Falling skies tv. Falling Skies: An Engaging Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Series That Exceeds Expectations

What makes Falling Skies stand out among post-apocalyptic TV shows. How does Steven Spielberg’s involvement impact the series. Why did Noah Wyle describe filming as a “slog” despite being proud of the show. What challenges did the series face during its five-season run.

The Premise: Earth Under Alien Occupation

Falling Skies, executive produced by Steven Spielberg, presents a gripping post-apocalyptic scenario where Earth has been devastated by an alien invasion. Set six months after the initial attack, the series follows a group of survivors known as the 2nd Mass as they struggle to fight back against the occupying alien force.

The aliens, referred to as “Skitters,” are assisted by deadly mechanized robots called “Mechs.” These formidable adversaries have decimated the human population, destroyed military targets, and established themselves as the dominant force on the planet.

Key Elements of the Alien Invasion Storyline:

• Widespread destruction of human civilization
• Decimation of the global population
• Overwhelming technological superiority of the aliens
• Ordinary citizens forced to become resistance fighters
• Children involved in the armed struggle for survival

Cast and Characters: Survivors in a Harsh New World

The series boasts a talented ensemble cast led by Noah Wyle, who portrays a central character in the resistance movement. Other notable cast members include:

• Moon Bloodgood
• Drew Roy
• Jessy Schram
• Connor Jessup
• Maxim Knight
• Colin Cunningham
• Sarah Carter
• Peter Shinkoda
• Mpho Koaho

These actors bring to life the diverse group of survivors who must band together in the face of overwhelming odds. Their characters range from former military personnel to civilians thrust into combat roles, each grappling with the harsh realities of their new world.

Critical Reception: Exceeding Expectations

Despite facing competition from other high-concept science fiction series, Falling Skies managed to impress critics and audiences alike. The Hollywood Reporter praised the show as a “superb and entertaining sci-fi series” that may ultimately prove stronger than initially expected.

What sets Falling Skies apart from other post-apocalyptic narratives? The series combines intense action sequences with character-driven storytelling, exploring the human struggle for survival in a world turned upside down. Its focus on ordinary people becoming resistance fighters adds a relatable dimension to the alien invasion premise.

Factors Contributing to the Show’s Success:

1. Steven Spielberg’s involvement as executive producer
2. A unique take on the alien invasion trope
3. Strong ensemble cast led by Noah Wyle
4. Balance of action and character development
5. Exploration of human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds

Production Challenges: Behind the Scenes Struggles

While Falling Skies achieved success during its five-season run, the production process was not without its challenges. Noah Wyle, in an interview with Digital Spy, described filming the series as a “slog” and expressed relief at its conclusion.

Why did Wyle characterize the production as difficult? One significant factor was the frequent changes in showrunners. Over the course of five years, the series had six different showrunning writers, which led to a fragmented narrative voice. This lack of continuity placed additional responsibility on the actors to maintain a sense of coherence in their character arcs and the overall story.

Impact of Multiple Showrunners:

• Inconsistent narrative voice
• Challenges in maintaining story continuity
• Increased burden on actors to provide character consistency
• Potential for disjointed storytelling across seasons

Despite these behind-the-scenes challenges, Wyle expressed pride in the show’s five-season run and his character’s arc. He acknowledged the “miraculous” nature of their ability to produce the series given the circumstances.

The Spielberg Factor: High-Concept Television

Steven Spielberg’s involvement as executive producer lent significant credibility and anticipation to Falling Skies. How does Spielberg’s influence manifest in the series? His trademark blend of spectacle and human drama is evident in the show’s premise and execution.

Interestingly, Falling Skies was one of two high-concept television series Spielberg was shepherding to the small screen around the same time. The other, Terra Nova, garnered more initial hype due to its enormous budget and ambitious prehistoric setting. However, Falling Skies managed to capture audience attention and critical acclaim despite its comparatively lower profile.

Spielberg’s Impact on Falling Skies:

• Credibility and anticipation boost for the series
• Influence on the show’s visual style and storytelling approach
• Potential for attracting top talent both in front of and behind the camera
• Experience in balancing spectacle with character-driven narratives

Audience Engagement: A Five-Season Journey

Falling Skies maintained a dedicated viewership throughout its five-season run on TNT. The series conclusion on August 30, 2015, provided closure for fans who had followed the survivors’ struggles against the alien occupation.

What factors contributed to the show’s ability to retain its audience over multiple seasons? The series’ blend of action, character development, and ongoing mystery surrounding the alien invaders kept viewers invested in the story. Additionally, the show’s willingness to evolve and introduce new elements prevented it from becoming stagnant.

Elements That Kept Viewers Engaged:

1. Ongoing character development and relationships
2. Evolving alien threat and mysteries
3. Introduction of new human factions and conflicts
4. Exploration of moral dilemmas in a post-apocalyptic world
5. Balance of standalone episodes and overarching plot

Legacy and Impact: Falling Skies in the Sci-Fi Landscape

As a notable entry in the post-apocalyptic and alien invasion subgenres of science fiction television, Falling Skies has left its mark on the TV landscape. How does the series compare to other entries in these popular categories?

Falling Skies distinguished itself through its focus on the human element of resistance against an overwhelming alien force. Unlike some other alien invasion narratives that prioritize spectacle over character, this series maintained a strong emphasis on the survivors’ struggles, relationships, and moral choices in the face of unprecedented challenges.

