Falling Skies: A Discussion (Spoilers)

[Covenant]

It's all a matter of speculation. I would like there to be a REASONABLE explanation as to why these adults aren't walking around out there with guns while someone's kid is. I get the feeling that there's enough of the "Fighters" around and not enough weapons to arm a lot more.

There's got to be limits on the amount of ammunition they have, and we know guns are precious so they're not exactly swimming in hardware. You could say they've shown enough guns to put them into the hands of kids, but I think some of those kids might be more effective soldiers than some of the other parents. We can only assume that some of the "civvies" are just off-duty fighters or specialists in other areas, and that the true number of "not going to stand on patrol" bunch is much smaller and has been narrowed down over this whole time to just those people who are too afraid or too useless to be soldiers. Maybe some of them used to depend on glasses to see shit more than a few inches in front of their face and would love to fight, if they could only do so safely.

Also, one of the differences I think is in the amount of firearms overall versus the amount of rifles. Pistols seem to be pretty common--either in the hands of doctor-robbing dickbags or just average people. But given how poorly people seem to do fighting the Skitters I think that a pistol is basically as useful as a flashlight for killing the aliens, and are thus not really considered viable soldier armaments.

We can only assume that once they figure out how to effectively fight the aliens, they will, but right now they can't. Unlike other guerilla forces, the Skitters don't have the need to keep any humans around, so they can just obliterate settlements and so forth. That kind of methodology would have made other guerilla or partisan resistances a lot easier for the invaders to deal with. All they can afford to do is stay hidden. Really, without a Deus ex Machina or some amazing invention they have to know they're screwed. They won't be able to repopulate and create any form of civilization while the aliens are as effective at killing them as they are now, so if nothing changes within a relatively short period there won't be a "resistance" as much as they'll just cease to exist.

If the skitters had only taken America or something, they could just try to hold out and make it too costly and give the rest of humanity time to gear up. But right now scattered bands are all the aliens have to deal with, and they're not even taking that threat all that seriously. Apparently the aliens have some kind of quota to meet, so we can assume that they're all Union workers or something and their supervisors are busting their green balls to step up productivity.

I had thought before that maybe the skitters themselves were penal legions or a species that had previously been conquered, thus explaining why none of them are actually armed or wearing body armor. Now I just think they don't much value their own safety so long as the Five Year Plan proceeds on schedule, which is an interesting dynamic to explore. I wonder if the regional commander will get sacked and a new guy installed if they manage to liberate too many kids.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I imagine 'Native wrangling' is pretty low on the skitter heirarchy of important jobs. Do skitters even get a gun?

[Covenant]

I imagine 'Native wrangling' is pretty low on the skitter heirarchy of important jobs. Do skitters even get a gun?

I've yet to see a skitter with an identifiable firearm. Maybe in Pilot, but so far I've never seen one with more than a tiny bit of body armor (may just be some utility webbing) or a gun of any sort. They have Meks, sure, but two or three of these guys so far have been killed by main cast with firearms due to them just being bare handed. More than that if you count Pope's barbeque and previous exploits.

They're competent hand to hand fighters, but nothing amazing. When you're facing armed combatants it makes no sense for them to be unarmed, unless they're not soldiers, or there's some other justification for them not having weapons of some sort--even a knife or something.

[TOSDOC]

I imagine 'Native wrangling' is pretty low on the skitter heirarchy of important jobs. Do skitters even get a gun?

I've yet to see a skitter with an identifiable firearm. Maybe in Pilot, but so far I've never seen one with more than a tiny bit of body armor (may just be some utility webbing) or a gun of any sort. They have Meks, sure, but two or three of these guys so far have been killed by main cast with firearms due to them just being bare handed. More than that if you count Pope's barbeque and previous exploits.

They're competent hand to hand fighters, but nothing amazing. When you're facing armed combatants it makes no sense for them to be unarmed, unless they're not soldiers, or there's some other justification for them not having weapons of some sort--even a knife or something.

I have to chalk that one up to Alien Society, with its own reasons and justifications that may be inexplicable to us for now, but not nearly so much as them treating human children like their own while they try to murder the adults. Compared to that, social taboos on carrying weapons and letting their mechs do their fighting isn't nearly as strange. We still don't know if they're the real brains or just a worker or slave caste, or any other reasons for them being on Earth besides the kids.

[Darksider]

Well that was certainly enlightening. Now we know why they don't give the skitters guns.

[SylasGaunt]

And CC finally got his scene with Pope.

And better.. the hope of a .50 cal MG version of that scene later.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its certainly going to change things if all of a sudden small arms can take down a Mek. I'm also glad to see 'girlfriend' is back, though I admit I still can't remember her name.

I'm a bit curious about the skitters. Are/were they human, or were they just another race that got harnessed? I'm pretty sure skitters showed up right at the first wave, so I didn't think they'd have time to mutate humans into them.

