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Falling Skies - 5 minute sneak peek (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZiXTcbYB6A)


Anyone else watch this?  The pilot double episode had some problems, it repeated the history professor background too much, the female characters all seem too attractive and the human baddies seemed unbelievably dim.  But it has potential with the post apocalyptic, alien/zombie invasion plot.

Oh there's a webcomic preview too http://www.tnt.tv/series/fallingskies/webcomic/

As long as it doesn't go all Battlefield Earth on us, it might be worth a watch.

I finished watching the two-parter intro episode last night. I liked it. The only real hitch I see is that I like the human villain characters (Pope and Maggie) more than any of the other sympathetic characters. But it didn't suck.

Streaming somewhere?

It wasn't bad at all.  The scene with the kid and the dog was a bit... :uhrr:

Other than that, it could be cool.  The bad guy leader seems to trend towards a future leader type where he turns from a way of a gang leader to a redeemable character.

Thought it was pretty boring for an invasion show.  Hated ALL the character (cept for the villian) and would rather the aliens win for once.  Prob won't watch again.

I thought all the characters were pretty cool except for the older son and the kid with a rifle.

Good to see that Steve Jobs' look-a-like can still get work. :awesome_for_real:

Hopefully the sci-fi part of this show ramps up somewhat quick.  I understand not wanting to go all-out on the pilot episode so maybe you'll attract a general audience, but if all this is going to be is "Which devastated town are we gonna see this week?", I think we're done with syndicated sci-fi on cable television, and Fringe S4 can't get here quick enough.

When the only difference between "civilian" and "military" seems to be the willingness to pick up a gun the civilian bitching is going to get old extremely fast.  If a history professor, a little kid and a cheerleader type can fight then so can you whiny bitches.

The Librarian (http://www.tnt.tv/movies/librarian/) in a Si-fi show.

It was OK, seemed to try to be in the vein of the walking dead, but came off more of a family time show. Still, I enjoyed science fiction being on air. Ill let it have a few more episodes.

Those people were far too happy for an Earth that had the majority of it's population wiped out. 

Also the skateboard product placement was beyond painful.

Turned it on, saw a little kid complaining about a birthday party, turned it off.

Well, I rushed a crap in order to keep watching so I think it held my interest.  If it stays more family than sci-fi I might bail though.  It comes on a bit late too (dvr broke).  Noah Wylie does a good job and I like the Pope character like too.  He's the Sawyer of Wylie's Jack.  I don't know, it could go south but I'm interested for now.

It's not bad but it would be a million times better without that damn kid.

That is an awesome metric!

I like it so far. I don't think it'll last, but I like it.

They really need to send some of the unkillable main characters and disposeable black men to rescue the hot scout or this show is gonna get a lot less interesting.

Watched this past week's episode last night. I must say, I'm becoming mellow with Noah Wylie, Action Geek. I dug the whole "Yeah, I beat this fucker myself. What about it?" vibe. Pope is still my favorite character. The kids, though... yeah, the kids are getting really fucking annoying.

Pope seems to be the only one trying to make this thing believable, but then I guess that's just how his character rolls.

We need to get through this 'save the kids' plot quick and move onto some decent matter.  If they made harnessed kids so expendable by being harnessed in the first place, what's the point of spending resources to save them?

It's Battlestar Galactica, except there's no fancy schmancy spaceships, they gotta walk! Uphill! Both ways! And it's not the good Galactica so we're stuck with Boxy and his Daggit.

Agreed, except the main cast is lacking in numbers and talent.  If they expanded it a bit, maybe show us some stuff happening around the world...would give it some depth or something.

Last night showed the typical inevitability we been expecting...

- Pope escaped
- Pope indirectly screwed over Steve Jobs' stand-in and crew
- Crazy dad of harnessed kid goes ape-shit
- Aliens are (still) assholes.
- Douche doctor is (still) a douche

This would have worked much better if they went the predator II route and the aliens deliberately kept people alive to allow them the chance to earn respect as warriors or some shit.  It's pretty stupid but they seem to stuck in a plot line that ultimately leads to the aliens retreating due to a virus (War of the Worlds) or, as SurfD said, monkeys learning to fly spaceships (Battlefield Earth).  This thought has rather put me off watching and I haven't viewed the latest episode yet.

Kids are ok in these things as long as they don't make it to being considered as part of the cast.  Once they are always there, I suffer from the Wesley Crusher death wish.

