TNT has signed off on a second season of Falling Skies. The order is for ten more episodes to air in 2012.
TNT’s head of programming Michael Wright described Falling Skies as a “true standout series” with “ambitious storytelling”, adding: “We’re reaching new audiences with Falling Skies and look forward to seeing where this fascinating and exciting series takes us next.”
Falling Skies producer Mark Verheiden recently revealed that he had plans for a second season of the program.
Taylor says
I haven’t gotten around to watching this yet. Once I finish up my re-read of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ I’ll have to check it out.
sweetbo says
Meh. This one was dead out of the gate. Between the race!fail, gender!fail, and the annoying children (seriously, why put one little boy in charge of something important like radios?) not to mention most of the plot being propelled by convenience (why don’t the aliens see a giant caravan of people moving in broad daylight?!)and characters taking turns being stupid I am surprised and then not really surprised this got renewed. My boss loves it. He is fine with things not making sense beacause he likes this white, all male family an entire apocalypse is a stage for. That worked decades ago but these days it is just lazy.
Adrian says
I agree with Sweetbo. The writing for this show is WEAK. Full of played out clichés. Not to mention TNT displays the title of the show, during 90% of the broadcast.
bocoe says
I watched the first episode and I have been recording the rest on my DVR. I must agree with sweetbo because right now it is not compelling television for me. I am so tired of television shows that depict a world of all white people. This country is a melting pot, like it or not. We should take a note from the Brits and use more multiplicity of ethnic groups. “Falling Skies”, seems to lacks any real punch. I will watch again hoping the episodes have gotten better since the pilot.
Mich67 says
Thus far it’s only average…I’m still watching…for now…willing to give it a chance to grow. Amazing that TNT renews so quickly while most good shows on other channels have to wait to the end of their season to see if they’ll get the green light or wait to get canceled (SGU).
AndyMac says
I’m not too impressed. I’m still watching it mostly because there’s nothing else on right now. When Eureka, WH13 and Alphas start next week this show will very quickly get relegated to the bottom of the DVR pile.
Sam says
I’m watching because I see a glimmer of hope for this show only improving with age, like a fine wine. And, thankfully TNT is going to give it a chance to see if it ages well, the show has already been picked up for a second season.
Mark says
I was a little surprised that I like this show. Sure, its not great, and a little cliche’d but I am glad its coming back.
Babylon 5/Crusade fans should really appreciate the irony in the part of the statement that said “We’re reaching new audiences with Falling Skies”! This is an audience they could have been cultivating for the last 12 years if they didn’t dismiss Crusade so easily!
A. A. Roi says
Well, as ratings trump all, this one is a winner. Perhaps here lies a warning that ‘traditional sci-fi’ still has a market, mediocre though it is. Lowest common denominator sci-fi has always done well.
But who knows, the writing might get better, the female characters might be allowed to do something;-)
Alverant says
I’m watching it now and one of the female characters was allowed to show everyone how to ninja kill a skitter.
Alverant says
I’m liking this series. I can understand some of the criticism. But there is one thing it’s doing right. It’s not being dark. The new BSG was dark. It lost me in 5 minutes and from what I heard about the series since didn’t make me want to come back. Who did they decide was really a robot, throwing a dart at a board? And the ending…ugh. Sorry to criticize the great Joss Wedon, but he doesn’t really do it for me.
After seeing the Cape get canceled, I’m glad that a genre show I like actually getting renewed.
AndyMac says
What did Joss Whedon have to do with BSG?
Summer Brooks says
That’s what I was going to ask…
Alverant says
Didn’t he make BSG? Well my mistake. He still doesn’t do anything for me.
Summer Brooks says
Nope. Joss Whedon did Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, the feature film Serenity, and the awesome Dr Horrible so far, as well as the comics for Buffy, Angel, Fray, and X-Men for a year or so (not sure how long there). Writing credits on a bunch of other movies as well.
Seriously? How can Firefly and Serenity not do anything for you? I understand people who have problems with how Dr Horrible ended, or may have various gripes with Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse, but nothing he’s done interests you? Odd.
Anyway, Ron Moore is who you want to lodge your BSG complaints with. The line for that is now stacked up to Albuquerque.
Dobbin Pitch says
I’m interested in the earlier comments on there not being any ethnic diversity in the cast; there are three African-Americans and an Asian-American in the main bundle of cast members right off the bat. This is a group of only 100+ people, whom we haven’t met all of yet, and we have cries of ‘whitey is running the show again!’ already? I agree that BBC has more racial diversity on their programing, but they are also based a more racially diverse nation. The U.S. is made up of mostly Whitey, so if you grabbed up 100-300 people, odds are, you’d end up with a lot of white faces, unless you were grabbing from an ethnic neighborhood, which might skew things a bit. Sorry you don’t like the ratios, but that’s a fair example of America as it stands. As for the storyline, they’ve addressed many of the issues that you complained about, and, like it or not, life doesn’t always come up with new and interesting ways to garner ratings and kill humans. Unlike the movies, life is often passe and boring… Uncle Ted didn’t get killed by a werewolf and a sparkly vampire, he got killed by a limb from a pecan tree as he was walking under it. Lame, but that’s life.
sweetbo says
I’m not talking ratios. Ratios were what TV in the 1990s were scraping to come up with. We should be doing better than ratios by now. Minorities and women on this show have no depth or agency outside of how they relate to the white male family. We know very little about them at all. They have no story of their own. They are just a love interest or inexplicably loyal or so paper thin they are hardly there.