I also want to find out what the deal is with the new aliens (who I'm calling Beanpoles), and what they want. Tonight's episode was good though, if for no other reason than now the humans have a chance of fighting back which isn't stupid or overly contrived. New Sherrif indeed

[NecronLord]

To think some of us thought the meks were humanoid because they were human...

When the skitters might be human, and the Meks actually resemble their creators!

[Covenant]

I knew it had to be something like that. I was also guessing they were going to have to humanize the skitters at some point, because as unknowable aliens they weren't sustainable. I'm happy to see such things come to pass--especially with me being right, at some level, about the Skitters being basically just slaves to another master, if we're right in assuming that.

My hope is that the skitters are a harassed species and not human. I won't flip tables if they end up being human, but it's a cop out. I think it'd be fine if the harnessed kids were going to grow into some kind of human hybrid, but I think it'd be a major, major mistake for them to make the skitters out to be modified humans.

It would suggest that the they'd harnessed millions and millions of people long before, let them transform over quite a while, before releasing them. It also would make no real sense for them to change so radically physically or change so much socially. Hanging from rafters like bats? Speaking in radio waves? Not to mention the amount of mass that'd need to be added to make a human into one of those 6 legged beasties.

So here's to hoping they don't do that. They can make the monsters creepy enough by turning their kids into an alien hive species who are chemically and socially dependent on whoever is actually in charge. They don't need to make them physically turn into skitters. Maybe just frankensteiny hybrids with gross skin and backs. We do know they make you super strong and/or possibly a brainwashed loser. Hopefully that and a little bit of hardback skin mutations is about the limit that we're going to.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm hoping the hard skin was an 'upgrade' for the new human labor force along with strength and endurance, and not the first step in turning harness kids INTO skitters.

Also, how many bullet slugs do you think you could get from one Mek casing like the one Pope shot? And is the word going out to the resistances that every ounce of scavenged metal is a dead alien?

[NecronLord]

I agree, Skitters as enslaved aliens makes much more sense.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Two bits of 'Skies' Good news:

1. Its been picked up for a second season.
2. This might follow the 'Earth 2' pattern, where a scifi show does ok in America, but gets a HUGE following overseas. Apparently the show is breaking all kinds of records in latin america and even Europe.

So at least we won't go out on an unresolved cliffhangar.

[Skgoa]

This episode was much better than the two before. But I was sure they would stage an ambush at the old lady's apartment to get Karen(?) and that beanpole. edit: So yeah, it wasn't predicable and I did not skip forward even once.

[Ahriman238]

I'm more interested in quite how much 'recycling' has been going on. The towers are built entirely from earth materials. Weaver said they were built using very basic architechtural and engineering techniques but I'm a little skeptical, since a.) they were built by a spacefaring race- basic materials or no and b.) I've never seen any four legged structures that tall built with simple materials and techniques.

But the mechs firing bullets made to fir earth shell casings? That implies the aliens were able to quickly build or refit their weapons to suit the usuable materials they found. That's interesting. Almost more interesting than the subdermal harnesses.

I too hope they won't say that the harnessed kids are going to physically turn into aliens.

Pope is still the most entertaining character, but I like that they took time to flesh out Weaver a bit. Bit worried about this pills he keeps popping, the most benign and oddly, most probable explanation I can think of is caffeine tablets.

[NecronLord]

I'm more interested in quite how much 'recycling' has been going on. The towers are built entirely from earth materials. Weaver said they were built using very basic architechtural and engineering techniques but I'm a little skeptical, since a.) they were built by a spacefaring race- basic materials or no

We use some engineering techniques that were known to the Ancient Romans and Greeks (in how we make doors for low structures for instance) still. There's no reason the tall silver dudes wouldn't use basic engineering techniques; if they're up to the job, no matter how advanced they are.

[TOSDOC]

I just had a horrible thought. Suppose this show is a slant on recycling. Are these the intergalactic recycling aliens, even turning the children of a civilization into a more productive, peaceful, loving slave race? The towers are built of recycled materials to project Star Trek replicators/reclimators to turn cities back into their constituent elements and alloys for efficient use. Even the mechs are taking our bullet cartridges and adding their own kick-ass bullet to make mincemeat of us.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Steve Spielberg wouldn't make a multi-episode millions of dollars TV show about recycling. Its just a plot point.

[CBG]

It was shown that skitters contain the same "harness" creature as used on kids.
There are 2 possible options:
-harness slowly transforms whatever it hangs on into a skitter
-harness is just a mind control\medical device that works on various races
Both can have very interesting conclusions.

Using mind controlled kids for work alone gives one conclusion - either their man- (or skitter-) power is too small to do the scavenging by themselves, building towers is time sensitive for them, or both. They wouldn't deal with the whole kid capturing business for fun.
And about the recycling part - the alien's interstellar transport might have some mass limitations, which means they couldn't bring their own advanced industrial base or a huge supply of construction material with them. In this case, "recycling" local junk into their own supplies makes a lot of sense.

