5.01: Falling Skies - Find Your Warrior

[REBerg]

The beginning of the end. Next Sunday, June 28, on TNT

 

[Dave]

A man walks through his life, he stumbles and he falls... At times he thinks he cannot get up... But he does. Over and over, until one day when a man cannot hold up the sky, falling all around him, anymore and he reaches his journey's end... But there is one last fight, and nothing will be as it was.

Is this a quote from a poem? Is this the source of the programme title?

Maybe I was stupid but I thought the title came from the children's story Henny Penny (Chicken Licken in the US) where the hen who mistakenly thinks the end of the world is coming, tells everyone she meets that the "The Sky is falling!" after being hit on the head by an acorn from a tree. A moral of one of the many versions of the 25-Centuries-old folk-tale is that one should have courage in the face of imminent disaster, which I thought fitted well.

 

[REBerg]

Maybe it's Noah Wyle's take on the folk tale. Rather artsy for a promo, I thought.

 

[REBerg]

5.01 Find Your Warrior

Spoiler

Tom Mason really took the hallucinatory directive of his late wife to heart – hacking a Skitter Black Hornet to death, taking its head to incite the troops and mincing very few words with an Overlord before putting it down, despite the fact that it was telepathically connected to Ben at the time.

I like the fact that this season, unlike the last few, picks up right where the last season ended. It had previously seemed as if the story had continued between seasons, leaving viewers to piece together what had transpired as best they could.

If the opener is any indication, the final season promises to be non-stop action. Kick some Espheni ass, 2nd Mass!

 

[Dave]

5.01 Find Your Warrior

I like the fact that this season, unlike the last few, picks up right where the last season ended. It had previously seemed as if the story had continued between seasons, leaving viewers to piece together what had transpired as best they could.

I've not read your spoiler as I haven't seen this yet, but I would agree to that being better. There was a very long gap during one break in which the baby became a grown child.

 

[Dave]

I've created a new forum for Falling Skies so we can talk without spoiler tags now. I agree that Tom Mason has changed character. Do you think that is a natural progression from the loss of his daughter and everything that has happened? Or is there some other sinister controlling influence (as we are being lead to believe)? Given what has happened before with mind control, brainwashing, parasites and cyber-implants, I'm not sure I could trust a man who cannot explain how he got back from the Moon and has several days of missing memory, yet he can see his dead first wife and she gives him military intelligence.

 

[Judderman]

Who put that fly in Tom's head? An opponent of the Overlords?

It was a fun episode. Lots of action and whoops of hope and victory. It did seem to go too well for them, other than a couple of minor character deaths. So I expect some horrors to happen shortly, before humanity ends triumphant.

 

[REBerg]

I've created a new forum for Falling Skies so we can talk without spoiler tags now. I agree that Tom Mason has changed character. Do you think that is a natural progression from the loss of his daughter and everything that has happened? Or is there some other sinister controlling influence (as we are being lead to believe)? Given what has happened before with mind control, brainwashing, parasites and cyber-implants, I'm not sure I could trust a man who cannot explain how he got back from the Moon and has several days of missing memory, yet he can see his dead first wife and she gives him military intelligence.

Yeah, as Ricky Ricardo frequently told Lucy, Tom's got "a lotta 'splainin' to do." I can see how he might hallucinate about his dead wife while immersed in what might well have become his watery grave. I can't explain the hint he got concerning the location of the Espheni Overlord. Only a former history professor would recognize a bust of Woodrow Wilson and make the connection.

My guess is that his daughter, otherworldly hybrid that she was/is, has remained with him in some form, maybe on another plane of existence or somehow implanted in his mind. He might be talking directly to her in a dream scene to come.

I don't know if the fly thing at the end of the episode is significant. Anne had given him a clean bill of health. Assuming that she knows what she is doing, he didn't return to camp as a remotely controlled spy. Maybe that's why the Overlord was so chatty. He was maneuvering to get the fly placed while Tom was distracted, and he failed.

In the end, I think Tom's new angry man personality is just a reflection of a trait we all find when pushed far enough, and he certainly has been pushed. Then, it just could be the show's way of setting a kick-ass tone for the final season.

Personally, I thing the series lost its way when it wandered into the Tom as President and Lexi storylines. I'm looking forward to Humanity wiping out the remaining Espheni forces and taking back the planet.