FALLING SKIES “What Hides Beneath” Review

FALLING SKIES “What Hides Beneath” Season 1, Episode 8 – This week’s episode of Falling Skies starts off with the exciting news that the resistance is finally organized to the point where they believe they can launch a successful attack against the main Skitter hub. Porter drops into the 2nd Mass giving them a four day timeline to prepare for the offensive and since they’re in need of some serious explosives, they turn to Pope for help. While Pope is not normally a team player, there are few things in their occupied world that motivate him more than his desire to utterly destroy the Skitters.

At such a crucial stage in the fight, Weaver seems to have hit his breaking point. His exhaustion inhibits his ability to block his painful memories and he becomes distracted and impulsive. We finally get filled in on the details about Weaver’s family and the tragic way in which they died. I’m not sure why Weaver’s back story had to remain a mystery for so long but now that he doesn’t have to carry that burden in secret, I’m hoping his relationship with both the civilians and the fighters will improve.

There was some interesting information about the aliens that Tom, Weaver and Hal picked up during their scouting mission. The first was that the alien structure appears to be built from normal Earth materials. The scrap work that the harnessed kids have been doing is likely to gather materials to build the alien hub. That information corresponds with the revelation that Pope had when he attempted to reverse engineer the Mech technology. He discovered that they use military weaponry found on Earth that is only slightly altered for use in the alien machines. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this development but it seems significant and rather unusual for an alien species to invade a planet using very limited alien materials.

The second big development about the Skitters came when Tom, Weaver and Hal caught sight of an entirely new form of alien. These tall, shiny, bipeds appear to have control over the Skitters. While the three of them are interested in the new form, they don’t spend a whole lot of time analyzing the new information because they’re caught off guard by Sonia, a woman who survived the invasion while living in the city.

Sonia is all sorts of strange and I’m surprised that Tom was so trusting of a lone survivor given the events in the previous two episodes of Falling Skies. He should know by now that there is a good chance that humans who are surviving against all odds are probably surviving by cooperating with the occupying aliens. Their time with Sonia ended up bringing Karen back into the picture as one of the harnessed kids the aliens use to communicate with collaborating humans. Although Hal has barely mentioned Karen in the last few episodes, he went into a frenzy when he saw her and I expect that she will be a large part of his storyline in the next few episodes.

After Anne dissected the backside of one of the Skitters to discover a harness deep beneath layers of tissue, she theorized that the Skitters were likely harnessed themselves and that they gradually morphed into the six legged monsters that have been terrorizing humanity. This does not bode well for the children in captivity, but it’s unclear what that means for Ben and Rick.

Despite his new, unnatural athletic abilities, I think Ben is being honest when he says he’s happy to be back with his family and that he despises what the Skitters have done. Rick, on the other hand, just keeps getting more and more creepy and I don’t know how everyone around him is able to dismiss it as some kind of post traumatic disorder. He tells Ben, “They love us, Ben, and they will come back for us” which makes me wonder if the rest of the kids are like Rick, waiting for the Skitter’s return, or if they’re like Ben. I’m guessing that the way Ben’s body has not absorbed the harness is part of reason why he’s not Skitter-crazy the way Rick is. It also makes me wonder if Rick is talking about the six legged Skitters or the tall biped aliens that we just met for the first time tonight.

All of the plot lines that were presented over the course of the season seemed to have gathered together in this week’s episode of Falling Skies and they are all pointing to what I hope will be an incredible season finale that will give us a lot of answers before throwing us into the next stage of the battle.