Falling Skies’ Contributions to the Genre:

• Grounded approach to post-alien invasion scenario
• Exploration of civilian resistance rather than military-focused narrative
• Emphasis on family dynamics in a world-ending situation
• Gradual unveiling of alien motivations and biology
• Examination of societal reconstruction amid ongoing conflict

The series’ ability to maintain viewer interest over five seasons demonstrates the enduring appeal of well-crafted post-apocalyptic narratives. Its success paved the way for future science fiction series that blend character-driven storytelling with high-concept premises.

Conclusion and Series End

The conclusion of Falling Skies after five seasons provided a sense of closure for both the characters and the audience. Noah Wyle expressed gratitude that the series wasn’t cancelled mid-season, allowing for a proper resolution to the storylines and character arcs that had been developed over the years.

Why did the series end after five seasons? While specific reasons for the show’s conclusion weren’t publicly stated, it’s common for science fiction series to face increasing production costs and challenges in maintaining narrative momentum as they progress. Ending the series at this point allowed the creators to wrap up the story on their own terms.

Reflections on the Series Conclusion:

• Opportunity for character arcs to reach satisfying conclusions
• Resolution of major plot threads and mysteries
• Avoidance of potential narrative stagnation in later seasons
• Ability to end on a high note rather than facing declining viewership
• Legacy as a complete story rather than an abruptly cancelled series

Falling Skies’ five-season run stands as a testament to its ability to engage viewers with its unique take on the alien invasion premise. While the production process may have been challenging, the end result was a series that left a lasting impression on the science fiction television landscape.

Falling Skies: Noah Wyle Glad TNT Show Ended – canceled + renewed TV shows

by Cindy McLennan, November 2, 2015

TNT‘s Falling Skies is set in the aftermath of an alien attack which has left much of the world incapacitated. As survivors band together to fight back, each day is a test of survival. And according to star Noah Wyle, making the series was no day at the beach, either. Wyle tells Digital Spy he is glad the series wasn’t cancelled in mid-season, so that the audience could get some “closure.” That said, Wyle also confesses that making Falling Skies was a real “slog.”

Before ending on August 30, 2015, Falling Skies ran for five seasons on TNT. The Falling Skies cast includes: Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Drew Roy, Jessy Schram, Connor Jessup, Maxim Knight, Colin Cunningham, Sarah Carter, Peter Shinkoda, and Mpho Koaho. Read on for more from Wyle.

From Digital Spy:

“I’m proud that the show went to five seasons, I’m very proud of the character arc that I got the chance to play, and given some of the circumstances we worked in, it was miraculous that we were able to do it. ”

Wyle described filming the series as a “slog”, adding: “It’s a very interesting show in that in five years we had six different showrunning writers so the voice was never singular, and as a result it always felt slightly fractured and fragmented, which put the responsibility to keep up a sense of continuity really on the actors, to give the narrative some kind of sensible shape.”

And he admitted that he’s relieved it’s over, saying: “I kind of have to be slightly politic and not show my actual enthusiasm about not doing it any more, but I’m pretty happy not to be doing it any more.

Wyle recurs on TNT’s fantasy drama, The Librarians. According to Digital Spy, he was able to contribute to five episodes of the current season two, versus only four during season one.

What do you think? Did you like the Falling Skies TV show on TNT? Do you think it should have been cancelled? Would you have watched a sixth season?

TV Review – The Hollywood Reporter

Steven Spielberg is executive producing two high-concept television series and has, in the past couple of years, been shepherding them to the small screen. But along the way, one – Terra Nova on Fox – was seemingly stealing all the hype.

Part of that was an enormous budget, with the 13 episodes reportedly costing $4 million each, plus shooting on location in Australia. Millions more were spent on elaborate sets. But there always seemed to be delays when Fox was preparing to show clips to critics. Production delays eventually forced Fox to drop its plan to air the pilot in May, a la the Glee launch, then return with a bang in the fall after everybody talked Terra Nova to death on social media all summer.

The Bottom Line

Superb and entertaining sci-fi series from Steven Spielberg that may ultimately be a stronger series than anyone expected.

Oh, well.

With the big May sneak-peek doomed, along came June and, with quite a bit less fanfare, the impending premiere of Spielberg’s other series, Falling Skies on TNT.

And guess what? It’s really good.

So good and so entertaining, in fact, that the pressure is squarely on Terra Nova not to become a high-priced flop (cough, FlashForward, cough) come fall. Hey, stranger things have happened.

And when it comes right down to it, do you want your sci-fi to involve going back in time with dinosaurs or confronting a post-apocalyptic world where aliens have bombed the bejesus out of Earth?

Exactly. Let Terra Nova dabble in Jurassic danger while Falling Skies puts machine guns in the hands of kids. Or they could both be really good.

If you’re wondering about kids with machine guns, yes, it has come to that in the world of Falling Skies. The premise is that alien ships arrived – present day – and brought a whole lot of whoop-ass with them. Much of the world has been destroyed, military targets taken out, the population decimated and the aliens are an occupying force. It’s left up to ordinary citizens to fight back – kids included — even though they are vastly outnumbered, under-armed and technologically lacking.

