Official Synopsis
As season five opens, all breed of beast and mutant are running rampant on earth. The Espheni’s power core has been destroyed, and humans are now ready to fight on their terms. And after four years of being tortured, Tom and the 2nd Mass are filled with rage, ready to destroy the enemy in an all-out battle to determine the fate of Earth.
I heard last year that TNT was asking for the Falling Skies series to wrap-up, which sounds like a bad thing, but honestly sometimes you want to wrap-up things before a story gets stale (see almost all BBC shows for details — they always seem to wrap-up at the right time). Anyway, creator Robert Rodat and his crew couldn’t have done a better job with tying up loose ends without leaving too many left behind.
Tom and his crew have been through hell and a half with the fight against the aliens, had successfully begun turning the tides at the end of season four and were pushing the aliens back to their central point, Washington, D.C.. How Rodat and his writers pieced all the plot points back together to conclude the 2011 series is nothing short of amazing, as well as entertaining.
Let’s get right to it, shall we?
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The first part of season five begins with Tom making it back to earth from destroying the power source on the moon. He doesn’t know how he got back, but he is back. He suspects that a third party alien force had something to do with his survival, which is confirmed with a series of strange hallucinations regarding his pre-war life, but he can’t confirm that immediately in the first part of the season. From that point on, when he makes it back to his group of freedom fighters, including his sons and wife, he sees that the Espheni are on the run, so he has to gather as many fighters for the final push to destroy them. Eventually the third party aliens reveal themselves and help to push the group in the right direction.
Easier said than done, though, as the storylines for the show break off from the group solely fighting the Espheni to Tom having to keep his soldiers together, as well as convincing people along the way to join his cause and not give up.
I’m particularly impressed with the show going this route, as it doesn’t go the Stargate path that focuses solely on the main fight with the alien force. Rather than go that direction, the writers start making this a very human piece, something close to what you would find on The Walking Dead. Focusing on the human element of survival and the temptation for those to take what they want or to give up fighting is an intriguing way to go while trying to wrap the series. You might think this would cause some sort of complication to the process of conclusion, but it actually helps to develop the characters involved, while also bringing a strong sense of tension and uneasiness outside of the main enemy. By doing this it adds a fair amount of depth to the overall season.
In short, it’s brilliant.
The feud between Tom and badass John Pope (Colin Cunningham) was a great way to divert attention away from what could be conceived as a hokey battle between humans and aliens. The pair’s fight stretches out the remainder of the season and it feels genuine, intense and adds more depth to the show than maybe intended. It’s a highlight during the season and it reaches its zenith when Tom has to choose whether to rescue his oldest son from the clutches of John Pope or leave it to fate. That’s a tough decision and it’s executed beautifully.
As the season starts hitting the mid-to-end portion of the story, efforts and details start to shift towards truly running the Espheni out of town. The writers reveal more about the enemy and give us a hopeless perspective towards the end that truly defines how big of odds the group has against them. The final battle, which is telling and adds a bit more mythology to the Espheni race, is the only caveat I have with the entire season. While it does give us some solid details of the alien race, it really just ends in a whimper rather than a huge bang. I know that everyone was dying to wrap-up how the humans ended up, but they should not have done that at the expense of a huge build-up that ends in a small screen of smoke. The very end is worth it, but not the final battle.
Regardless, it does wrap-up the series well. I hope somewhere along the way there is a possible revisit to the Falling Skies world, maybe even a made for television movie, but until then it does what it needs to do to satisfy fans.
Overall, there is a lot of human focus in the final season of Falling Skies. There are some great emotional moments, character defining situations and plenty of variety that makes this far more than just another show about humans fighting the odds against aliens (see V for examples). I wish the ending was a bit more fruitful in the final fight, but all in all it was a solid way to end a series.
On the Blu-ray side of the tracks, the show hits all its strides fine, even in the CGI department. I know the CGI isn’t the best due to a television budget, but in comparison to other shows of its type, it does a good job looking good. The transfer to HD is quite good, though there is the occasional grainy look here and there. Nothing too bad, though.
On the special features side of the track, here’s what you should expect:
– Farewell to the Skies
– 2015 WonderCon Panel with Cast
– A Look Back
Not too bad for this show and the look back was quite good. Good stuff for a great season.
Onto the summary.