Edit typo

I like the show better if it could juggle more than 2 plotlines, or better yet write better dialogue. As it stands, its a ok show when I'm not watching shit else. I really don't see how the aliens beat all of us, the mechs can be blown up by c4, and skitters can be hurt by small arm fire, and run around naked at that. There ships seem to go boom if hit directly by a rocket. I mean shit, the fing taliban would wreck there shit night and day.

I think that is a general issue with the 'alien apocalypse' trope; finding a compelling explanation for how the aliens can wipe out all the armies of the world, but fail to take out a few stragglers, seems to have been elusive. I do not think I have ever seen a show or film which resolves this in a particularly satisfying way.

They used giant EMPs or some shit, shut down all our shit. Seems like we still should've been able to take them though. Almost done with this, too much retarded family drama. Unless religious chick goes all The Mist on us this is just one predictable cliche after another.  If they are setting this up for a "god did it" BSG ending I rather not stick around.

Sane openly christian character has to go bugged eyed anti science cult leader to make this show interesting? lolz. I say world of the worlds was believable, apparently space faring race comes down to earth wrecks our shit but forgets the antibiotics. But lets be honest, if we were capable of space flight, traveled to a breathable world, and that world just happened to have "equivalents" of food and water, we would not think twice about running around in shorts and jeans before we catch alien herpies.

The drama is well....errr i wouldn't even call it drama. The little kids a brat whose sole purpose is to show that our warrior poet isn't 100% infallible. Our older son is tolerable because he isn't busy saying "fuck you dad for not being there FUCK YOU!!!" in fact as far as family drama is concerned, if it was just the dad and the older son we would have a decent show. Its the little kid that derp derps the show into oblivion. I think some soccer mom finds him adorable or something.

It's what happens when you attach Spielberg to something, there has to be a god damn little kid.

It's not quite the same genre, but I thought WW-Z had a fairly good treatment of the entire issue of how you could suffer complete collapse of the military and society while still allowing people to fight back.

WW-Z solution was elegant, the "plague" happened in the WORST POSSIBLE COUNTRY for it to happen, China, who in their to zeal censor the existence of the plague basically driving the families of plague victims underground sending hundreds if not thousands of biobombs to every country on the planet.

There's the original V plot line as well, aliens have a resistance movement within them (also features in the Space Battleship Yamato movie) but in V they went one step further and had a half breed alien/human Messiah born.  I hate both of those.

I tried watching Dr Who and it's not for me but one episode had the aliens taking control of humans of one blood type, was an interesting idea, one blood type resistant to an alien created virus would work for me for a human survivor resistance plot.

I think they are going to make Noah Wylie's character the next G. Washington.  Lots of patriotic themes in the background.

Pretty enjoyable show overall.

Shows dam preachy. They spend way to much time on that crap.

Really enjoyed how the army guy is all "Your optimism is getting annoying" yet he lets faith girl slide.

NVM aliens shatter the myth, but surely she is either just crazy at this point, or just broken.

Why would the mere presence of aliens shatter the myth of religion and faith? It should certainly ALTER it, but it doesn't totally invalidate centuries of religious thought or faith in a higher being.

I love how the aliens have technology advanced enough to travel across the galaxy and easily defeat us but fight hand to hand.

I'm getting quite annoyed with the commercials showing all this awesome footage of the alien spaceships flying around and shit, along with glimpses into the events leading up to the invasion, and all we're seeing is a band of 'rebels' trying to keep civilians under control.

Ok, now a lot of you are just being nitpicky bitches.

NOW? As opposed to any other point in f13's history? Or the history of the Internet for that matter?

(http://images.dpchallenge.com/images_portfolio/0-4999/1024/800/Copyrighted_Image_Reuse_Prohibited_492356.jpg)

Yeah, now. And yes, I realize this is f13 and we're bitchy about everything here, but it's not usually this petty.

Pettiness is all we've got left. All our A material was coopted by comedy websites.

This past week's episode convinced me that they can walk a very fine line between smaltzy and kickass. Moon Bloodgood's breakdown at the board of kid's pics after she


really did it for me. And the creepy scene with


gave the whole thing a bit more of a sinister edge.

I'm just glad they finally rescued the damned kids and killed of cocky-sci-fi-doctor #5156.  Now that they spent their time establishing characters, can we move on to something more palpable?

Cocky and incompetent - he applied all of his brilliance to come up with the communication plan of 'show the alien two pictures, shout at him in English a bunch, then agitate him by showing him a body, and, uh, shout some more I guess'.

That wasn't incompetetance. That was frustration, anger and despair in the face of a situation he saw as the end of humanity with one of it's perpetrators in his capture.