Falling Skies picks up six months after the carnage and part of the citizen army known as 2^nd Mass (because they are in Boston) is looking for food and weapons, trying to avoid the deadly mechanized robots (known as “Mechs”) doing the killing for the multiple-legged aliens (known as “Skitters”) who launched the attack. (The aliens are hard to describe, but if you’ve seen Monsters, Inc., think about Mr. Waternoose sans color or the ability to sound like James Coburn).

The series wastes little time in setting the grim scenario: Everybody’s on their own. The resistance fighters are doing the best they can, but it’s a rag-tag collection at best, vastly overwhelmed to the point where anybody who can handle a gun gets one (if there’s one to be spared). The aliens have also kidnapped teenagers and attached a tentacled bug to their spines, which essentially turns them into zombie-like slaves.

Conceived by Spielberg and Robert Rodat (who wrote Saving Private Ryan), the series also claims Graham Yost (Justified, The Pacific) as an executive producer. Mark Verheiden (Heroes, Battlestar Galactica) and Greg Beeman (Heroes, Smallville) are co-executive producers – and hopefully they’ve learned from the wayward mistakes of Heroes as Falling Skies goes forward.

The series stars Noah Wyle as Tom Mason, a Boston history professor with a specialty in military tactics. He’s assigned to Weaver (Will Patton), the commander of 2^nd Mass. Moon Bloodgood is Anne Glass, a pediatrician who lost her own family but is taking care of the children in the group. Mason has three sons – eldest teenager Hal (Drew Roy) who has become impressively battle-hardened; middle child Ben (Connor Jessup), kidnapped and “harnessed” by the aliens; and 8-year-old Matt (Maxim Knight), who has not only lost his mother, who died in the invasion, plus a brother under alien control, but he doesn’t have the ability to fully understand why his life isn’t normal.

And that’s ultimately what works best in Falling Skies. Smartly set just far enough after the attack to have the shock worn down, but not far enough for anyone to have fully recovered, emotionally, we meet these characters at an unfamiliar juncture for most sci-fi fare. Spielberg and company don’t have to recreate War of the Worlds for us to know what happened. Falling Skies shares a number of welcome similarities to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, in that both series have a tone that each character understands and both series accomplish a lot for what is likely a fraction of what Terra Nova is spending. This more granular approach to the apocalypse favors sharp writing and nuance. Credit Wyle with establishing exactly the right tone here – his character has lost his wife, a son is kidnapped by the aliens and instead of running around frantically, his downbeat acceptance essentially conveys, “Hey, it’s done. It happened. We didn’t dream it. This is life as we know it now.”

Of course, in that way there are also welcome comparisons to The Walking Dead as well. Falling Skies is first and foremost a survival story. The series does well by not sugarcoating reality for the children in the story. Mason’s youngest may want to celebrate a birthday and get a present, but the abiding mood is that such whimsy belongs in a past life. There’s a bigger question out there – what are the aliens up to? – plus numerous unanswered smaller questions about whether there’s a government in place, how many people are still alive, etc.

But the entertainment value and suspense of Falling Skies is paced just right. You get the sense that we’ll get those answers eventually. And yet, you want to devour the next episode immediately. You know, like a raptorsaurus.

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Spielberg-produced “Falling Skies” alien invasion starts Sunday on TNT

It doesn’t take long for “Falling Skies” actor Noah Wyle to get cornered by some scary looking space creatures in Sunday night’s premiere of TNT’s much anticipated sci-fi drama. But the “ER” vet admits there was a lot of imagination used on the set of the two-hour pilot when it was shot nearly two years ago. In the premiere, all of the aliens are CGI and were edited into the show long after the actors wrapped their scenes.

“It presented a challenge, let’s just say!” Wyle concedes laughing. “There were six of us being terrorized by tennis balls on sticks and we were looking at each other like, ‘So, you’re playing this ‘stoic’ and not choosing to go with ‘debilitating fear?’ Really? Come on! We’re about to be killed here!’” In future episodes, the “Falling Skies” ensemble gets to act opposite actual creatures with costumed actors being pummeled inside the blistering hot outfits, along with the computer generated special effects.

Coming off his hit series of “Librarian” films for TNT, Wyle is psyched by the combined physicality of his “Falling Skies” character Tom Mason coupled with the nerdiness of Mason’s history professor background. When the show opens, we’re six months into an alien invasion and it’s clear the invaders are winning. Mason is a widower and father of three whose family is among the survivors fighting with the rebel forces for their planet. One problem: The aliens have snatched Tom’s middle son Ben and his fate remains uncertain in Sunday’s premiere.

Like last year’s Halloween premiere of “The Walking Dead” on AMC, it’s no coincidence that TNT is premiering “Falling Skies” on Father’s Day night. Says Wyle: “For me, part of the appeal of working on this show, aside from the opportunity to work with Mr. Spielberg, was that this is a show about a family that provides the counterpoint to the alien invasion. The thread of hope runs throughout the series.”

But hang on, is the baby faced former Dr. John Carter even old enough to have teenage boys? “God bless you,” Wyle says. “The answer, regrettably, is yes, physiologically speaking, I am. But psychologically speaking? Probably not!”

