almost 0% transferred over from genre SF into film? How is The Thing in any sense like “Who Goes There” or borrowed imagery from the actual story “Farewell to the Master” which was, again, a minor and ignored work by Bates that is most certainly not in that film.
The point is this: where is the brilliance, nuance and sophistication of “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954) by Alfred Bester or anything that comprised the real work of Bradbury and Heinlein?
Where is anything remotely like “The Weapon Shop” (1942) A.E. Van Vogt, “Mars Is Heaven (1948) Ray Bradbury, “The Little Black Bag”, “The Marching Morons” (1950-51), C.M. Kornbluth, the bright vision of “Coming Attraction” (1950) Fritz Lieber, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”, “Vintage Season (1943 and 46) Kuttner/Moore, “With Folded Hands” (1947) Jack Williamson, “The Witches of Karres” (1949) by James Schmitz, “The Big Front Yard” (1958) Clifford Simak, “The Spectre General (1952) by Theodore Cosgwell and a lot more – there is nothing.
SF literature was years ahead of film in the 50s and films from that decade virtually ignored what was happening in SF from the inception of the SF pulps in the 20s to the end of the 50s. SF film from the 50s can honestly be said to be in no way a reflection of what real SF writers were doing at the same time; they contributed nothing and introduced nothing of their own literary genre into films of the 50s.
The less than a handful of interactions between film and genre SF writers brought nothing to the screen from SF literature and the two entities may as well have had a wall built between them. TV in the 50s, now that’s a different story entirely as it tended more towards the dreamy, literate side of SF from short stories.
As for Gattaca, it is a very bright SF film for an original screenplay. I count it as one of the finest SF films ever made. It has the nuance, unique problematic relationships between humans that can only arise from SF and a nice lack of giant spiders. In a very real sense it’s what SF is all about and draws heavily from literature for its inspiration. Falling Skies only wishes it was as good and original.
If you subscribe to any form of cable or satellite your money goes to support the progressive view. At least you can boycott the advertisers on the airwave broadcasts (until the FCC decides to ban that and make you buy government-supported cable).
You mean the 2nd Mass looking like a picture-perfect ‘diverse’ Democratic Party ad, while the actual military officer guy is written deliberately dumb/stubborn kinda redneck just to have friction with Wyle’s character and the human badguys were all white… those weren’t clues enough?
The PC racial diversity is particularly a fraud given they’re supposed to be from frickin *Boston* [the city whose segregation and visible friction I saw a few blocks from Harvard shocked me when I visited from *Alabama* 20 years ago. ]
No good. The 2 hour premier was not very promising. I had no desire to see more. I read the reviews on IMDB and they nearly all agreed with what I felt. The show is too contrived, nothing but a soap-fi. The aliens were unnecessary, just a backdrop for the family drama crud that was forefront. They rarely even showed the aliens, or anything about them, or explanations for anything they did.
And then we devolve into factions fighting each other, with that “outlaw”…sheesh, so contrived. He’s bad, then he’s good, then guess what, he’s going to be with us for a long time. Characters and plot were all straight out of a liberal-hollywood-formulaic-script-grinding-machine.
No thanks.
I’ve watched this series from the start and it’s okay. There’s a little too much TTB (typical television behavior) that simply infuriates me at times but I’m going to give it some leeway just until Walking Dead comes back in the fall.
You obviously didn’t watch the most recent episode. Dr. Anne kills the skitter in the cage. Previous to that, her dialogue includes her arguing that she studies the creature so that they can figure out how to beat them.
I’m not a huge fan of the show, but my wife likes it, and I was coincidentally watching the very episode you describe while reading this. I understand where you are coming from but did you watch the rest of the episode? Later on Dr. Anne sticks her hand down the skitter’s throat and kills it with her bare hands. Not exactly PC.
On one hand, I understand the concern …
On the other, ” ‘Can’t we all get along?’ character getting killed” is a Sci-Fi staple. See, e.g., “Minister gets vaporized”, War of the Worlds (the first one).
Hopefully, Anne learns “Going Rodney King” doesn’t work with skitters.
Ummm. Annie kills the skitter in the next episode so you don’t have much of a theory. She was studying the skitter for all the right reasons. Bottom-line is that the show will be good if the writing is interesting and distinctive.