[Chirios]

My guess? The aliens are kind of like the Qunari from Dragon Age.

They want Earth for some reason, it's one of few habitable planets, it's near a sufficiently large wormhole, they want a planet that they can live on whilst building materials to build a huge cyclotron around Saturn so that they can mass produce antimatter etc. But there are all these pesky humans in the way. So they figure, we're sufficiently advanced aliens, we'll kill the humans. But they believe in "waste not want not", so they convert the children into slave labour. Why not use robots? Too far away from their nearest colony and they need to destroy a large portion of Earth's manufacturing base in order to properly take control of it. So they turn the children into their robots by increasing their strength and fine motor skills to near robotic levels, and then they can use them for colonising this solar system.

[Ahriman238]

It was shown that skitters contain the same "harness" creature as used on kids.
There are 2 possible options:
-harness slowly transforms whatever it hangs on into a skitter
-harness is just a mind control\medical device that works on various races
Both can have very interesting conclusions.

Using mind controlled kids for work alone gives one conclusion - either their man- (or skitter-) power is too small to do the scavenging by themselves, building towers is time sensitive for them, or both. They wouldn't deal with the whole kid capturing business for fun.
And about the recycling part - the alien's interstellar transport might have some mass limitations, which means they couldn't bring their own advanced industrial base or a huge supply of construction material with them. In this case, "recycling" local junk into their own supplies makes a lot of sense.

Another possibility, though it's unlikely to be the answer in this show: we know the skitters communicate via radio waves, and that the harnesses recieve and apparently transmit data as well. That's how the skitters control the harnessed kids, and I suspect how they control the mechs. The harness may be the organ or mechanism that allows them radio communication. It may be implanted in them for this purpose, or the harnesses could be cloned and modified versions of what was already in the skitter's biology.

[CBG]

We know that the harness can do much medical stuff beside radio communication - this kid with healed lungs, physiological changes, insane endurance etc. It would be strange if skitters had a natural organ that does all this stuff and can be placed into another species without any significant changes and do the same then. The theory that it's a biotechnological alien population control device connects these facts much better. Especially that one of formerly implanted kids show a kind of sympathy\loyalty to aliens even after having his harness removed.
We also know that when using harnessed kids in direct control mode, they have very limited reflex\perception - as the shooting harnessed kids shoot more like primitive robots programmed to hold a weapon, point it in a general direction and pull the trigger than actually identify targets, aim and shoot. This doesn't take much advantage of the kid's physical capabilities. Considering what happend to one of these formerly harnessed kids, it might be that after being harnessed for enough time the harnessed specimen gains complete loyalty to alien masters and is allowed to think by itself no matter if a genuine alien is in radio control range or not.
That's how skitters, a completly reformed and harnessed species work as the alien's soldiers.
They are using kids in radio control mode only because they didn't have time to properly transform them into willing servants yet.

I guess that in the future we might see some human attempts in EM warfare, and if they discover a method to completly reverse all effects of harnessing, they might try using it on skitters.

[Darksider]

Wow. That was one hell of a shot.

EDIT: I know many will fault tom for his decision at the end, and it was hardly rational, but I don't expect a parent worried about a child to be rational.

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't blame him either, although what he did was risky. They could have been simply planning to seize him to get information about what was going on.

I'm curious as to what will happen next season. Tom is off with the aliens, Weaver is on his way back to the base, the civilians are in transit - it's one hell of a cliff-hanger.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Basically it was either 'die now' or 'go and learn'. Whether or not he can get BACK is up in the air, but he loses nothing but himself by going.

[TOSDOC]

Well, he might not, but the resistance and his sons do. As the XO he must know a few things valuable to the aliens, including how their outfit has come up with both new ammunition and the radio jamming. He must be aware of where the 2nd Mass is headed at least, so I hope Weaver changes that new location in a hurry.

Unless they bomb Weaver while they're lifting off.

The finale shows both why Tom should and should not be leading--he is an optimist who has his people's best interest at heart, while having a firm grasp on strategy and a reason to fight. He knows they must fight and win as a unit, and when to cut and run to survive when the odds are stacked, while taking calculated risks to save Weaver and the others when the odds are back in his favor. He is the logical choice as an envoy given his background. His weaknesses are his children, and it blinded him to the aliens' past lies with both the woman in the city and with Ricky. Blinded him enough to put the rest of the 2nd Mass in danger. I wouldn't have trusted to go with them just yet--better to pull up a table and a couple of chairs in the middle of that road to get more information first.

Yes, that was one hell of a shot, the most amazing one I've seen with an RPG since Red Dawn. The parallels to the old V series keep coming back too.