Falling Skies, FX

It’s ironic that we TV critics were only allowed one viewing of this new sci-fi series before having to pass judgment, because even those only casually acquainted with the genre will feel they’ve seen the like of this part-Spielberg-conceived space invasion series many times before anyway. In fact, I can imagine the heads of sci-fi geeks exploding Scanners-style as their brains overheat with the effort of trying quickly to reel off all the films referenced by either concept or design in this opening episode alone.

So let me save you from cranial meltdown by pointing out just a few of them: Terminator (even Noah Sorota’s theme tune heavily alludes to The Terminator theme), Robocop, Transformers and Battlestar Galactica for the robots (we’ll return to those lumbering bipeds later); Alien, Predator and District 9 for the extraterrestrials themselves, and everything from ER to ET in the overall tone. The ER influence is emphasised by the presence of Noah Wyle as agreeable academic Tom Mason who, needless to say, clashes with the military meatheads who just want to “nuke the skitters”. As Wyle is essentially still playing Dr Carter, it felt like we were back at the Chicago County General during any of the hectically directed scenes featuring wounded humans (of which there were quite a few). As for the ET influence, Spielberg’s compulsion to revel in father-son sentimentality oozed from almost every frame, which unfortunately detracted somewhat from the tougher, edgier direction the drama could and should have gone in.

But by far the most significant influence on Falling Skies would appear to be Neill Blomkamp’s seminal 2009 film District 9. Blomkamp realised that sci-fi needed to be made more viscerally bloody, sweaty and dirty. But conversely he also reinstated a degree of subtlety to the special effects in order to reawaken an increasingly CGI-weary viewer. So, rather than make his giant spaceship look like a souped-up airborne merry-go-round, he veiled it in heat haze and smog, and occasionally just placed it matter-of-factly on the horizon (pictured above). This paradoxically made it seem more real than if every rivet and flashing light had been lovingly rendered in a trillion pixels.

But District 9 was also bold in that it explored racism and the status of refugees. On the strength of this opening episode, all Falling Skies appears to be doing is tread the well-worn path where loving, caring Americans get enslaved and shot at by heartless bug-eyed monsters. Although, to its credit, it treads this well-worn path with enough flare and conviction to make me vaguely curious as to what happens next. Imagine the BBC’s Survivors with monsters and 10 times the budget and you’ll have some idea of what’s on offer.

The first episode opened with a child’s voice: “I was in school when the ships came, they were really big…” as we are shown a number of children’s drawings of the invasion. So again, like District 9, Falling Skies cuts straight to the chase by plunging us into the aftermath of the invasion. The aliens have already switched off all the lights and computers, and the surviving humans spend their days looting deserted supermarkets and talking nostalgically about hash browns and English muffins.

Another important sci-fi criterion we have to address is how monstrous are the monsters? Well, the “skitters” themselves are impressively unpleasant, like chunky crabs with HR Giger-like heads. But their sidekick robots (the mechs) just produced a deep sigh of disappointment from this viewer. Why would a six-legged being create bipedal robots? Curiously enough, we get what feels like an almost apologetic explanation in episode two for these dated Robocop-like constructions. The theory put forward by our hero Mason is that their bipedal form was a deliberate ploy by the aliens to have more of a psychological impact on humans by making robots in their image. What poppycock! We humans are generally much more scared by multi-legged creatures than creatures that look like us. I suspect that this clunky justification for a lapse of design imagination was a late addition to the script after a test screening got a disappointed response to the “mechs” similar to my own.

The gently simmering Spielbergian sentimentality comes to a fierce boil in the final over-long scene. While humanity is getting fried on a global scale, Carter gives his young son the birthday gift of a skateboard. With the saccharine score building in the background, I half expected the aliens to pause in their laser-beaming to join the all-smiling humans as they watched the boy trundle around on his four-wheeled plywood symbol-of-hope-for-all-mankind - or at least all America-kind.

There are indications that this series could have been the definitive alien invasion drama in much the same way HBO’s The Walking Dead has become the definitive zombie drama. For example, I loved the delightfully unpleasant centipede-like organisms that attached themselves to the spines of children in order to enslave them. But unless a rather predictable premise takes some unexpected turns, I don’t hold out much hope. It’s a darn sight better than the recent BBC One apocalyptic soap Outcasts. But that’s damning with the faintest praise that anything has ever been damned with.

• Watch a five-minute preview of Falling Skies at FXUK.com