You beat me to it. I was about to chime in with, yes, she does get “touchy” but not so “feely” with it, and definitely minus the hug. Her subsequent addition to the missing persons board is no whimpering plea, but an angry and defiant cri de coeur. I think I’ll stick around and see where this goes. In short, Mr. Moran… haha, they fooled you!
+++
Steven Weber?
Seriously, his presence alone would be reason enough not to watch this series.
I gave it a try for a couple of episodes, but I find Captain Weaver to be a ridiculous portrayal of a military man.
Well Anne dies kill the skitter before the end fo the episode, and it could go to the basic story arc instead of being a sign of impending PCness. There are a few hints in the story arc that this is not the first contact between skitters and humans (how come the skitters use bipedal robots when they are quadrapeds, and what is the who deal with the harnesses). I strongly suspect that the story arc contains some prehistoric connection between humans and skitters which will be discovered.
I don’t have cable at the moment, but I can see your point about going PC. In fact, in the situation you describe the human race in, there’s going to have to be asymmetrical warfare (see Iraq, Vietnam) and that means getting to know the enemy, their weak points and appealing to their Jane Fondas, George Clooneys and Sean Penns.
Endgame: You copy their products and sell back to them cheaper than they can build them.
I don’t trust Spielberg. A story about people surviving, and overcoming, an overwhelming invasion from space simply won’t be big enough a story for him.
No, the aliens will really be here to save us, or are us, or somehow humans are responsible for the aliens invading in the first place…out of self defense.
Please. Any show that has a major character whose REAL name is Moon Bloodgood (!!!) is going to be swayed by her to become pc and touchy feely. Add Turner, Noah Wylie and Speilburg, and before you know it the “Skitters” will be renamed “Skittles”, wear nifty neon colored t shirts, and be guest staring on Sesame Street.
There have been endless “alien invasion” shows on TV. It’s been done to death.
And I don’t want to watch any more of them.
The British Open is one this weekend. I hope my TV still works. I haven’t tested it in weeks. Hollywood is a communist outpost, one of the few left. It was so funny when they were shocked at the success of Forrest Gump.
Can anybody say Jericho? Come on…I know you can. In a world full of Islamic terrorism the only enemy they could come up with is white, Dick Cheney types.
And I’ll turn this one off just as fast.
On June 26th on the basis of two episodes I wrote on my blog:
My nits from the beginning of this one… Child psych… They have the kids (the kid) seeming the least able to adjust to this terrifying new world. This seems unlikely and unsupported by both anecdote and History. But it does provide a chain-jerking intro to the facts of events. I found it annoying.
The hero… a History professor with an interest in military History. Nothing wrong with that. Enter the military which, naturally, disparages military History. Oh, noes! Not another “military people are autocratic and incurious” stereotype! And it’s actually made somewhat worse by what seems to be efforts to show the military leadership as more or less right, which means someone is *trying* to be fair… right or not, they [the military] are still incurious and autocratic.
Oh comeon guys. ‘The Librarian’ is the star actor on this show so I no doubt it will become a left wing PC show.
And that is why I don’t watch it.
I pine for the days of Firefly!
It’s produced by Spielberg? Ugh, next.
Calling him “liberal” is a slur on liberals. Star Trek is liberal – heck, it’s communist – but even commies are capable of moving beyond the Same Damn Plot Aesop that infuses everything guys like Spielberg and James Cameron touch.
I’ll give even money that the aliens were brought here by a military contractor corporation to start a war for profit.
Given the fact that the good doctor Glass killed the alien in question by reaching into its mouth and shoving a scalpel into its brain with her bare hand in the last episode, no, I don’t think it’s drifting Lefty . . . yet.
And yes, I too miss Firefly and hope the people responsible for its cancellation suffer in the special hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
Could be worse, could be _Jericho_.. “Let’s have the baddies be Blackwater, who framed poor innocent mooslums! Yeah, that makes sense!!!”
