As if the surviving humans in Falling Skies didn’t have enough to worry about, another race of aliens shows up for season three.
“Three’s a crowd,” said 18-year-old Canadian Connor Jessup, who plays Ben Mason. “So it’s a crowded season.
“As if it wasn’t complicated enough for these people. Alien threat grows, it’s sort of redundant.
“But even if the aliens disappeared, you still have to deal with humans, and we’re not easy.”
Truer words never were spoken. As the third season of Falling Skies debuts across Canada with back-to-back episodes on Super Channel on Sunday, June 16 (one week after its debut on TNT in the United States), it’s hard to tell who’s more bothersome and problematic, the aliens or the humans.
Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Falling Skies follows the human fight against an occupying alien force that is plaguing the Earth. Noah Wyle stars as Tom Mason, father of Jessup’s character Ben.
“It really has grown in scale,” Jessup said. “If you go back and look at the first season, it really was just a story about a small group of people, very insular, fighting against a faceless, nameless enemy that we didn’t understand.
“But by the third season it has expanded, more people have joined up, we founded a society, new technology, new aliens, there are faces to villains, names to villains, there’s weird phraseology. It has become deeper in terms of the genre element and the sci-fi element.
“The show started out strongly attached to the American Revolution. And in many ways it still is. It’s following the path of, say, Tom as a George Washington figure, whose first concern is purely military, how do we win this? But as victory becomes in sight, the political questions arise. After victory, what kind of world do we build? That theme is entering the show, especially in the third season.”
Jessup’s character Ben, a former captive of the aliens, has become a translator for a group of rebel “skitters,” which is the term used to describe the invaders.
“Season two was all about walking this tightrope between alien and human for Ben,” Jessup explained. “There’s a transformation happening. It’s not resolved. He’s changing.
“Even though at the end of season two Ben fell more on the human side, it’s an ongoing thing. It’s a hard world for Ben to live in, because now that he’s not alone any more in having these abilities and people are starting to appreciate the contribution we can make, it’s still by no means easy.
“Again, it begs the question: After the war, will these things be so easily forgotten? The youthfulness we have now, that people appreciate us for now, when that’s gone what will be left? How will we recover?”
Trying to win the war leads to trying to win the peace. It’s a pattern that has been repeated over and over in human history, and the theme continues in Falling Skies, with aliens thrown into the mix.
“The war is not over by any means, but it has entered a different phase,” Jessup said.
“Wars unite disparate factions. People who would not normally be allies, it forces them to be friends. But after wars, those things are a lot more difficult.”
bill.harris@sunmedia.ca
@billharris_tv
