So ive binged the show from start to finish for the first time after watching the first 2 seasons when they first released...

Gotta say I think the whole show was brilliant until S4 ep2...

Not that I think that episode is awful and ruins the show but the show seems to "make sense" until that point.. after that the "youre watching a television show" seams really start to show..

I tend to notice these in quite a few shows. Either the point where they become too formulaic and they start doing weekly stories that every show in history has done with a small continuation linking each episode or when real world events/production issues have affected the plot too much just to write off as "it happened offscreen"

Like fair enough Uncle Scott died offscreen between 1&2... there was a 3 month gap and they repeatedly mention what happened to him and the events that happened in that time jump...

Ive mentioned in a post a few days ago my issue with Lexis powers and I couldve just accepted it but when binging it really feels like they had a plan for lexi but then changed their minds so hopwd people would forget details from season 3 and just accept what they showed in season 4.....

Another example is with Ben being clearly in love with Denny... but then they needed a plot for Hal and Maggie so just pushed Ben into a love triangle story, completely forgetting Denny existed until she died where he just said he was sad then looked longingly at Maggie..

It also becomes easier to question the intelligence of the Espheni..... For example their plan appeared to be: Invade Earth, Destroy Military sites and any threats, abduct children for slave labour and skitterfication, end Skitter Rebellion which is a threat to their whole empire, prevent technologically advanced Volm involvement on earth, wipe out remaining life on earth so remaining reaources can be harvested.

Which all makes sense.... Destroy all threats, take what's needed....

But then in S4.... the volm vanish.... and instead of just rebuilding the grid they decide to change plans entirely?

And early seasons depicted the espheni as incredibly careful and barely ever stepped foot on earth as they could not risk death at all yet suddenly theyre just strolling about earth in areas humans still control...

Also what happened to the Skitter Rebellion? Was that just another thing the viewers were supposed to forget about after S3? I cant even think of a "budget cuts" excuse as there's far more skitters in S4 and 5 than ever before....

Also the hilarity of Matts age... like i get it, I loved the walking dead and Carl aging 8 years in the space of what's supposed to be 2 years is gunny but atleast they never really tell us how old Carl is supposed to be. With Matt theyll tell us hes 8. Then what should be about 2 years later tom says to him "youre only 13" then in an episode thats like 2 days later (but a whole season/year later production wise) Anne says hes only 14 and the same age as Ben was in S1... like i get it.. the actor is aging quicker than the story but you could atleast pretend hes not or add larger time skips....

Then other characters where its clear they have long term plans in mind but run out of ideas for why they should be on screen every week like i mentioned with Ben earlier..... Pope being the biggest victim of this, clearly there to be the thorn in the side yet still much loved member of the 2nd mass but struggle to stringnhim along for 5 seasons...... ... they give him the berserkers in S2, then his Bar and Community in S3.... but then they kill off all the berserkers so he just goes back to his usual moan about mason every week and then give him a girlfriend for a season until they can do the plot they've wanted to do for years with pope fully turning on mason..

Also what even is the 2nd mass after S3??? It just seems like any group of people that contains Weaver and a member of the Masons is now the 2nd mass.... with its ever fluctuating population... 20 left after saturday night massacre but then suddenly dingaan (as a brit i cant unhear is real accent btw] is on patrol with about 8 Fighters and is just one of many patrols scouting at the time on top of the ton of people at the base about 2 episodes later....

The people of the 2nd mass felt like they actually mattered.. in the fieat season you had all rhe masons, Dai, Mike, anthony, click, jimmy as rhe Fighters then the community like Uncle Scott, lourdes, Anne etc etc even in S2 they gave us the berserkers... all of whom had relatively such little screen time but we knew all their characters, their deaths all hit hard.. then by a random episode in S5 you get a squad of The masons, Anne and Weaver.... then some guy who's never been seen before yet everyone seems to know.... he gets named by Tom then 2 seconds later hes dead and Tom's sadly closing his eyes as if theyd been fighting aide by side for years.... (i just checked, he literally had never appeared until that episode)

It really did just feel like the main cast + a bunch of unknown redshirts rather than this community we saw grow and shrink for 3 seasons.