Just looking at the endless promos before this thing debuted made me pretty sure it was going to be a Grade-A crapfest. Based on the comments above it is apparently even worse than I thought it was going to be. Moon Bloodgood is a damn fine-looking woman and a capable actress. I’ve enjoyed her work elsewhere. But I won’t be watching her in this misbegotten thing. I’m getting quite annoyed with witless producers who hire splendid-looking ladies and stick them in serialized dreck. “You can only see (fill in the babe-a-licious babe of your choice) if you watch my crummy show!” they seem to be saying. Sorry, Bub – no sale.
It lacks a cowardly commie like Dr. Smith. Someone who keeps trying to run out of the cave and yell, “We’re here! We’re here!” He just knows if he surrenders the aliens will treat them right and that it’s all some kind of misunderstanding based on a lack of dialogue and lack of trust on the part of human who jump to conclusions when they’re enslaved, just like Africans did in colonial America.
Loved Firefly, really loved Babylon 5.
I had hoped it would be good (needing a new S/F series after “V” was cancelled) – right away in the Pilot it was a dead giveaway the show was going to SUCK HARD when it became obvious it would concentrate on “the children” as obsessively as it has. At best it’s “War of the Worlds” (the modern remake, not the old one) made for the small screen.
I’m still watching it. But it’s like Old Faithful – it both sucks and blows at the same time. It can only get worse. Morbid curiousity keeps me tuning in but each episode is worse than the last.
I QQ moar that Firefly had no chance.
I am going to give it a little more time. Someone was smart enough to have the main character know the difference between a clip and a magazine plus, Dale Dye is involved so hopefully they will enlist his military knowledge. I sure do miss Firefly though!
I gave an episode and a half…..it committed the cardinal sin worse than going PC. It got boring. I struggled to watch the second half of episode two and just gave up because I really didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. It was either so cliche as to not be surprised or too boring to care.
Some series start slow and catch on. Others never get off the ground. This one just ended up being a total borefest.
The above article mentions that she kills it.
I didn’t see that episode (already gave up on the show) but the important part isn’t if she kills it or not, but if she learned anything.
I also take issue with which ideas get put in which character’s mouths as much as what eventually happens with those ideas.
Consider the first group of human bad guys they meet. The “good” guys (wasn’t it Mason?) invite the bad guys to join the group to kill aliens (think “Rocketeer” were the mobster turns on the nazi spy, no question) and to have a better chance of survival. But the bad guys are so utterly stereotypically bad guys, and trapped in the romance of fatalism, that what they’d prefer is to enjoy the freedom to be as bad as possible for as long as it lasts. No loyalty to humanity, no common human desire for survival. The minions are killed off and the leader, who we accept is still evil but smarter than the sub-human minions, is left alive. But wasn’t at least one person in the 2nd killed by his order? But the “good guys” are going to keep him alive to be a thorn in their side?
This was a story choice, and a bad one. A better story choice would have been for the bad-guy AND his minions to be the ones to suggest joining forces. They are human after all and what is there to chose? But this “good” idea, this tolerant attitude, could never have come out of a “bad” person’s mouth. It had to come out of the “good” person’s mouth.
Studying the aliens, attempting to talk to them, even attempting to reason with them, isn’t a bad idea. It is an obvious idea, no matter how slim a chance to work, it’s important to know more. The military leader should have been pushing for this, not the doctor. The military leader should have insisted on an organization that included the civilians and reporting chains and responsibility so that if anyone has a thought about a problem or solution it will reach the decision makers. But no. The military leadership didn’t do this, the civilians have to work around the obstacles. Because all of the *good* ideas have to be in certain mouths. The military is incurious and autocratic. The human bad-guys can’t even tell what would be a good situation for themselves, they are just too evil and stoopid.
It’s not just that this show is likely to slide into progressive ideology, it’s built into the *structure* of the show.
And it’s not a surprise to anyone.
I usually crank my libdar way down for scifi TV series, especially after BSG season 3, but I have to agree that the episode with the Aryan Bikers was pretty egregious. I’m willing to overlook some of the more hard scifi mistakes as long as they can make the storyline semi-believable, but that one sucked hard.
In the latest episode what struck me wasn’t PC treatment of the Skitter prisoner, but the way the Skitter treated it’s human charges in the hospital. Alien Tenderness? WTF?
And Firefly: hell yeah!
stargate universe, gone.
v, gone.
even blade, with jill wagner…mmm, gone.
bsg, gone after season two. the other seasons were just a cruel torture.
caught fallen skies…painful.