“Terminator Salvation” actress Moon Bloodgood plays Anne Glass, a pediatrician in the series who has suffered a tremendous loss at the hands (tentacles? claws?) of the aliens. “There are a lot of things that she’s not yet ready to come to terms with,” Bloodgood explains. “As we move forward, you’re going to see Anne not so much confront what has happened to her but be placed in a situation that just implodes. She’ll come face to face with an alien. In one of my favorite scenes, I completely lose my mind. It’s about releasing all of the angst that’s been pent up inside her. But she doesn’t have the luxury of being vulnerable in that moment.”

Wyle and the cast, along with “Falling Skies” producers and more than a few Dreamworks Television and TNT execs will all be studying the ratings this week and next since “Falling Skies” is both expensive and time-consuming to produce. “Because of all the special effects, the turn around on this show is really long,” Wyle explains. “As it stands, it would be tricky to turn around a second season in a year but we’re all hoping for that green light and that opportunity. It’s an amazing show to be a part of and we’re all very hopeful that we’ll get to continue to tell this story. ”

“Falling Skies” premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. with a two-hour episode on TNT. Beginning June 26, the show moves to its regular time slot of Sundays at 10 p.m.

The Fall and Rise of “Falling Skies” | Features

The spawn of Spielberg and Robert Rodat (“Saving Private Ryan”), “Skies” starts after humanity loses an alien invasion. A hardscrabble group of patriots—the ‘Second Mass’, as in the regiment of Battle of Gettysburg fame—fight the brown-skinned, multi-legged, creatures that humans dubbed “skitters,” a name that always made me think of delicious candy. The skitters’ main threat is in their numbers and ability to use technology to fool young people into believing their side of the story. Later it’s revealed that the skitters are actually slaves to the bio-mechanical Overlords. A group of rebel skitters lobby for the right to fight alongside humans, going so far as to wear American colors on their skin. (Again, science fiction is never about the future or space or aliens. It’s about Now through a metaphor filter.)

Heading the Second Mass is Tom Mason (Noah Wyle), a former military history professor prone to sudden Revolutionary War ruminations. He has three sons: 16-year-old Hal (Drew Roy), tween Ben (Connor Jessup) and ten-ish Matt (Maxim Knight, in a vulnerably plucky, star-making turn). As if to portray all stages of the male life experience, the show includes Gulf War vet Dan, played by Will Patton with bellicosity turned to 11. With the Second Mass out-numbered, out-gunned and ridiculously dwarfed, tech-wise, the first two seasons are based around Tom’s belief that U.S. history proves that the home field advantage always wins. This is what my shrink calls “magical thinking.”

Anyway, the show was terrible. And as for “Skies”‘ women, oy. There was nervous nurse Lourdes (Seychelle Gabriel) playing submissive mouse to Mason’s Big Cheese; foxy Karen (Jessy Schram), an alien-possessed Evil Babe so evil you expected her to find a honey blond mustache to glue on and twirl, and ever-surly Maggie (Sarah Carter), a good actor with the badass physicality of Katee Sackhoff but no character to attach it to.  But for a pure tincture of “Skies”‘ female trouble, I present you with the strange case of Doctor Anne Glass (Moon Goodblood), the only female allowed even a very small plot of “Skies”‘ narrative land. When the Second Mass captures a skitter, Dr. Glass tires of everyone arguing about what to do and just rams her fist up the thing’s mouth and jabs at its brain until it dies a shrieking, horrible alien death.

Pretty badass, right? Wrong. The show steals the triumph of Dr. Glass immediately to restore male dominance. She abruptly freaks out, runs away, and dissolves into a puddle of tears on Tom ‘s shoulder as she whines about her family photographs. Put it this way: try to imagine Tom finally figuring the key to vanquishing the alien menace, breaking down in tears, and wandering the halls for a shoulder to cry on.

Frustratingly, the show had promising aspects. There were the teen human slave labor force created by sticky bio-mechanical “harnesses” attached to kids’ spines that only sometimes totally control you: a Cronenbergian way of folding dread and mistrust into teen angst. There were the magnificently unnerving scenes of harnessed kids cuddled up to skitters who caress them in motherly ways that verged on erotic. And there were the tiny ant-like smart-probes sliding into people’s eyes. Those were all SF ideas worth exploring—just not on “Falling Skies.”

Until suddenly they were.

I like to think that Spielberg, a child of divorce who has always idealized the intact, 1950s-style, dad-dominated family unit, took a fearless inventory, and realized that at least some of the problems that had dogged both “Terra Nova” and “Falling Skies” might be solved by people who grew up in an America more defined by a more fluid sense of family—still the core of this show. It’s the America of single-parent homes, stay-at-home dads, and single-gender couples who weren’t surprised when a May 29, 2013 New York Times piece found that “four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family. ”

And so “Skies” went through that massive re-tooling by genre experts in alternative family dramas like “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Battlestar Galactica” (Bradley Thompson & David Weddle), “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (John Wirth), “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (David Solomon), “Dexter” (Holly Dale), “Human Target” (Heather V. Regnier) and the late, lamented “Alphas” (Jordan Rosenberg).

The proof of new-“Skies” is there in the first image of Season Three: a determined young woman’s face in close-up looking at a row of lime-dust-covered slaves, the sun glaring. You could be excused for thinking you’ve tuned into another show entirely. You kind of have. This “Falling Skies” finds humanity aided by The Volm, a noble, melancholic alien race in multigenerational war against the Espheni, the real and proper name for “skitters”, which means I don’t have to think about delicious candy every time people talk about them.

