Are you sick and tired of alien invasions yet, with movies like Battle: Los Angeles already out and the upcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon just around the corner? Well of course you’re not. Here we have another alien invasion story, only this time it’s on the small screen in the form of Falling Skies, the Steven Spielberg-produced show that will have a two-hour premiere on June 19, 2011 at 9pm ET. This will be different from other alien invasions since this one takes place after the majority of mankind has been wiped out. The remaining survivors try to survive and take back what’s theirs, just like the resistance in Terminator: Salvation.

Noah Wyle stars as Tom Mason, a history teacher/father, who lost his wife and middle son during the invasion. Noah is a perfect fit for a guy who wants to prove that he’s not just a teacher, but also one that can make a difference in the fight against the aliens. With him currently are his youngest and oldest sons. Playing the oldest son, Hal Mason, is Drew Roy. I think he’s the weakest link of all the cast members, as he definitely doesn’t look like he fits into the post-apocalyptic world. He looks like he just came out of Hannah Montana, which surprisingly he did. Moon Bloodgood stars as Anne Glass, a pediatrician who now takes care of the injured and wounded. We also have Peter Shinkoda as Tom’s right-hand man, Dai (he’s going to be Sektor in the last episode of the Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series).

Tom Mason, thanks to his history knowledge, gets to be the second-in-command, next to Will Patton’s Weaver, a veteran who doesn’t like to take risks and is always set on trying to preserve the whole group. This turns into drama, as Weaver doesn’t want Tom to go on a search and rescue mission after Tom finds out his middle son is still alive. What’s a guy to do? Plead again and send himself and a small team to rescue his son. The small team later find out that Tom’s middle son is being controlled mentally by the aliens, thanks to an alien contraption that’s embedded into the spine of all the servant kids.

Throughout the show, we see the aliens, which are called Skitters because they skitter about like insects. One thing I’m still waiting to see is how awesome these guys are. So far, we’ve seen them behaving like how Nazi soldiers treat the Jewish. For an alien race that’s supposedly able to take over and kill off most of humanity, they sure didn’t show it. One of them gets his ass kicked by Noah Wyle in close quarter combat. To be fair, Noah had a shotgun. One thing that makes them cool, are their mechs that they control. As for their motive, we still don’t know what they want. All we know is that they like to wipe out humanity and control kids to collect metal parts.

And now I’d like to mention The Walking Dead series. As much as the two shows are different, they share a common theme about a father trying to find his loved ones. In Walking Dead, you can feel the pain and loneliness that Rick Grimes went through. Tom Mason, on the other hand, still has his two sons from the get-go. His missing middle son is still okay, even though he’s got a mysterious alien device attached to his body. I just didn’t feel the pain as much as I should.

The show can be a real drag when Tom is busy looking for his son and the resistance group is being threatened by a gang of outlaws. The subplots aren’t really interesting and doesn’t help the show move forward. The overall cast is pretty solid, but the show could be better by showing more engaging emotions and better dialogue. It’s not until the ending of the second episode we are introduced to a cliffhanger. The ending for the second episode shows promise for a more interesting plot between aliens and humans. I’ll be checking the series out just to see if things will pick up for the better.

Grade: C