I’m another one of those who discovered Firefly only after it was cancelled and I’m particularly upset I missed the Marathon of the 4th of July. No longer a big fan of Speilberg but I thought his series from 3 or so years ago “Taken” was pretty damn good. I rarely hear it mentioned…
It has taken some of you this long to figure out that Falling Skies is crap? Seriously?
I mean you couldn’t figure that out from the pilot where the Genocidal Aliens in their aircraft (that can deliver air to ground ordnance) completely ignores the streaming column of humanity leaving Boston, ignores all the heat sources at night from the rebel camp and the hot engine of the caddy, but pops a high tech heat seeking missile at a road flare. Are you kidding me?
Over on a board run by a SF publishing house the professional SF authors were making fun of the thing because it was so bad.
I had my suspicions when TV Guide said the military man (“dogmatic and wound too tight”) would get into conflict with the professor (the intellectual hero).
Firefly is way over rated. Granted it has interesting characters and witty dialog but everything else is drek. Space western chic? A guild of whores who are revered by average colonists? Another evil empire? Psychotic, bestial Reavers who somehow can maintain and fly spaceships?
Geez, Starwars had a more believable back story.
Firefly was sci-fi fantasy. Those who enjoyed it accepted it as such. I also enjoyed Lord of the Rings for the very same reason. Firefly is no less enjoyable to watch than Star Trek and Captain Kirk and appeals to the boy in me – the dreams never realized of exploring far worlds.
I fell asleep watching the pilot. ‘Nuff said.
The problem with B5 is getting over the hump of the genuinely awful 1st season. I caught it occasionally over the first two seasons but did not become engaged until “War without End” in season 3. After that it was must-see TV. I was up to episode 7 of S1 a couple of weeks ago when Netflix pulled it from the Streaming queue.
Where’s the Farscape love? I’m now in the middle of my annual Farscape rewatch.
I, too, miss our big damn heroes.
I think a lot of people are so expecting it to suck, that they are not seeing some balance that actually is there:
The pre-teen kids are taught to learn biology, in part to figure out how to kill the skitters.
Anne has already been discussed killing the skitter. Note the reason she did it right then is to give the fighters the information they need to kill skitters as they are about to enter the hospital to get Ben. In other words, human life is more important than other biological forms (such as snail darters).
Lastly, how un-PC can you get with what was shown at the end of episode “Silent Kill”, with many in the camp joining hands and praying to God? At this point the character of Lourdes seems to be there mainly to explore faith in this environment. Yes, I do expect future episodes where faith is challenged, but at this point they are treating actual Christian religion in a balanced way. This almost never happens.
For these reasons, I am looking past some show’s weaknesses. The first episode did not grab onto your attention as well as BSG or Lost, but I think it deserves some attention. If for nothing else, than to ensure future shows have a chance to be made.
I have to agree with Mark — there is balance, if not a slight skew to the conservative. A couple more things to add is that they portray a young teen as a reliable fighter and the importance of family bonds. To say this show is going in PC territory is way too premature.
The show admittedly is getting off to a slow start, but it seems to be picking up steam, like many other successful shows. I have to say that I’m being pulled in. I usually try to weigh a show by the season, not by the first two or three episodes that are building the situation and characters.
As a side note, according to Wikipedia, the show has already been picked up for another season of 10 episodes. Hopefully we’ll see it mature into a must-watch series.
Falling Skies will not, I believe, last beyond next June. It’s not science fiction in any meaningful sense: it doesn’t e.g. show how scientific beliefs and/or technological changes affect human character and social norms.
It’s just a soap opera, a character study of people who have no character. If it does last, I foresee a long, dreary series where humans win occasional battles (but never the war; if that happened, they’d have to end it) and engage in cliched discussions of the morality of war. If I might make a suggestion, why not show this as a “last stand” type of story: say, the humans keep losing, keep dwindling in number, and (like the American Indian tribes) try to face their imminent extinction. Or, the show could follow the story line of Pellegrino-Zebrowski’s “The Killing Star”, where the remnants of humanity, their people nearly exterminated by xenocidal aliens, decide to adopt hatred and revenge rather than love and forgiveness as their dominant morality. Please, do something different.
farscape was fantastic.
