The 2nd mass is back to basics, bringing the ground fight back to the aliens as much as possible. We got skitter action and overlord scenes in the season 5 premiere which in previous years they didn’t spend the budget on showing both as much as they did this time. We setup the story for season 5 with the new alien race running Tom’s decisions and ended the episode with a bug of some kind which will end up playing a role down the road. We also made more use of the Volm’s tech to find and destroy Espheni tech. This episode was not light on action, and its good that the season started hitting the ground running. However, one of the long running issues with the show was its back and forth diving into the mythology of the aliens and the harnesses, which we will explore below.
Season 1 and 2 were in my opinion the best seasons of Falling Skies. They are what made the show unique with the plot lines about the aliens harnessing children and changing them and the consequences of those changes. Including the ugly skitter creatures which were the things of your nightmares. However, the constant change in show-runners and writers have led to large story plots being abandoned. I can only hope we revisit them in the 5th season but here are a few that bother me the most.
At the end of season 1 the Espheni commented on the importance of Ben and the fact that the harness process for him and for Karen were different. A cut scene from season 1 where Hal goes on a mission to save Ben, Hal runs across a bloody room where the skitters experimented on the children, killing several, as they learned how to successfully control the children. This scene was cut and was never shown on screen. As we went into the second season, Ben went down an angry path that included letting Karen lure him away from the 2nd mass and back to an overlord who wanted him harnessed again. Clearly there was a reason more than trying to figure out the skitter rebellion that Ben was now in the middle of but that story was quickly ended after his rescue and their escape from the hospital. The aliens threw a few new tricks at the 2nd mass in the form of mini spider like creatures and the overlords showed Tom how they could tap into the spikes that Ben and other harnessed kids had and use them as a way to manipulate and control them. Also in season 2, the near harnessing of Matt Mason gave us a small glimpse into what Ben went through, as evident by Ben’s emotional state at the sight of having to go into a harness factory again and seeing the pool of harnesses.
Neither Ben or Karen exhibited the same transformation that the other kids did and it was clear they were chosen as ‘overlord harness’ kids whom were slightly different from the others. In fact during several of our interviews on the set of Falling Skies for season 2, then show-runner Remi Aubuchon and director Greg Beeman spoke about how the harness scene for Ben would have played out on-screen. There was even a comic between seasons that shows Karen being harnessed, in which it was also commented that Ben was treated the same way. At the start of season 2 we also got to see how Ben’s back had progressed as the transformation continued to some degree and after the harness factory scene with Matt, the writers left that on the cutting room floor and it was never explored further. The fact that the overlords could tap into Ben’s mind with the spikes seems like a rather dangerous issue for the 2nd mass but it was brushed off and never fully looked at.
In season 3, Denny ended up being a balancing force for Ben and together they the harness effects were talked about and explored slightly but then forgotten as neither wanted to lose the powers they had in the fight against the aliens. The introduction of the Volm and their technology changed the pace of the war in the favor of the 2nd mass and offered a chance to better understand what the Espheni were doing with the children of earth. The skitter rebellion continued in season 3 to some extent but as the Espheni began to torture some of the skitters those in their ranks were found and killed leaving the entire effort all but lost by the end of the 3rd season. However, a new hybrid was found in the form of Tom and Anne’s new baby girl Lexi. After finding out that Lourdes was infected with eye worms and was the one who assassinated the president, the season ended with Lexi using her powers to remove the eye worms from Lourdes thus saving her. Season 3 proved to be very empty for the mythology started in season 1 and 2 but started a new one with the Volm. We got the biggest backstory of any of the alien races with the Volm, even more then what we learned about the skitters in the previous season.
In Season 4 we again very lightly touched on the fate of those harnessed like Ben and the aliens continued efforts to change humanity, with the above scene between Ben and Lexi. Here Lexi tries to convince Ben that this method of evolution was the path towards peace. After everything he had been through, he wasn’t about to accept that. However, yet again the writers let it go and don’t revisit it accept at the very end of the season in the form of ground harnesses attempting to trap and change everyone in the 2nd mass. We also had scenes in season 4 where Ben was seen being injured when the overlord he was connected with was hurt. Now Tom can shoot the alien in the head and nothing happens to Ben? Did we forget about that scene in season 4?
Everything that made this a genre,alien show and everything that made this so unique has been minimized as the different show runners came in and shifted directions on the story. It is not too late for the writers to go back to the story lines they started in the first few seasons and explore them and complete them before it’s all over. Each season dabbled in the alien mythology from the Volm, to the skitters and the harnesses but never spent enough time to give you a deep dive into any of their history.
The mythology of the harnesses, skitters, the Espheni Overlords and the history of the war between all of them and the Volm were key story elements that made the show so different from other attempts at alien based shows on TV. The fact that Falling Skies was airing on a broadcast channel, not a genre channel like Syfy, was unique in its own right. The writers for season 5 have a lot to wrap up and it is our hope that some of the mythology that the writers in the beginning started are brought to some level of conclusion in the final season.
As we enter the fifth season, the number of people around Ben has continued to drop. Starting with Ricks death in season 2 along with Jimmy. Then the death of the rebel skitter leader ‘redeye’. Now Denny is dead, you have to wonder if Ben will go back down a dark path and what that could mean for the 2nd mass. We also have to wonder if the feud between Cochise and his father will continue to inhibit their ability to aid the 2nd mass in fighting the Espheni as it still appears the main Volm force has left earth and has yet to return. The espheni were on earth attacking humanity long before the power core came around, so while the power core did reduce their ability to use larger forms of tech like Mega Mechs, it shouldn’t have stopped them from using standard Mechs and skitters as they had done in seasons past. There is still a lot of unanswered questions about the Espheni’s initial reason for invasion, the Volms true backstory with the Espheni, the fate of all those captured and harnessed and the introduction of this mysterious third race of aliens. Who will survive and what will be left of humanity?
