Someday someone is going to write a thesis with a title like, Extreme Makeovers: The Reinvention of the Self in Post-Apocalyptic Pop Culture dealing with the appeal to scenarios involving “the day after.” I think it’s because first, we identify with the survivors because they’re still here! Somehow they survived, which means they were chosen by some Higher Power for some Higher Purpose or just chosen by Chance because they were luckier than everyone else: whatever the case, they’re special! Second, it represents freedom. Hate your job but can’t quit because you enjoy eating and living indoors? The (fill in the blank) Apocalypse does it for you—when zombies/robots/aliens/glaciers are shuffling down the street, somehow that monthly report doesn’t seem quite so important anymore.
Third, it’s now your chance to shine. Maybe you couldn’t be captain of the football team or head cheerleader, but you did take that basic first aid course. Great! In the post apocalypse world, you’re now the Surgeon General! Fourth, now you’re hot! Have you ever seen a day after world where everyone wasn’t height-weight proportionate? (There may have been a couple of beefy guys in the Mad Max movies, and Hurley from Lost doesn’t count—they were castaways, not survivors. (Okay, they did survive a plane crash (or did they?) but the rest of the world kept on keepin’ on.) And finally, your dating prospects go through the roof, you always end up with someone hotter than your dearly departed… What was his/her name again? Sure, this is someone who said they wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last person on Earth—but that was when there were 7 billion potential partners to choose from. As the numbers dwindle, just like at a bar as closing time approaches, you start looking better and better.
Of course, the real irony here is that, as they say in France, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose—the more that changes, the more it's the same thing. You’re still stuck in a job you hate (Duh, surviving!), working with people you like even less than your old coworkers (for dramatic purposes a group of “survivors” must always be “disparate”), and—and this is the biggest irony of all—you just want things to go back to the way they were before… Which you weren’t too crazy about in the first place.
All of these themes are on display in Falling Skies, TBS’s first SF series (10 pm EST, Sundays, already renewed for a second season). The series starts after Earth has been invaded (and largely decimated) by aliens and follows the exploits of Tom Mason, formerly a history professor but now the second in command of the “2nd Massachusetts Militia Regiment, a group of civilians and fighters fleeing post-apocalyptic Boston.”
Our monsters are always metaphors: the giant ants and spiders of the 1950s were a warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons, the pod people of the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers bespoke the hidden threat of communism (they look like us, but they’re not!). Vampires have always been about the “dangers” of wanton, non-marital sex (yes, I know it’s hard to think of Bela Lugosi as a sex symbol) and in the True Blood era, they are a stand-in for society’s treatment of people with AIDS. (Sleep with them at your own risk, they’ll either kill you or make you one of them!) As near as I can tell, the “Skitters” in Falling Skies (you always give The Other a denigrating name) represent the ultimate Tea Party-nightmare about… immigrants. They come here uninvited, take your jobs and destroy everything, and the government does nothing to stop them. If we are to prevail, we’ll have to do it ourselves, without federal help, using good ol’ American ingenuity (and guns). (In a recent episode, one of the resistance members “vigorously interrogates” one of the aliens by sticking a loaded gun in its mouth and poking it until it passes out, convinced it can speak/understand our language but just refuses to.)
Falling Skies is decent but not dazzling, but then it’s still early in the series. TBS knows drama; let’s give them a chance to see what they know about science fiction.
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