88 episodes…
how many did firefly have?
wiki has it as 14. to hear of it, one would think that a number was missing.
still, nathan fillion got to be lead voiceover in halo. must have made someone a believer. (even the monkees has 58 episodes.)
Firefly is 14 episodes of distilled sci-fi goodness. Mind you, these were to be merely the first 14 episodes of an entire series. Many genre shows take at least that long to even start getting good.
The entire reason for its failure lies at the feet of FOX. Not only was it managed completely ineptly (the pilot was aired way late, and episodes were aired out of order), but they decided to air this funky new property (what, a space western?) against a new Star Trek series.
Just so you know, its DVD sales were so good, just from word-of-mouth, that it got a full-length feature movie.
But FOX has a history of dumb decisions. Even Family Guy and Futurama were canceled at one point.
Falling skies lost me. Really, how completely shell-shocked would people be if nearly 75% or more of everyone they knew was killed? And they are next…. The entire concept of “fighters” and “civilians” in the story is beyond stupid. Everyone would be in such a survival mode that they would make Spartan society look warm and cuddly. Ask the French at Dien Bien Phu how humanitarian the Vietnamese were… oh wait, they were nearly all killed. But that was Ok – the French were “invaders” – oh wait, I thought the skidders were invaders, maybe they are here to save the earth from evil people…..
Poppycock.
“We’re just not on the same wavelength” is a perfectly reasonable plot element for a sci-fi show. There’s no reason the writers have to press a conservative narrative, “the enemy is irredeemably evil and must be killed,” instead of the liberal one you describe. The writers should concentrate on making the plot interesting and the characters worthy of emotional investment.
Any resemblance to a political narrative is beside the point, and neither good nor bad in itself.
ALright Nathan, let’s leave the PC to the side then and go.
This thing is unbearable.
The teenage motorcyler scouts – on dirt bikes – in love
getting gas and spare parts from?
then again, what’s there to scout? the skit populate MA like video game villians. Hanging out, waiting to suprise you in a warehouse? It’s an invasion, right? Dont they have places to be?
…like constantly flying over the streams of resistance fighters and not straffing them? Or calling in fire? Have the writers ever looked out the window of an airplane and noticed how painfully obvious everything on the ground is? And don’t even get me started on the coming winter.
And slave labor? Does anyone here get how mind-bogglingly inefficient that is? Making their food (human food that they have no idea how to prepare), storing it, moving it to the slaves, feeding them, treating them from the immediate ailments they’d have after about 3 days of living in thier own filth? And children? moving scap iron? WTF?
It’s why it’ll have to be, must be, no way around it, ‘PC’. There’s no other reason for creating such a ridiculous contruct.
I watched the 82 min. pilot – I thought it was boring. People talking so they wouldn’t have to use special effects money. They’re aliens, they might as well have been Russians. There is no SF in this other than technically. It seems devolved to an older, less imaginative style of writing. Frankly, the people who wrote this really didn’t have anything to say. I thought the casting was what was PC.
If you want to deal in stereotypes, make it work for you. It would’ve been more interesting to see enclaves reacting to the peril in a Wall St, college campus, poor neighborhood, suburban and rich neighborhood, all multiple story lines that could converge with lessons learned from their previously insulated existence.
Let me see some armed cholos or some college, yoga doofus walking up to them with a white flag like the priest in the old “War of the Worlds.”
I think you either love this show or hate it. A lot of people don’t seem to get it but I think it’s really good. I understand not every week can be action packed but with decent characters like John Pope and Maggie it keeps me entertained between the CGI effects.
I’ve been watching the pilot episode online since I managed to miss the first 3, and figured I’d continue on cable. I can’t get into it and don’t really like most of the actors themselves – now I know why so I’ll skip the rest. We own “Firefly” and “Serenity” and still watched a bunch of the marathon over the holiday weekend. Great characters, great writing. I still miss “Earth: Final Conflict” even though we own it all. Skip the last and 5th season – drek. Waiting impatiently for the new season of “Fringe.”