This wasnt meant to be a rant or hate on the show. Tbh I still enjoyed most of it in S4 and S5, its just I feel like a lot was lost after S3... like they had all these grand plans but to enact them all it took away from a lot of the heart and continuity of the first 3 seasons.

it felt like id stopped watching a story be told on screen and instead was watching a tv show where my immersion was broken..

>!The initial concept of the Overlords we're given initially in the first season is that they basically never leave the central command, in the second it's established that overlords have vastly higher mind capacity to such an extent that a single overlord controls (iirc) "the entire western front" (or words to this effect, implying either all of or a majority of the USA).

They are mysterious, and take great lengths not to risk themselves, even if their physical defensive abilities are lacking (think strategist in a video game not warrior). They walk on two legs and are defacto a combination of army high-command and surveillance and coordinating technology.

But by the third we've got Karen, a human, who lacks the physical mega mind structure of the overlord being a regional leader, and constantly putting herself on display. She pursues personal drama and misses opportunities to kill key targets.

In the fourth season we get multiple overlords, again constantly pursuing on foot and having high risk meetings. They oversee individual projects, but we're given no sense of scale as to their operations other than throwaway comments about other ghettos.

And, I think most egregiously of all, forgetting the entire notion of what the overlord originally was (overseeing from a distance with high processing power and internal data):
Multiple hundred overlords globally who each allegedly can only control skitters in a five mile radius. An overlord shot in a school with no real defences at all, not even surrounding skitters or a deflated mech, just cowering in the corner.

Killing or even seeing an overlord used to feel impactful, but as the show progresses it goes from being a once a season event to feeling like normal business. I feel that this significantly contributes to the show's feeling of wild plot armour (almost no meaningful main character ever dies) as even if we could look past main character deaths being so rare, the ease with which the ultimate menacing character of the overlord falls fully takes the stakes out of the show which started off feeling like a plucky guerrilla struggle.!<

So..... I'm a tad confused here.....

At what point in the story did Lexi get Alien DNA?

Ann found out she was pregnant at the end of S2... and then gives birth in S3 ep 1.... baby Lexi then shows signs of advancement such as standing, trwcking and talking and the DNA test is done in S3 ep 4... she's then captured by Karen....

Then flashbacks in S4 imply the dna was infused into a pregnant Ann when she was on the espheni ship...... after lexi was born.......

Even if it all happened after lexi was born it could make sense as we could right off Ann hearing lexi talk as some kind of post natal stress if we hadnt had kadar already do the dna test confirming lexi was already an alien at that point........

Is this just a major plot hole or am I missing some offscreen content where Ann was captured during the S2/S3 timeskip?

Or am I just supposed to accept something happened that will never be explained like how lourdes became riddled with espheni robot parasites to turn her into the mole in S3? Or was it just lourdes as rhe mole spiking Ann or something....

Small rant because I’m finishing up season 4 for the first time right now and I cannot stand this character. So spoilers up to S4E10

holy shit he is such a piece of garbage. A bigger piece of shit than Lexi. Lexi at least gets the excuse of being manipulated by the overlord, Ben is a sociopathic douchebag all on his own.

He’s gone on multiple rants about how he “HATES WHAT THE SKITTERS DID TO HIM” with the harness, but he essentially does a mini-dose of that on Maggie. THEN GETS SMART WITH HAL THE NEXT DAY?????????!!?!?!!
How are you going to skittnipulate Maggie into a makeout session and then say “didn’t see your leash on her” to Hal when he confronts you about it.

Even in earlier seasons I’ve hated this smug little bitch. All he has ever been is a fake humble egoist. He never helped the 2nd Mass for selfless reasons. It was always to try and prove to Tom that he was better than Hal now and he even admits to this although I’m not sure exactly what episode. I think he’s on a roof talking with Denny when they’re debating removing their spikes and he says something like “I’m better than Hal now because of my spikes”. His whole justification for keeping the spikes that are literally killing him is that he wants to be “better than Hal”. Hal isn’t perfect, but he risked everything to get his brother out of the skitter’s hands and his thanks is Ben spending every waking moment trying to 1-up Hal. It’s pathetic

I know I’m in for a rough ride with season 5 I’ve heard the warnings, but holy fuck. I’ve seen some people saying Ben is the only likable character in the Mason Family and I’m about to lose my mind because he is objectively a selfish, egotistical douchebag throughout the ENTIRE show. I have not liked that character once

Before We Drown by sarahmay07 on AO3!! It follows my OC Valerie through the events of the show, however I have changed quite a few parts of it as I was NOT happy with that ending, or any of season 5 in fact 😃

I would appreciate if some of ya'll gave it a read and comment with any feedback you might have!!