Check out what people do in a minor car wreck then try to imagine something on this scale. Most folks simply cannot handle panic adversity of any sort.

Umm, yes, that was incompetence. How the hell is that supposed to ever lead to communication? His frustration, anger, and despair may be his motivation or excuse for not trying anything sensible, but there's simply no way that the nonsense he did would ever lead to communication. If someone is given a job, and does something that is just stupid and has no chance at working, they're incompetent at the job.


I've been in a car wreck, I didn't hold up two pictures to the other person and start shouting at them in a language they don't understand, then drag a dead dog out of the trunk to freak them out, then shout some more, then mock my passenger when he tried to show insurance information.

You're an idiot.

You think it's idiotic to call someone 'incompetent' at their job when they come up with a plan that obviously will never work and doesn't even make sense to begin with?

I never got the impression Dr. Harris gave two shits about communicating with the alien. He wasn't incompetent (ok, a little) so much as burned to the point of hating all things alien. He'd much rather have just chopped the thing up.

I'm fairly certain his job never entailed communicating with an alien species.

His job was to study them and learn as much about them as possible, which would include communication if possible, and he seemed to think communicating with them was his job on at least two occasions, when he held up pictures and when the kid put the harness back on. If his job really didn't involve communication, then he was demonstrating incompetence at doing his actual job by spending a bunch of time on communication and annoyance attempts. Under what plan of action would showing the dead body and going 'yep that annoyed it' be a sensible step? If he felt his job was just to find week points, the competent thing to do would be to strap it down and start poking, not hold up picures, shout, and show it a dead body.

And after watching last week's episode, FFS he got himself KILLED by the alien in a cage. Unless his job was to find a fancy way to commit suicide, letting the creature in the cage kill you qualifies as pretty gross incompetence whatever it was.

Just caught up with the last two eps.

"What gang you run with? Crips? Bloods? Slytherin?"

Fuckin' A. Pope, you funny little douchebag.

News flash: Researcher/Doctor during the end of the world looses his cool, compassion and common sense while examining alien being that invaded earth and killed millions. Bedside manner said to be lacking.

At this rate they are going to run out of disposable black men to show the seriousness of the situation very soon.

Eh, I'm sure we'll see the 6th Atlanta brigade come up from the deep south eventually  :grin:

Only two eps left this season, I think. And it looked like they set up his son for the season finale in that last scene.

Season finale next week, two parts both on the same night.

Watched this last Sunday's last night.

You mean we can use the alien bullets which are exactly like ours but way awesomer against them? BRILLIANT!

Its kinda more like the aliens are eco friendly murders.  :drill:
I mean seriously if your smart enough for space travel your smart enough to go green :drill:

You can't beat the (Mech) Metal. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6CPwu0I44)  :drill:

Seems like they are trying to make the aliens out to be garbage collectors/intergalactic junk men. Strip the planet of all usable materials, move on to the next one.

Why else would they come here? The polite, mentally stimulating conversation?

They're obviously Protheans.

I think the boost to the slave race population is the main reason for their arivial. Making use of native resources just makes sense as its less crap one has to cart from one world to the next.

Yea, the logistics of invading alien worlds can be a real bitch sometimes.
This season is ramping up nicely, I wasn't too sure about this after the first few eps but if they can make this finale work I'm sure I'll actually look forward to the next season.

That shot was  :uhrr:, i thought Tom was talking about taking a shot at the immobile structure not hitting a moving flyer hundreds of feet in the air.

Their reactions were amusing though both had that LOL wtf look after he hit the ship and it chain reacted.

Yeah, someone should have told the writers that RPG's are dumbfire rockets, not heat-seeking missiles. Still, it was a fun enough shot that I forgave them. This episode could have used a lot more pew pew boom boom and less gutwrenching human drama (particularly the 1-hour dickwaving contest in the first part of the finale) but overall, I liked it. I will definitely be watching it next summer.

That thing looked like you could bring it down by blowing up a single leg, two at the most.  And after all that build up not only do they fail miserably at even getting the bombs there, but we see absolutely nothing of the fight.

Nope, I'm done.  This show is fucking retarded.

Oh, hey, look at that.  Alcatraz gets canceled, Terra Nova gets the ax, No Ordinary Family gets hacked, and this is the one show that gets saved?

*sigh*.  So anyway, it's back.  Two hour season premiere was last night.

Did all the child actors die yet?

That one scene where they are about to torture the doctor lady and professor dude gives in? twice and episode every single episode next season, book it.