Thanks to the Volm’s tech and humankind’s pluck, the Second Mass is actually gaining ground. Still, this lime quarry attack is brutal stuff, with the group’s youth a well-oiled killing machine, right down de-harnessed girl Deni (Megan Danso), who casually rips an Espheni’s brains out in the quintessential Glassian style. The battle peaks with a classic Spielberg dolly-in/angle-up shot meant to carve heroes’ faces in the Mount Rushmores of our imagination. But since Tom—now President of the New United Sates of America—is late to the battle, the image instead admires Deni, Ben, and a bloodied Espheni rebel.

It’s the opening volley in the season’s real-world America immigration crisis allegory, where the Espheni understand that the most effective way to destroy community is to nurture mistrust and Other-hate and watch people tear each other apart. Having settled in Charlotte, North Carolina, only creates a level of comfort that more easily allows the Overlords’ micro-tech probes to go undetected and wreak maximum interpersonal damage while sucking up Second Mass military plans.

No matter what’s happening in an episode’s story, “Skies” nags at questions that supposed quality shows like “Ray Donovan” and “Low Winter Sun” don’t think to even treat poorly, because nihilism is a full-time job. When is the right time to forget your old life? What violence is and isn’t justified? Who decides how we pass on our legacy? “Falling Skies” triumphs when it shows people attempting partial answers.

In the episode “Badlands,” a silent, shadowed artist welds a “Tree of Liberty” out of bronze and tin for what will be a dreamlike memorial. Public art and the procedures of loss are celebrated as a child choir sings a starkly beautiful, modernist hymn. People hang metal ‘leaves’ inscribed with the names of their beloved lost on the tree’s branches, pausing for prayer. It’s “Falling Skies”‘ creators crafting a new spirituality that works for people coping with old gods that looked the other way. There’s a breeze of classic Spielberg optimism here that just makes everything achier.

Tom, meanwhile, is arguably closest to a Volm named Cochise (Doug Jones). So it’s crushing on a personal level when, after the human/Volm alliance leads to the destruction of an Espheni installation, Cochise’ father announces, as nicely as he can, that because humans are physically, intellectually and technologically inferior, there can be no place for them in the ongoing Volm/Espheni war. However, the Volm will be happy to relocate humankind, with full protection, supplies, and housing to…Brazil. Enraged, Tom pledges that humans will fight to their last breath for their planet. Dan splutters about a new, better resistance, one that’s all human, dammit! (Dan’s daughter, played by Laci J Mailey, doesn’t get the downside of a life of protected leisure lying on beautiful beaches drinking Mai-Tais, but the men won’t hear of it.)

“Skies”‘ great new card trick is the merging of macro and micro. While the military deals with their pyrrhic victory, we return to the story of Doctor Glass and Tom’s strange child, who grows at a terrifying intellectual rate while continuing to appear as an infant—until there’s no hiding her true nature from Tom in a shocker reveal: Still only a few months old, Lexi is now the height of a six year old. When she sees Lourdes in agony and near death from the hundreds of insect-like probes buzzing in her head, a single glance makes them fall out of her eyes and turn to what looks like onyx dust. Then Lexi says “Hi Daddy!” 

Kudos to Wyle for getting down the mix of shock, dawning realization that it was something the Overlords did when they abducted him that caused Lexi’s difference, and bursting love and pride for her being so awesome. And then his terror for what all of this means: Having an older son, Hal, who caused untold numbers of people to die while under alien control; and Ben, who may have had his harness removed but is still in psychic connection with the Espheni, a boy of two countries who can separate from neither; and now a daughter with the DNA of two worlds. Hal has three children who are immediate danger from a body politic recently betrayed.

But even with his fear of what the fragged Second Mass might do to his family, now poster children for the evils of alien miscegenation, and his barely checked terror of having the Other alive and doing things in his own body—even with all that, Tom doesn’t bail, or balk at this radically new idea of family. If anything, he loves them more fiercely. Tom proves himself the equal to Doctor Glass, who all season long has had to live with, explore and control the information about these issues as they developed, never giving in to fear or other peoples’ hysteria, alone, for her reasons.

Much like “Battlestar Galactica” finales, this season of “Falling Skies” ends with nothing but exciting question marks. It has so effectively destroyed its settings, goals, and our assumptions while pushing its characters to such no-way-back extremes that it’s hard to imagine what the show might be next season. But I’m betting it involves lots of angry villagers.

{TB Talks TV} Falling Skies Review: “Respite”

Tweetable Takeaway: “Respite” serves as a break from the action, however a calmer and quieter episode doesn’t mean it’s any less intriguing. Tweet

Airtime: Sundays 10 PM, TNT

By: Paul Gulyas, Contributor

The sixth episode of FALLING SKIES’ final season does in fact offer some respite, a break in the action, from the last two episodes of maniac Pope trying to avenge the death of his dear Sara on the Masons. Pope wasn’t even seen this episode (it wouldn’t have been much of a respite if he was, considering just his appearance is so unsettling). By my count the only kill, human or alien, the entire episode was a moth Espheni (the one who carried away Tom at the last moment last week) lying on the ground already injured, who Ben puts out of its misery with a couple rounds to the head.

