Falling Skies

Falling Skies opens roughly six months after a devastating alien invasion has wiped out most of humanity, knocked out the worlds militaries, and reduced cities to rubble. The survivors band together into ragtag militia groups, and the series follows the 2nd Massachusetts, or 2nd Mass, a mobile column of civilians and fighters trying to stay alive while constantly on the move. At the heart of the story is Tom Mason, a former Boston University history professor who lost his wife in the attack and now applies his knowledge of past revolutions and guerrilla wars to the human resistance.

The alien threat comes in several forms. The foot soldiers are the insectoid Skitters, six-legged creatures that round up humans and harvest children. The children are fitted with biomechanical harnesses that enslave them to the aliens, a horror that drives much of Toms personal mission because his middle son Ben is captured early on. Above the Skitters sit the tall, sinister Espheni, sometimes called Overlords, who orchestrate the occupation, while towering mechanical Mechs enforce their will on the ground.

Across five seasons the show charts the resistances evolution from scattered survival to organized counteroffensive, moving from the streets of greater Boston to a fragile settlement called Charleston and eventually toward an all-out push to drive the Espheni from Earth. Executive produced by Steven Spielberg through DreamWorks Television, Falling Skies blends large-scale alien-invasion spectacle with an intimate family drama about a father trying to hold his sons together while leading a war he never asked to fight.