I liked the last few episodes, but the alien three-way may lead to some bad shit.

I enjoyed this season.  They expanded on their mythos and still kept a good focus on the characters.  Plus, Moon Bloodgood is gorgeous! 

She is just a little Super-Hawt, it's true.

I like this show, but it is so predictable. Like if you've ever seen a sci-fi invasion movie before, you know what's going to happen about 15 minutes before it ever happens, if not sooner. The 3rd faction looks cool, but we still don't even know what the first factions are doing there, much less a third ass-kicker faction.

Actually, all of the main women are cute, from Moon, to Jesus girl to "I'm a badass with a crush on clean cut American freedom fighter kid" girl.

My favorite was the scout chick who got captured and turned cartoony evil early in the first season :P

She's even more cartoony evil now. And she wants her man back.

My biggest problem with Falling Skies lies with me entirely. I was really hoping for a Band of Brothers style series about an Alien Invasion.

Beyond that, this show is just too loaded with bad writing. The whole last arc was filled with terribly written characters, including Terry O'Quinn.

It's not entirely you.  It's just a poorly written show with a silly, cliche-filled plot.  All cartoony-evil chick needs to do now is grow a nice long alien mustache to twirl.

LOOK, I DON'T HAVE TIME TO SCREW AROUND IN PHOTOSHOP OKAY.

Focusing more on family drama rather than alien invasion/dinosaurs/zombies is how they keep the budget under control, it was the same with Terra Nova and Walking Dead.  The problem is nobody gives a shit about their stupid family drama, specially when it involves little kids.

The difference with walking dead is that they HAD the budget, but AMC yanked a bunch of it away even though they made huge profits on the first season.

Also, zombie shit is always best when it's about the survivors and morality/humanity. The zombies are almost an abstract. I personally love drama... when it's written well. This is not. This a gaggle of shitty poorly written characters who shift personality to fit the scene.

Yeah. And stock sci-fi scenes mixed with gut-wrenching human drama.

I've seen worse, but it could be so much better.

The Walking Dead is all about the characters, even in the comics.  As a matter of fact, the Walking Dead title is in reference to the survivors and not the zombies.

Say what you like, but the Mech sound effects creep me the fuck out.

Since it's based on an actual cow sound (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_412HrvbDI) you might have bovinophobia. Maybe you can bring that up on the next doctor visit, just to make sure.

I doubt it.

Tho that youtube clip sounds nothing like how they sound when I watch.

Oddly.

Also, War of the Worlds horns were kinda creepy too.  I guess biomechs invading that have horns are going to bother me.

It's that low, bassy, rumbling moan. And yes, in real world circumstances, be they this or War of the Worlds, it would be absolutely horrifying. Especially since it's almost always a prelude to shit getting real.

The only thing I get from that is that aliens that have interstellar travel capability don't understand the concept of a muffler.

Don't need a muffler. That's not what the sound is for. It's purely psychological. At least I the case of Falling Skies, it's meant to make your less seasoned troops crack, shit their pants and break ranks.

The bagpipes of alien invasions?  :awesome_for_real:

Sorry, doesn't work for me.  Sounds like an enormous HERE WE ARE instead of something that's intimidating.

Well it's hard to hide a 14' tall mech, might as well give it a boss horn.

Especially when the footsteps sound like the cast of Stomp being gunned down.

The bagpipes of alien invasions that are fully capable of decimating your entire battalion while your bullets ping harmlessly off it's armor. Fuck yeah, that's intimidating.

Look at it this way, you're some medieval archer or some shit, that suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a goddamn M1 Abrams with the Dukes of Hazzard horn, or even a fucking ice cream truck jingle just after it put a couple of rounds of 120mm through your front line defense. Tell me you wouldn't be intimidated.

Until you discover how to make the magic bullets of alien mech armor penetration.   :why_so_serious:

Bagpipes, bugles and drums have a long tradition in warfare, but they were all largely used for communication.  Your cavalry charge bugles might intimidate the natives who've never heard it before the first time, but once they know it that particular advantage is lost and it only serves to give away your position and the element of surprise, which is why modern armies stopped using it once they developed better methods of communicating.  Now maybe I'm wrong and modern infantry/armor units use loud techno to scare the enemy, but somehow I doubt it.  The goofy hum in the show because some people think it sounds 'cool', not because it's practical or makes any real sense.  Much like most of the stuff in the show.

Don't forget the rebel yell.  There are plenty of examples of noise used as intimidation, and not communication, during warfare.