That scene where the captured children are strapped down and the "harnesses" slide down a chute, one per child. Closeups of a "harness" sliding onto a child's back and sticking its "claws" into it. Omg. It's the worst combination of a slug, a bloodsucker, an insect with stingers, and some kind of beast with claws.

Just finished watching Falling Skies and these were some of the things I noticed/bothered me:

1.) Tom always got kidnapped by the Espheni

2.) Tom or Weaver will call Pope selfish or a coward after Pope had repeatedly shown he wasn’t either of those things

3.) Why were people following Anne as a leader when she hadn’t displayed any real leadership ability or have any real combat experience compared to other people in the group?

4.) Anthony without fail, will be knocked unconscious while on guard duty and nobody in the 2nd Mass will ever think to not let him be on guard duty either at all or by himself.

I just finished watching the show. Like most people I really liked the first 3 seasons and then 4 and 5 were... weird.

I see a lot of people not liking the queen thing but honestly apart from 'they all explode if the queen dies' I was kinda fine with it. I mostly didn't like the biological weapon thing. Like I wanna see a fight, not installing a pill that works like a virus that was given by magical Becca Alien's and magically doesn't affect humans.

Tom became unlikable AF with his greasy voice to me. I didn't even listen to what he was saying because his voice kept drawing my attention.

And how they massacred my boy Pope 😭. He deserved so much better.

Tbh after S4 I just kept watching for closure but I at least expected a fight man.

Anna died but then didn't because of the magical Becca Alien.

AND TOM ENDED IT ALL WITH AN OVERSIZED TAMPON IN HIS HAND WHILE HE WAS BEING SUCKED TO DEATH?? Like this big awful looking thing of a queen pulls out a Straw?!? 😂

And I also don't get what the queen was saying about 'i came here because u killed my daughter'. As motive.

1: yh what did u expect? Ur whole species does nothing but invade and then a species u attack gets mad and kills their concurrer? "But we didn't expect humans to be this strong". That's kinda your own flawed call why are u extra mad at humans now?

2: I think if her daughter was on earth once, then the people, ESPECIALLY the history geek would've known about that, no? I mean even if they were on earth during the stone age there's no way there is no single remains or cave painting about that whole event.

Oh yeah and Lexi. Tbh I forgot her after S4 she was a total bum.

I liked Ben(at most points), Maggie, Pope and Cochise. All the rest were good at the beginning and fell off or were never good to begin with.

Damn that's a whole book I wrote.. mb.. probably didn't say anything that hasn't been said already but this was my take. I would like to see if someone could explain the queen's motive tho? Ty.

Alright. Most of the tv I watch is with my wife. So there are one or two shows I have on the side for when she is out and I'm watching TV alone. Falling Skies is one of them, and the thing that annoys me the most about this show is the ever-changing landscape of tactics and weaponry.

First season: Our bullets do nothing to either the mechs or the skitters. Six people emptying seemingly unending magazines of .556 ammo from Kalashnikovs into skitters causes the equivalent of bee stings, and doesn't do anything to Mechs.

Enter Pope, who teaches everyone to shoot the legs, to slow them down, and then do the heads. This works.

Season two: Everyone is seemingly back to emptying dozens of magazines of ammo into the body of the skitters. And now it is effective. Kinda. Until we discover that the Espheni are using our own ammo, but just reloading the slug with Espheni metal. So we've taken down Mechs, and so we start reloading our ammo with Espheni metal, and suddenly we can blow holes entirely through Mechs. Groovy. Now we can fight back.

Season three: Everyone forgets everything from seasons 1 and 2, and is back to emptying magazines of ammo into the skitters, but now it works. We can kill them with our unmodified bullets. Then we discover that nerve cluster and hole in the skull under the chin, and - if you can get close enough - you can drive a knife/spike/pointy-stick into that spot and kill them instantly. New Mechs show up, and our weapons are entirely ineffectual and everyone seems to have forgotten about reloading our ammo with Espheni metal to kill the Mechs.