However, a calmer and quieter episode doesn’t mean it’s any less intriguing or well executed. We see that Tom is on the mend from Pope’s bullet in his leg. He wakes up on a farm all but untouched by the alien invasion. The children living there have no idea that anything extraterrestrial even exists. Normally in a series’ final run, these little asides seem distracting, unfocused, and unnecessary. We want to see the main characters together, tying up the storylines from across the series in neat little bows, or at least making progress towards that. For this reason I felt cautious knowing that this episode would have an A storyline mostly taking place on a farm.

In the end, though, it worked. Ultimately this storyline is there to remind Tom, and the viewers, what EXACTLY he and his 2nd Mass are and have been fighting for for the entire run of the series: a return to normalcy. To just live. In a particularly affecting scene, Tom joins the farm family for dinner, taking the head of the table, and holding hands to say grace, pass the potatoes, pass the corn… He breaks down crying. This drab, everyday moment we take for granted has become more alien to him than the Espheni themselves. It’s tragic. And particularly moving when at the end of the episode Tom starts speaking to the family about rebuilding America, and needing strong families to help. Though it may not have been the writers’ sole intention, it definitely hyped me up to see the humans once and for all win this thing.

Other plotlines involved Maggie removing her spikes in her spine, thus removing her deep connection with Ben Mason. The interesting part that I didn’t see coming was that when Hal returns (with new girlfriend Isabella), Maggie seems to be completely in love with him again. With the introduction of Isabella last episode, and with Isabella and Hal hooking up this week, I naturally presumed that the writers were making things easy on the two oldest Mason boys former love triangle debacle; “Oh, Ben and Maggie can end up together because we’ll give Hal another also badass girl to fall in love with.” If this isn’t in the cards, then I’m genuinely unsure where all this is leading.

And in a twist surely to play out in great importance in the coming episodes, Weaver discovered an Espheni tool in an old abandoned whiskey distillery. No clue what it does but he described it as “the nail in the Espheni coffin.” Whatever it is, there are still battles and losses ahead, I’m sure of it. And Pope is still out there somewhere…

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Paul co-created and writes for SHOWoff, a game that lets players predict what happens next on their favorite TV shows, earn points for what they get right, and see where they stack up against friends and the world (free in the iOS App store).   Check out the SHOWoff app at playSHOWoff.com
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The Detroit News

Lynn Elber
 |  Associated Press

Los Angeles — Noah Wyle’s life during the past five years has been divided neatly between bucolic and demanding.

At his Santa Barbara-area ranch, Wyle has been happily surrounded by his wife, actress Sara Wells; his son and daughter; and rescue animals, including a pair of miniature horses that, as the former “ER” star puts it, “do nothing but stand there and look cute.”

“I have sort of a love ranch. Everybody’s in harmony: dogs and cats and ducks all wandering around,” Wyle said.

There’s an important new member of the brood: Wells gave birth Monday to their daughter, Frances Harper Wyle. (Wyle’s other two children are from his first marriage to Tracy Warbin.)

On the flip side of the equation is “Falling Skies,” the post-apocalyptic drama that he found a valuable, but stressful, experience. As the TNT series begins its final season (10 p.m. Sunday), Wyle, 44, says he’s ready to say farewell to his role as alien-fighter Tom Mason.

Ahead for the actor: A return to the lighthearted action of TNT’s “The Librarians” series this fall, and production of a TV project about key U.S. and British figures in the World War II era.

In an interview, he discussed the ups and down of fighting an extraterrestrial invasion, the art of the TV finale and how “Falling Skies” must end (no spoiler alert needed).

Is the timing right to bring the series to a close?

I definitely think this is the right time for it to end. It’s very rare you get to script your own ending. Usually it’s thrust upon you because of poor ratings and you don’t get a sense of closure as a cast, you don’t get a sense of completion as an audience member. So we were all very grateful they announced our fifth and final season last year so we could write an end and wrap up all our storytelling and mythology.

In last season’s finale, we saw your character, Tom, coming to aboard a mystery spaceship. What’s next for him?

We left Tom staring at something that we don’t see and saying the line, ‘My God, you’re beautiful.’ I will say we pick up exactly where we left off. We’ll see what Tom is talking to, and that moment will kick off the entire season. It brings Tom back into the narrative with a brand new point of view. He’s on a murderous rampage to finish this war, and this sliding moral scale that’s he’s been grappling with for four seasons, he’s just put that on a shelf for a little while.

You’d left “ER” as a series regular, but returned to be part of the 2009 finale. How does wrapping ‘Falling Skies’ compare to that experience?

That (“ER”) was more like saying goodbye to a chapter of my life than saying goodbye to a job. … “Falling Skies” feels like closing up the circus tent: “See you on the next one.” … It’s a show that’s really difficult to do. It’s hard to be in Canada away from your kids and away from home for five months a year. It’s hard to work on a show that in five seasons had six show runners.

But I learned a lot. It was an experience that gave me a (Directors Guild of America) membership. An experience that allowed me to lead an ensemble from the jump, and have a real hand in crafting the creative side of things and understand what producing’s all about. I’m so grateful to the show for the education. But I’m also really glad I graduated.

How challenging is it to do a successful finale?