The little we thought we knew about the African American father (I was going to look up his name but he isn’t even in the show site’s character bios) was that he seemed to be a level headed, intelligent guy but as soon as he got into Wyle’s rescue plan they character assassinated him by making him do something stupid to keep the plot moving. From what we saw of him that was OOC. But I guess we should cheer for that because at least he does something even if it makes no sense. That’s more than can be said of the other minority male characters. Anthony’s sole profile point is being ex-military and having the his paper thin friend get killed with an arrow. We hardly knew you, pal. Dai hardly talks and just stands in the background and occasionally, silently, gets beat up and shakes it off. We know nothing about him otherwise. He’s just a loyal helper which can be repeated often.
The ladies don’t fare well either. In this one you got a pediatrician who stays at base and tends to the boys and is a potential love interest who empathizes with the alien prisoner. Hardly any times passes before there is a more qualified man outranking there to make what little she does miserable and point out her female weaknesses. There is a recently emancipated-from-creepy-abusive-prison-dude woman who just sorta wanders around doing sound bites and little else. I thought she’s do something cool, but she got swept up in that stupid B plot surrounding cooking and that prison dude and hasn’t yet rejoined the main plot. There is teenage girl who is overly religious and prays a lot and is also there for soundbites and flirting with the teenage male lead. Why someone her age isn’t using a gun yet I’ll never know. She isn’t doing anything else important. They seem to want to keep able bodied people as cattle instead of embracing the reality they live in. Then again the very important job of fixing/manning radios is given to an emo child so… priorities. They all really should die.
Then there was Karin. Karen was actually fine at first. She’d go off on the scouting parties and no one mentioned once that it was dangerous for a girl to be out there or anything. Momentarily refreshing if you did some handwaving. She was just one of the group and a no brainer to be in danger with the rest of them. She hardly talked and when she did it was through being the love interest or strangely devoted to Wyle’s ridiculous plans, but if you ignored how paper thin she was at least she seemed to be involved a bit more than someone like praying girl who.
And then she got snatched by the aliens. This post-snatching episode was where the boys waxed poetical about how she was just a high school senior and shouldn’t have been out there blah blah blah (doesn’t that make her older than the 16 year old son?) and just was out there because she was lead by emotions to help them find her lover’s brother blah blah. Never mind the fact being a teenage girl had nothing to do with the reason she got snatched and that she seemed to be going on dangerous missions every other day with them no problem. Oh, but now she has the misfortune of being captured and the boys get all sentimental and shit about it. She’s just there to be momentarily cool, a love interest, and then for the male characters to be emotional about. Maybe they’ll rescue her and complete the ridiculousness.
So yeah, I expect a little more than ratio. Passing the Bechdel test seems like a far off dream, but why a show would try to have an ensemble cast of this makeup and then leave most of them shells of people in favor of B plots about cooking and twee scenes with all-too-wise kids playing with toys I will never know. This day and age it is just lazy though.
BoKnowsDiddley says
What you say? A Sci-Fi Show that panders to white males…that is crazy! They should have made the main protagonist a black female. Women and minorities are the target demographic after all. Oh, wait they’re not, are they?
And therein lies the answer to the riddle. Moral/political outrage is as completely misplaced as would be raging against a male protagonist on Lifetime or a White protagonist on BET. It’s all about targeting an audience, generating revenue, getting renewed…and delivering some sort of story in the middle of it all. It is not about politics, it is not about equal rights, and it’s not even about art. It is a business, and it targets the largest representative group of the particular market. In science fiction that group is white males.
That said, I like the show…I overlook the watered down storytelling, the cliches, and the unrealistic bits that season the show. In short, I suspend my disbelief and I’m left with a mildly entertaining distraction. Which is as much as I hope for in a show clearly targeted at the masses gathered at the shallowest end of the Sci-Fi pool.
Sweetbo, I think you are just a bit overly angry…just my opinion…take it for what it is.
But to be completely honest, I would much prefer watching Gabriell Union killing aliens in a post apocalyptic world. Sorry, Noah…
Skiznot says
Most recent episode seem slightly better. I agree it’s cliche, on the other hand the action sequences have been kind of cool. It’s kind of the only sci-fi show with a narrative I have this summer since I’m boycotting Syfy.
KGDC says
I like this show a lot. After listening to the latest voicemail show, I get the gripes, but I don’t share them. Thus, this is just another case where you dislike something I think has already proven itself to be a fairly decent show. I’m not spoiled by BSG or SGU, they were GREAT shows but I’m not looking to replace them. If another sci-drama comes along that is AS good as those two mentioned? Cool. If I can find a show that’s entertaining, but has quirks? I can live with that too.
The thing is, you guys (SOSF’ers) like Pope… I personally can’t stand his character. If anything, he’s the least interesting and most teletype character on the show. It is literally a much much stronger show without Pope, but I know he’ll eventually be back. So be it, I’ll bear him. I like the characters, the storyline and the family aspects of the show. It’s the heart of this show that makes it appealing and why people are gravatating to it. Anyway, watch or don’t… I’ll be tuning in.
AndyMac says
I finally figured out why this show just isn’t doing it for me. There are no WTF moments. None. It’s boring. It’s bland. It’s predictable. What have we learned in 4 episodes? Not much.
There was an opportunity in the July 10th episode for us to find out something about the skitters while the rescue was going on. Did we? No. Then after the rescue the last 20 minutes of the show was mushy, dramatic stuff-no forward movement of the story at all!
To top it all off I just don’t care about any of the characters. I can’t even remember any of their names-except maybe Ben since that’s all the Noah Noah Wyle character talks about.
Do you want something to help you realize just how boring this show is? Watch it and then immediately follow it with Eureka and WH13 like I did on Monday night. Talk about whiplash.