They did the same thing with the fabulous show “Lie To Me”.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/17185-Lie-To-Me-The-tale-of-a-lefty-plan-thwarted.html
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I tend to believe that Hollywood can’t let a decent series remain decent, but rather feels compelled to turn anything popular into propaganda. To cite one example, Mad Men was quite good for about half a season, when its emphasis was depicting life from the early 1960s FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of people of the early 1960s. But very quickly, it became progressive-liberal hand-wringing about the plight of gays and women and minorities. That is, it focused solely on the issues that would matter today to DailyKos.
Made it through the first 30 minutes before giving up…PC has killed TV.
Exactly the same thing happened to Boston Legal, rendered, for me, unwatchable in its latter seasons.
You want to break Hollywood’s grip on the culture? Want to teach them a lesson?
STOP WATCHING THE F**KING TV AND GOING TO F**KING MOVIES.
How hard is that?
For dumb@ss Americans, evidently pretty effing hard.
I would like to see someone like Johnny Ringo be producer to a TV sci-fi show. Bring the Posleen horde to TV, and I would so be there…
My problem with the show is that it’s incredibly stupid.
These invader aliens seem to lurk in warehouses alone for the sole purpose of popping out and scaring people. They’re not in tight communication with one another, so you can kill one off without alerting a horde of others.
They sleep under bridges.
It’s an invasion by homeless people!
They have machines and energy sources beyond our ken but they employ children to haul crap around.
But if all this can be explained by some alien pscyhology, the human behaviors can’t. Captured a dangerous alien? Let’s quarter it by our two doctors with no sentry. Doctors after all are cheap and plentiful, no danger of losing a valuable resource — whoops.
Rather than teach his (nine year old?) kid to use a gun–in the midst of an apocalyptic alien invasion–Noah Wylie says, soulfully, “He deserves a childhood!”
Yeah? And I deserve a spongebath from Mila Kunis! Think of my hideousness and lack of personal hygeine like an alien invasion: It prevents me from getting what I deserve. And if I proceed anyway, results in restraining orders and jail time.
Which is still better than what would happen to a kid who can’t defend himself.
How many people does Noah Wylie’s character have to see die before he grasps that self-defense might be important, even if guns are so, so nasty?
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Wow – so much hate for “entertainment”…
I like FS well enough. There are certainly holes in the plot large enough to drive a space cruiser for…
Here they have children picking up scrap metal, walking past dead vehicles. HELLO!!! Are the dead vehicles not made of metal?
I don’t find the thought of bad guys continuing to be bad after the SHTF all that unbelievable. They already prey on humanity, what makes anyone think they would have any humanity after an alien invasion? They had no problem killing skitters, but they would want to be on top of any organization.
Firefly had 14 episodes filmed. Only 11 were aired by Fox. They even broadcast the pilot last instead of first.
Then they replaced it with a generic cops and robbers show that didn’t last either (big selling point for the initial episode was that the drug smugglers were naked women with machine guns).
#28 – Kevin Baker
“Given the fact that the good doctor Glass killed the alien in question by reaching into its mouth and shoving a scalpel into its brain with her bare hand in the last episode, no, I don’t think it’s drifting Lefty . . . yet.”
Actually, it already is lefty. Dr. Glass’s little paroxysm of skittercide was out of character and bizarre. The script “explained” it afterward with her point that she had nothing left — no mementos — from the family the skitters had killed. We’re supposed to believe she rose up and killed the big bug because her anguish had been building up in her. But nothing about her character made that logical or likely.
Realistically, Moon Bloodgood wouldn’t have killed the skitter. If the screenwriters knew anything about people pulling together in extreme circumstances, they’d know that Noah Wylie would eventually have had it killed under Will Patton’s orders. Patton gave him 24 hours; Wylie might have wangled 24 more, but he would have done what Patton said to in the end. In a situation like that postulated in Falling Skies, everything falls apart without leadership and discipline. Annoyance at leaders who aren’t as ambivalent as you are is actually pretty boring, in terms of drama, and in a survival situation it’s group suicide to make it your priority. The Noah Wylie character hasn’t been written to operate like an out-of-control 14-year-old. He’d suck this one up and do what Patton told him to.
Having Moon Bloodgood kill the skitter came off like a cheap plot device to avoid putting Wylie’s character in that situation: having to execute an order he didn’t like from the redneck. It’s a cop-out, and one characteristic of the left. It has been interesting to watch Falling Skies as a sort of documentary of the hollowness of the cultural left’s philosophy. It’s been PC from the beginning.