Oh, come on.  Billy Idol couldn't intimidate anyone, he was just a poser.  :why_so_serious:

You don't need loud drums when we have really big and really loud guns...

So I watched the 3rd season finale of this show.

I'm done. I barely hung on through this entire season as they trotted out shitty sci-fi invasion retreads one after the other then pasted smaltzy shit family drama on top of it. But the finale was just pants on head stupid and did nothing to convince me it will ever get better. The only character worth missing will be Pope and they relegated him to gruff audience voice for comedic relief and only real sane fucking guy in the bunch long ago.

Oh.  Series 3 just started here and the wife likes it, cause, you know, Noah.

Are you saying it's bad ?  The baby stuff so far is bad.  Like, really bad.  It gets worse ?

Oh, you poor bastard.  At least we had hope, a faint glimmer that at some point the stupid, pants-on-head retarded formulaic recycling would stop and they'd hit us with the Twist, the big Reveal that would show we hadn't been wasting our time.  But now we know better, and if we're not happier for it, at least it's over.  But you, you just have to watch it unfold, without even the slightest glimmer that at some point the incredible, soul-sucking piles of shit will stop coming and it will finally get good.

It's not going to happen.  The light at the end of the tunnel isn't even an oncoming train, with the promise of ending your misery.  It's just...

--Dave

It gets much worse, in that some point, any character you ever cared about even a little bit other than Pope goes full retard. Whatever interest you might have had in any particular character gets quickly extinguished as they make dumber and dumber choices. And even better? The showrunner quit at the end of the season and the guy taking over was one of the showrunners on Battlestar Galactica and Caprica.

So yes, it's that bad and will never get better.

So much worse.  The baby stuff specifically makes me want to punch an actual baby.

The baby stuff at the end reminded me of the end of the 4400.  That is not a good thing.  This show has sunk to almost Revolution levels of stupid.

I Tried. Show needs more aliens and less Supernatural=talk-about-feelings moments. I no longer care about this show. Its as if the only reason there are aliens in this show are so the characters can talk about how it makes them feel.

I started watching this show (cause, you know, Noah  :grin:) and it seemed okay although nothing too special.  Then it totally disappeared and I reckoned it was canceled and never thought about it again.  I'm really surprised to see it's still on.  What was with the huge silent empty time gap?  Not interested in watching again since it was sort of mediocre, but just confused.

It only ran during the summer months for I think a 13-episode season. So there was a lag time of a year between each season.

It wasn't that bad. Shades of the original V aside, I still want to know what the Volm are up to and where they're gonna go with Cancer/junkie girl after her last act.

Oh.

 :oh_i_see:

This whole series was utter, utter fucking wank.

Not going to bother with this any further. 

Which part of the show finally made you just give up completely?

You were right about the finale.  It was the most unbelievably awful cliched gibberish.

Not interested anymore.

I just started watching season 1 on my commute home.  The black kid just put the worm thing back on.  I thought that was a great moment, and then his Dad rips it off, killing him!  I see that this show seems to go downhill in later seasons but I am enjoying it so far despite flashes of stupidity.

First season was definitely best. It still had hope of being a decent story. If you can make it through season 2, just stop there.

I can solider on! First season was sooooo bad only got remotely less grating once my eyes got used to the bad, from there its happy happy joy joy acid trip for me. Are the volm a bad idea? yes. does it matter? no.

What is so hard about making a sci fi show that isn't a god damn family drama.  I don't even care if its just plain drama, battlestar galactica had drama, what it didn't have was fucking children and their fucking stupid ass parents doing stupid ass shit because of them.

Little Jesus doctor girl in season one should have been the cue.

It's just annoying that they ruined the whole recent rash of good premise sci fi shows (terranova, revolution, falling skies) by turning them into bullshit I GOTTA SAVE MUH CHILDREN shows.

None of those shows had a good premise. At least falling skies littered each episode with death and carnage. And to be honest the major theme of falling skies is NOT saving your kids. Your kids are more competent then you'll ever be and can take care of themselves. In fact the one thing the adults need to do is let them go.

In an idle moment I recently watched the first few episodes of season 1 and...


This and:
* Guns fix everything, especially strutting around with an AR-15 type.
* If you don't have a gun, having one will make everything better.
* Isn't it good society has so many guns for if there was an alien invasion.
* Organising into militias keeps everything good. 
* Episodes with The Lord's Prayer and unchallenged Christian beliefs.

This show is propaganda and a comforter for the American right.