When most people think of Noah Wyle, they think of his roles as a doctor, both in the iconic 1990s medical drama ER where he played Dr. John Carter and in HBO’s The Pitt where he stars as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, and for good reason. Both shows have had major pop cultural impact. But Wyle isn’t just great in medical dramas. The actor has appeared in a wide range of television series including a deeply underrated forgotten sci-fi series from Steven Spielberg and while that series arrived 15 years ago today, time has only made it better.
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Falling Skies premiered on June 19, 2011, on TNT, ultimately running for five total seasons before ending it’s run on August 30, 2015. The series was created by Robert Rodat, known for his Academy Award winning script for Saving Private Ryan, but it was also saw Rodat re-team with Steven Spielberg, who produced Falling Skies via Amblin Entertainment. The series offered viewers an alien invasion story that takes a very unique and in many ways refreshing in how it approached the story.
Falling Skies is an Alien Invasion Story Through Human Eyes
In Falling Skies, we follow Wyle’s Tom Mason, a former history professor who is now one of the leaders of the Massachusetts Militia Regiment, essentially one of the last remaining pieces of the U.S. military and government following a devastating alien invasion six months prior to the events of the series that saw the world destroyed, militaries fallen, and more than 90 percent of the human population killed. While the aliens have decimated humanity and the planet, their invasion progresses as they continue to kill off the remnants of humanity. Tom and his group of survivors are trying not only to, well, survive, but also try to take the planet back.
While on the surface that sounds like the framework for just about every alien invasion story you can imagine, there are some important elements that make the series unique. First, we start after the end of the world. Humanity has, at this point in the story, lost. What’s left is more survival than resistance and it’s from that deeply bleak place, a story that is much more human than you might expect emerges. Tom and the other characters are tasked less with fighting the aliens and more with the basic questions of how to take care of themselves, how to protect their children, how to parent in this desperate world. Family—both blood and found—is at the center of Falling Skies. It makes for an engaging story (especially as we get deeper into the series and the children become a little more central to the alien plot) and, that engaging story makes the stakes even higher. It also feels very in keeping with other stories that fall under Spielberg’s umbrella as many of Spielberg’s movies have that family focused element that make the story something much more personal for those in the audience.
Spielberg may not have created, written, or directed Falling Skies, but it is impossible to not feel his influence over the series, even without the human focus of the story. That is, in some ways, not a surprise because Spielberg was very involved. Wyle has even previously spoken about how involved Spielberg was in the series, noting that his “fingerprints are all over this” and noted that the legendary director had influence on the script, the pilot, and everything. The series has a lot of Spielberg DNA. It’s also that human element that has allowed the show to age incredibly well. Unlike most alien invasion stories, there isn’t a heavy reliance on technology or science. It really is just the people as well as their place in what is, ultimately, a situation far larger than Earth. Even beyond the fact that the show is almost a better watch today than it was when it originally aired, with the release of Spielberg’s Disclosure Day offering another, slightly unique, sort of alien story, Falling Skies feels very present and very current—and if you haven’t watched it yet, you should.
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