Falling Skies (TV Series)

[PanzerJaeger]

The premier was last Sunday. Did anyone watch? Was it any good?

It looks completely derivative, but awesome at the same time. I'm a sucker for Red Dawn type themes. Also, I think Spielberg is involved too, which is usually not a bad thing. I think I'm going to try and find it on ondemand tonight.

[Lemur]

Hmmm ... could be a good heap of fun, could be terrible. As with BSG and V, I think a big question will be what do the aliens want, and do the writers have a good answer. If not ...

[Crazed Rabbit]

I thought German Discotheques was a good answer.

CR

[Hooahguy]

I watched the first 20 minutes of this.

It reminds me of Terminator, just without the whole "guy teleporting back to save Sarah Connor" thing.

[Husar]

Err, no, thanks.

Looks like your generic alien invasion thing and half the sentences in the trailer I've heard in that exact intonation before.
I mean, when I'm bored, and I'm often bored, then I'd watch it, but I also watch german police series when I'm bored...

It doesn't seem to have any exciting premise, any twist or something that makes it more believable, it's often aliens that have superior firepower and then send out small search parties that the partisans can destroy when they might just as well blow up the whole area. District 9 had an interesting premise, it was just different. If it were done by Russians and situated in Russia, it might be different, even if it "just" means less hollywood-freedom-humanity-bravado.

For example a huge appeal of Primeval (even though I have to watch it dubbed in German) is the britishness and appeal of James Lester, it gives things a different touch but this just looks like any other US survivor story from Hollywood.

[gaelic cowboy]

I watched it courtesy of the tinterweb as it's not on here in Ireland yet, I thought it was decent enough summer tv fare twas better than the new V was at any rate.

[A Nerd]

I like this much better!

[econ21]

I caught the first episode last night on UK TV (FX). For a Spielberg production, it was underwhelming. Well, for any kind of production, really. I will probably continue with it as there is precious little else on at the moment (no more Game of Thrones, True Blood, Walking the Dead, etc. for a while) but have not committed to seeing it through.

I came in a couple of minutes late and was mortified to find the aliens had already taken over. So unless they did it in 2 minutes, the series basically skips the whole "first encounter, aliens take Manhatten" type opening. I know such an opening might have been a cliche and presumably hellishly expensive, but still, it's the best part of these type of alien invasion type scenarios. (You know, the whole alien invasion part - as opposed to the "plucky humans kick the butts of aliens despite being massively technologically inferior" part.) Even the first episode the original series of V was fun just because the first encounter/alien invasion scenario is so intrinsically interesting.

What we got instead was generic action that engaged me as much as watching my son playing Call of Duty on his X-box. And like CoD combat, the action did not make much sense to me. Columns of hundreds of armed humans walking unmolested along the roads in daylight. Scouting parties of humans standing in the middle of the town green in daylight. One unarmed unarmoured alien and one robot being the "trap" at an food depot. I kept thinking of US army vs insurgent encounters and wondering why these technologically advanced aliens were so much less competent than our present day military. I know we struggle against insurgents, but at least we don't lay traps with just two soldiers, one of whom we forget to give a gun.

The only redeeming point is the lead, Noah Wyle, who makes an engaging main protaganist, Even then, I found him more credible as a young doctor in ER than as a miltary historian/guerilla, but that's probably down to the quality of the writing rather than his acting.