You’re under a lot of pressure to tie up story lines and wrap up mythology and make it satisfying on all fronts. It’s very difficult to do that. We have the advantage of having a broad concept — aliens attack the Earth — so you assume in the finale they’re either going to be defeated or be successful, and we definitely give closure to that. But in terms of individual story lines, it’s tricky. We have a huge ensemble and it was tough to give everybody their due.

Review of TNT’s Falling Skies

TNT

One of the hoariest  sci-fi tropes is the invading alien race that wants our women (or occasionally, to mix it up, our men). It never held up much to logical scrutiny; rare is the viewer who has, in turn, looked at a scary reptilian space creature and thought “mmm, I’d like to get me some of that.” (That it was able to put a human in the role of the invader looking for interspecies sumpin’-sumpin’ was an overlooked advance of Avatar.)

Alien invaders have to want something, though, and hungering for our mineral deposits doesn’t have quite the same emotional tug. TNT’s non-groundbreaking but absorbing new drama, Falling Skies (two-hour premiere Sunday night) finds a worthy replacement, as did Torchwood: Children of Earth in 2009: the aliens who want our kids.

We join humanity on the outskirts of Boston, six months after an alien attack wiped out Earth’s major cities and most of its humans. A fleet of motherships arrived, knocked out our electronics with a pulse, and disgorged billions of reptilian/insectoid creatures—”skitters,” the survivors call them–backed up by fearsome robot warriors. The skitters swarmed the Earth, slaughtering adults but sparing teenagers, whom they “harnessed” by attaching a kind of biomechanical spine to their backs which enslaves them. They use their armies of teen zombies for menial labor, the purpose of which is not clear–but in the meantime, they’re mopping up humanity’s remaining pockets of resistance.

The pocket we’re concerned with is the 2nd Massachusetts, a militia of about a hundred fighters protecting around 200 civilians. (Humans have been dispersing into smaller groups to avoid detection.) Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) is a history professor whose wife died after the attack and has three sons–the middle one of whom was harnessed weeks ago. Using his study of military history to aid the 2nd Mass commanders, Tom tries to find a plan of resistance while acting as the voice of the civilians–and trying to get his son back.

The most obvious point of comparison for Falling Skies (executive produced by Steven Spielberg, like fall’s upcoming Terra Nova) is recently departed alien-invasion remake V, but really the series falls best in the category of postapocalyptic survival story, with the likes of Jericho, The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica. Which is not to say it’s the same as those very different series.

In terms of tone and general grimness, it’s at the midpoint between Jericho and The Walking Dead–it pulls fewer punches than the CBS post-nuke series, but stays well away from the true hellscape of AMC’s zombie story. Whereas The Walking Dead posits that the fight against beastly anarchy is a hard and possibly losing battle, Falling Skies shows the remnants of Massachusetts hanging together, except for some bad apples.

In terms of quality, it’s closer to Jericho than BSG. Falling Skies is not, nor does it appears to want to be, a series of deep characters and big ideas. Like Jericho, it has a sentimental streak, and seems determined to undercut the grimness with Hallmark moments. Most of the secondary characters–sweet kids, gruff soldiers–are as flat as postapocalypse Boston, and even a non-postapocalypse buff will see some of the “twists” of later episodes coming.

Wyle becomes convincing as a thoughtful but tough rebel leader–maybe it’s the beard–but Tom is not exactly the most complex protagonist in sci-fi history. “History professor and caring dad” sums him up, and his constant war-history parallels–to the Greeks, the Romans, the American revolution–become almost a running joke. (The only character in the series who truly pops is Pope, played by Colin Cunningham, the leader of a predatory gang, who tells Tom the correct analogy is not the Yanks against the British, but the Indians about to be annihilated by the Europeans.)

And the skitters? Like the characters under attack, we know little about who the invaders are, what specifically they want, how they talk or how they think. We learn as they do, and from the hints we get, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get the interrogations of faith, consciousness, morality and freedom that BSG and its complex Cylons gave us. (There is a certain amount of tension between the rights of civilians and the exigencies of the military, as in BSG, but it’s definitely the lite version.)

Actually, the closest comparison I might make would be to Jericho in its short final season, when it quickened its pace, pared some plots and gave us a starker sense of its stakes. And mind you, I say this as someone who watched every episode of Jericho (not out of work obligation), so when I say that Falling Skies is not a great show, it doesn’t mean it’s not an entertaining one.

Because within Falling Skies’ limited ambitions is some decent popcorn entertainment. The special effects are strong for TV, much less basic cable (the show doesn’t skimp on full-monty sights of the skitters). There are intriguing questions about the invaders. (Why do they build human-like robots? Why would they come so far for subminimum-wage teen labor? Why haven’t they wiped out humanity wholesale with nukes, which seems within their capability?)

And as sentimental, even sappy, as the show can be, the theme of protecting children is not just a source of endless child-in-peril scenes (though it is that). It’s also about all the hopes that people in the worst of times invest in another generation (which was the theme, in far, far starker terms, of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road).

I doubt Falling Skies will ever inspire deep reflection on what it all means, but–as I can attest, having plowed through six episodes despite my skepticism–it at least made me want to know what happens next. If a postapocalypse can’t do that,  what’s a postapocalypse for?

90,000 The falling sky is … What is the falling sky?

