FALLING SKIES
Season 3
Available on disc

On Thin Ice

It's seven months since the arrival of a new race of aliens, this time allying with the humans, and the tide of war has turned. Even so, Hal has lost the use of his legs, there's a traitor in the camp and not everyone trusts the newcomers.

FALLING SKIES returns and kicks off with some ass-kicking action, but once that is over it all goes downhill a bit. The introduction of the traitor in the camp is a bit of a tired plot, though it does lead to a suprisingly short guest appearance.

Tom is now the President, Hal has a mental problem that has taken away the use of his legs, Pope is still an asshole and Anne is having a baby.

That's an awful lot going on and some serious background stuff to catch up on, so why does it feel so static and talky?

Collateral Damage

A nuclear power plant provides a target that could cripple the invaders' plan, but how can it be attacked without spilling nuclear waste over half the country?

Again, the aliens have a base that is hugely important and yet don't defend it with a whole lot of resources. A few hyperactive kids and some easily distracted metal walkers is the best that they can come up with for such an important place? Really?

The super-fast developing baby is straight out of V - THE FINAL BATTLE and they mystery of Hal's failed legs gets a little further along. The soap opera aspects of the plot detract from the rest rather than add human interest and mire the whole enterprise down in the mediocre.

Badlands

Whilst waiting for a retaliation, the people of Charleston dedicated a tree of memoriam, Anne becomes more concerned about her daughter and one of Pope's people is hit by sniper fire.

We're only episode three and the season is treading water. The whole sniper victim lies dying is an effective storyline in itself, but is a distraction from anything else going on, the essence of time-filler since it doesn't really affet the characters significantly.

The creepy baby storyline continues to be nuts with everyone assuming that Anne is just that, despite her being quite lucid on the matter. Seriously, if this is the best that the show can manage then perhaps it is time to let those skies fall once and for all.

At All Costs

Now that the President of the USA is back on the job, Tom takes alien ally Cochese for a friendly chat that proves to be less friendly than expected. Then they are attacked.

This is another episode that is setting up a load of stuff, but paying off on none of it. Hal is going totally bonkers for reasons as yet not quite explained, but nobody notices at all. Anne gets the word that her baby really is alien and so decides to go on the run. That's something of an over-reaction surely.

More interesting is the power play between Tom and real president over the good aliens and their plan. There are shifting sands here aplenty and everyone has hidden motives and agendas. Sadly, that makes the climactic attack all the more clumsy and unwelcome.

Search And Recover

Brought down in a plane crash, Pope and Tom have to work together to get back to Charleston. Bonding isn't likely to be on the cards.

Two opponents bickering their way through enemy territory and coming to a better understanding of each ohter - it's a hackneyed plot, but those are the only kind that FALLING SKIES seems to have any more. Nothing that happens out in the field comes as any surprise, not even the soliloquys about past lives.

Back in Charleston, the good aliens are looking less like good aliens all the time, Hal has gone all schizo and nothing else of note happened. Shaky doesn't begin to cover the current state of the show.

Be Silent And Come Out

Hal is unmasked as being infected and controlled by alien bugs. He takes Tom hostage and a seige situation begins. A cure for the infection does exist, but it could just as easily kill Hal.

Seiges are inherently tense things and so usually make for exciting plots, but this one misses the tension and the excitement and just gets very silly in the lengths it has to go to in order to stop someone putting a bullet through the bad guys brain just because he's one of the show's royal family. Pope has it exactly right when he says that nobody would be trying to save Hal if he wasn't Tom Mason's son.

Then we go on to the whole will it kill him/won't it cure scenario. Shame that cure wasn't mentioned any time sooner or it might have possibly saved some other folks.

FALLING SKIES is veering quite close to becoming unwatchable.

The Pickett Line

The Masons are ambushed and have their property stolen by a family that seems to stand for everythign they don't. They decide to get it back, but how far will they go?

The balance of power between the two families in this story swaps so many times that it just gets plain silly. There is only so many times that this switch can be made without someone just shooting everybody on the other side, but it never quite happens.

The side story of Pope becoming a so-called man of the people standing up to the overbearing regime seemed pointless and asinine, but everything was saved in the moment when someone went into a room beneath the President of the USA and did something awesome.

Strange Brew

Tom wakes up just before Christmas after suffering the wierdest nightmare about an alien attack. His day gets wierder, however, when a woman he has never met called Anne starts stalking him and he sees figures from his dream everywhere.

Yes, it's the old 'it was all a dream ... or was it?' episode familiar from many other series and absolutely nothing new is done with it at all. It's no spoiler to say that it's an alien technique to get the information from his brain nor that the dream isn't over when it's over because both are obvious and poorly managed.

Add to that the fact that the investigation into the murder of the President firmly identifies Charleston's president as the only suspect when the real culprit had no alibi and the sloppiness of the storytelling continues to undermine the quality acting work.

Journey To Xibalba

Tom returns following the loss of those he loves and sets about discovering the identity of the mole before the big push against the alien occupiers.

The penultimate episode of the season and it suffers from being so. The need of setting up the big finale and not having a story of its own to tell is a real problem, but the story of the mole is interesting enough and it's certainly not the lowest level of storytelling that the show has ever reached.

Brazil

The assault on the occupation tower goes ahead, but in the aftermath the truth about who is, and is not, an ally is revealed.

How very strange this is. Having built up to the big final assault on the tower, the whole thing is dealt with in a throwaway manner. This could have been an all-action episode, paying off on all the promises that have been made to date. Instead, it's done and dusted before the first commercial break.

The programme makers are clearly more interested in setting up the new scenario, with the allies being dismissive of the human forces and wanting to lead them all away to camps where they can be kept a bit like pets until the enemy is defeated. Nobody gets a choice in this, which doesn't go down well. Reasonable enough drama, but enough to take away the big action finale? It's just odd.