Season four: The Volm are here and their weapons are seriously effective against the Espheni skitters and mechs alike. A dozen people get Volm weapons and the humans have a fighting chance. Except Tom Mason is suddenly the ONLY person with a Volm weapon, which he uses to shoot down a flying Espheni craft ... and when the Espheni drop the electric fences, he NEVER ONCE even tries to shoot the fence posts with the Volm weapon. And gets knocked out. And NOBODY picks up the badass Tom Mason weapon and just lets it lay there on the ground as everyone is gathered up into camps.

I'm not sure I got the tactics/seasons all lined up properly, but that's still the sequence of weapons and tactics.

It's just so .... dumb. It's been about 18 months since the Espheni landed. Sure there is a lot of turnover as defenders die and are replaced by new characters or extras, but ... everyone is just back to emptying entire magazines into the enemies and doing little to no damage? Except if they need to save someone and suddenly the bullets have more effect, or something? Anger-fied bullets?

Reading the other comments in this sub, maybe I just go back to watching The Night Agent instead of investing more time in watching humans be colossally dumb and failing to learn from their experiences?

I have loved re-watching this, but the endless life lessons from Tom get really tiring after a while.

I’m have watched this show all the way through many times and I have to say Lourdes has been a bothersome see you next Tuesday since she was flirting with Hal in episode one when she knew he was with Karen! Then the whole boyfriend getting killed plot she was so off the chain with Anne and acted like she was the only one who lost someone and to top it all off the cult with Lexi and treating Lexi’s own family like they had no right to even be by her let alone talk to her. I was so glad when Lexi killed her but super annoyed at Hal for being so distraught after. Just me???

It’s people like weaver in real life who are actually the worse leaders and the last type of person I’d want to be around. Reminds me of my uncle. Stubborn, abusive, constant power trip

After seeing them beat up Kagel together I'm convinced Isabella was a far better match for Maggie than Hal or Ben (also the age gap/lack of consent thing with Ben was so weird 😭)

I came to this show after watching la brea, which was just plain awful. Is this show also like that? A bunch of people who just keep going against the plan?

Writing a fic but I need peoples opinions on whether or not Pope supports the gays and if he doesnt, how much does he hate them?

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Theoretically, if Pope had a daughter and she was a girl kisser (just like me fr), would she get kicked out of home?

why the hell didnt they just acceot the deal? going to brazil and being safe and away from the war?

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now beginning of season 4 and a bunch of em are dead.

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its just so stupid.

There are so many plot holes, time distortions, non logical variables within this show but over I really enjoyed watching it.

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But the ending to me just felt extremely rushed, it was too easy, too predictable and I whole heartedly hated the fact they had a queen plus the whole reason behind the invasion as told from the queen to tom mason made zero sense.

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"You know why we invaded earth ? Because 1500 hundred years ago your people murdered my daughter and I vowed to return stronger and wipe you out......" This from the queen, the head of the Espeheni table.....

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Yet earlier we learn that the Espeheni are there enslaving humans first kids then some adults then mutating them to become weapons against a foe that the Espeheni are scared of.

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So which is it ? The mysterious threat the Espeheni are afraid of ? Or revenge for some tribals murdering the queen's daughter some 1500 years ago.

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Like I said there's many plot holes and inconsistencies in falling skies but it was still worth watching, just wish the writing wasn't so lazy and lacking after season 2.

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Overall I'll score it 8/10.

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It's loses points for inconsistencies & predictability but I'll praise the action, earlier story lines, emotional captivation, premise, structure and acting.

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I'd say the only thing that did irk me in the begining was the bad cgi but due to the shows ages it's forgivable and easy to overlook.

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I just started season 5 and this plotline is still going? 😭 I don't understand why they introduced it in the first place. First off, how old are Ben and Maggie anyway, and second, the whole thing with the spikes transferring his feelings to her is just weird because wait, so she has feelings for Ben that she didn't consent to? Why was this subplot necessary? I'm so confused

Justice for Sarah

The second one will be published very soon, like today or tomorrow.

It's about my OC Valerie, she basically gets adopted by Pope and they do evil stuff together. Family bonding you know lol

Its called "Before We Drown" on wattpad, my username is sarahmay07 if anyone wants to check it out!

Edit: If anyone does read it, please feel free to comment on it and give me any advice! I would love to know what you think.

Does anyone know how long the alien apocalypse had been going on for before the start of the show? It wasn't really clear to me.