I thought they made it pretty clear that the aliens will turn out to be just the last-conquered slave race, rather than the overlords. So, yes, they’re building sympathy with them b/c they’ll be allies in the resistance.
Watched the Falling Skies pilot. They began a migration. I told the wife, “It’s Battlestar Galactica with SHOPPING CARTS!” Won’t waste my time on it anymore.
I heard from a friend that Spielberg has the largest gun collection in CA, and remember he did Saving Private Ryan. I think hes is Liberal but still Jewish enough to remember Fascism’s evils. And he appreciates our military!
I was encouraged by previews because it seemed that finally someone was sticking a crowbar in his wallet and springing for some SFX in order to give us aliens who look like aliens. The aliens-masquerading-as-humans schtick is incredibly boring. But now I have to remember that in the Steven Spielberg universe, aliens are always the misunderstood good guys and the American government is always the bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel, alien-dissecting bad guy. Not getting my hopes up.
In a good alien movie, the character who suggests “Let’s try to find out what it wants” should eventually find out that it wants to eat your brain.
So hopefully a copy of “How To Serve Humans” will show up being toted by some skitter, eventually….
Other than the basic premise of aliens occupying earth, “FS” is not so much sci-fi as it is a COIN (counterinsurgency) story strategically, and a father/son(s) story, tactically–and since I teach COIN, have always been fascinated by post-apocalyptic scenarios, and have sons myself I find it interesting.
I’ve tried to watch “Firefly” but find it boring–I’m just not simpatico with those of you who belong to that cult.
I agree that “Babylon 5″ might be the best sci-fi series ever–rivaled only by “Deep Space 9″ which, while set in the Trek universe, was far grittier and believable than any of the other Trek shows.
I love “Falling Skies” as others note, Dr. Moon Bloodgood studies the skitter to learn how to kill them – and does so in a very intense vengeance-filled manner. Studying your enemy is one of Professor Noah Wylie’s lessons.
I find it fascinating to follow the resistance survivors who happen to be from Cambridge, Mass. Wylie is turning into the ultimate smart insurgent – ever more like Mel Gibson’s butcher of Fort Wilderness in “The Patriot”.
So what if “Falling Skies” is recycled “Independence Day” with zero air force?
Beats all the reality-TV and cable news that is soooo boring.
You display built-in prejudice just because they are from Cambridge, Mass and so far, surviving in JFK high school. You could have exactly the same plot and characters from a “conservative” bastion, and would never accuse a series of PC.
If only “Justified” had a primetime slot for years, but at least “NCIS” is still uber-tv.
It’s simple folks, Hollywood ses everything as Iraq and the WoT with the aliens run by a bug called GW Bush.
The aliens are High tech American forces with aviation assets like Apache gunships and jets fighters and the people of earth are the Iraqi’s and the Muslim’s being persecuted by the world. It’s the old “we have met the enemy and he is us meme” If an alien has the tech to cruise light years to get here why do they have so much trouble eradicating earthlings? Have they not heard of gas? Bio weapons? and why if so High tech do they need slave labor?
As in the movie V there will be kinder, gentler aliens who are multicultural and would love to just cuddle with Humans and have a beer summit.
I could see this in the first 15 minutes.
I live in the town of Acton, Ma. I wish that whoever wrote the episodes had studied a map or knew something about the town before the scripts were completed. The use of place names and orientation of locations is just crazy. Three obvious examples from the pilot. Littleton is west of Acton. No way you would come to a Littleton Bridge (which doesn’t exist) on your way from Boston to Acton. They could have very easily said the Sudbury River bridge and that would make sense. There is no Kennedy School in Acton (Douglas, Conant, Gates, Merriam, McCarthy-Towne, Blanchard Jr. High School and the Acton-Boxboro Regional High School). Acton does not have an armory.
Seems pretty good so far.
Since the second season is likely already written, we’ll have to wait and see… or not…
Good comments, (mostly) all!
@DGS, Some mistakes might be intentional. Being too specific could help enable wackiness–But, I understand how you feel.
Spelt is my current fave flour! Love it!