The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Oh wait. That was just an avalanche of summer cable series DVDs sliding off my desk.
Among the most eagerly anticipated series of summer 2011 is TNT’s sci-fi adventure “Falling Skies.”
The best you can say for “Falling Skies,” which has DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg credentials behind it, is that Noah Wyle looks great. He’s attractive even in a scruffy, post-apocalyptic beard. For some of his fans, that may be enough.
Wyle, who grew up on “ER” and who hasn’t particularly distinguished himself since (remember “The Librarian” TV movies?), plays the lead resistance fighter and loving father figure in the scary special- effects-laden tale.
He’s battling aliens rather than disease in this end-of-the-world drama, premiering 7-9 p.m. Sunday on TNT, and running for eight weeks. (The series moves to 8 p.m. Sundays next week.)
The alien shoot-’em-up has lofty ambitions (or are they pretensions?), with references to the American Revolution, 9/11 and more. The piece aims to be an allegorical entertainment, with lots to say about the human spirit, the innocence of youth, the triumph of determined resistance groups through military history and, if you were so inclined, much, much more.
It falls to a mild-mannered history professor, Tom Mason (Wyle), to encourage the scrappy citizenry in their fight against the vastly nastier aliens. Besides saving the world, he needs to retrieve his son, who has been taken by the aliens.
Go, De-fense!
Think of those feisty colonists confronting the fancy redcoats. The aliens may be wolves, but the resistance fighters are porcupines! he yells. Think Red Sox versus Yankees in ’04! “We can beat ’em!” Mason urges.
There’s something about Macedonians and other underdogs throughout history too.
Fighters for the “2nd Massachusetts” are a diverse lot of dedicated humans, roaming the Boston area in a post-apocalyptic band of revolutionary brothers, fighting aliens who look nothing like the British. Plenty of revolutionary imagery, from cannon to sculptures, dots the landscape, now overshadowed by a hovering alien mother ship. A fife-and-drum joke even works its way into the dialogue.
But, judging by the two-hour opening installment, high-mindedness quickly gives way to scary fun.
The aliens are six-legged insect- like critters with lizard hides and sizzling laser weaponry. Imagine a combination of Transformers and a sinister E.T., cloaked in heavy metal.
As the story opens, the aliens have already destroyed most of the planet, with mother ships hovering over the major cities and citizens scrounging for food. The aliens seem to be killing the adults and catching the kids, rounding up human adolescents and implanting “harnesses” on their spines to control them.
Silly aliens. Don’t they know that trying to harness the power of adolescence and bend it to your will is an impossible dream?
The grown-ups, led by a ragtag group of military freaks plus Professor Mason, are heroic and yet prone to infighting. How else to keep the tension going between alien freakouts? Will Patton plays Weaver, a cranky military leader and Mason’s commanding officer; Colin Cunningham is a standout as John Pope, the head of a gang of marauders keen on killing.
A violent and dark tale, leavened with a few tender human moments, “Falling Skies” is not a bad summer time-waster. Its most promising attribute may be that it is contained — limited to only eight episodes this summer.
“It’s gonna get better,” the history prof tells his wide-eyed youngest son, roughly 20 minutes in.
With six hours to go, we want to believe. But we know that, before it gets better, things must get much, much worse.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