Falling sky (Norv. Himmelfall) is a 2002 Norwegian film directed by Gunnar Vikene.

Plot

The film begins on Little Christmas Eve (Norwegian bitte lille julaften), December 22, three days before Christmas. In the center of the story is a psychiatric clinic in the Norwegian city of Sollihøgda (Norwegian Sollihøgda) and people connected with it in one way or another. Patient Reidar Ruud suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is actively interested in the latest achievements of science and is sure that a huge meteorite is about to crash into the Earth and destroy all life on the planet.Therefore, scientists, in his opinion, should launch a special satellite as soon as possible to track meteorites threatening the Earth. He also constantly throws a tennis ball against the wall, believing that one day circumstances will develop in such a way (the relative position of the particles of one object in relation to the particles of another will turn out to be such) that the ball will not fly off the wall, but will pass through it. Then, in his opinion, the moment of universal harmony will come when everything will be balanced.

Reidar has sympathy for another patient of the clinic, Yuni, trying to protect and support her in all difficult situations.One of the pathologies that Yuni suffers from is her intolerance to any physical contact with another person, up to a simple pat on the shoulder. As a reaction, she involuntarily strikes the “offender” in the face.

At Christmas, all the patients in the clinic go home. Longing for the attention and love of her parents, Yuni is looking forward to their arrival, but they visit her only to give a symbolic gift and say that they are leaving to rest in the Canary Islands. They do not take Yuni with them, explaining this by the extremely unfortunate experience of the joint holidays held in previous years.Reidar tries to console and support Yuni by all means available to him, but she only regularly asks him to help her in something. In the course of the development of the plot, it becomes clear that she is asking to help her end her life, but in this Reidar refuses her and tries to dissuade her from committing suicide.

In parallel, Vigdis, the wife of the director of the clinic Johannes, who became impotent due to constant thoughts of work, starts an affair with a young guy named Thomas. Thomas is going to enter the police academy, but constantly embarks on financial adventures.He bets on horse races, convinces the owner of a gas station store to buy and sell fireworks from him, and obtains a fake Norwegian passport for a Burmese named Wong, who has no residence permit in Norway. However, at the races, Thomas loses, and the owner of the store (Siv), who found out that it was illegal to sell fireworks at a gas station, asks Thomas to pick them up and return her money. A fake passport turns out to be made on the knee, and the police quickly expose the Burmese, who goes on the run, and at the same time also demands that Thomas return money to him for a low-quality product.Some time later, the police still catch Wong, but he pretends to be crazy, and he is sent to a local psychiatric hospital, where everyone understands that he is absolutely normal, but they cover him up for humane reasons.

The fourth storyline of the film is related to Reidar’s mother, Mrs. Ruud, whom Reidar visits almost every day, but this is not enough. She suffers from memory gaps and senile dementia and is increasingly able to take care of herself, but she categorically refuses to admit this fact.This creates a lot of problems for Vigdis (Johannes’ wife), who works in social services and unsuccessfully tries to persuade Ms. Ruud to move to a nursing home.

Burmese Wong eventually escapes from a psychiatric clinic, but dies when, unfortunate enough, he is hit by Thomas’s taxi. Thomas himself receives serious spinal injuries in the accident, although he remains alive. Johannes, who at first did not mind his wife’s betrayal, admits that he hoped to cope with the current situation, but in fact everything went too far, and he and Vigdis will never be able to be together again.At the same time, Vigdis claims that, in spite of everything, she loves her husband, and the ending of this conflict remains open.

Overwhelmed with paranoia, Ms. Ruud decides to hide from the social workers in the van where Siv keeps unsold fireworks. Absent-mindedly, she throws an unextinguished cigarette butt into one of the boxes, causing firecrackers and rockets to explode. One of them flies out through the window and hits the Siv store across the street, causing it to catch fire. This means that Zib is saved from ruin because fire insurance is the “miracle” that can cover all of her debts and expenses.

Reidar and Yuni bury Wong on a raft, sending his body sailing on a local lake according to the traditions of his people. They even plan to light a funeral pyre on the raft so that Wong can be reborn, but abandon the idea. They walk through the city, and Reidar throws a tennis ball against the walls of neighboring houses. At some point, the ball suddenly passes through one of them and disappears. After that, Reidar and Yuni sit on the swing and look from afar at the Siv fireworks flying into the night sky, and Yuni, who by this moment has already given up the idea of ​​suicide, takes Reidar by the hand herself.

Cast

Awards

Notes

References

90,000 An entry with a shooting star in the sky over Japan was published on the Web :: Society :: RBK

Photo: hisa__por / Instagram

A bolide, or a bright shooting star, was recorded in the sky in western Japan. The object is captured in a video published by NHK TV channel.

Daichi Fuji, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum in Kanagawa Prefecture, who is familiar with such phenomena, told the TV channel that the brightness of the object was comparable to a full moon. “By analyzing the video, you can determine the trajectory and estimate where it came from,” he added.

In the sky over Thailand, eyewitnesses spot a large fireball

Local residents who posted videos on their pages on social networks said that the crash of the car was accompanied by a loud rumble.

In November 2017, a fireball flew over the Murmansk region. The object was noticed by residents of Monchegorsk and Snezhnogorsk. The flash was also visible from Finland.

90,000 Victory dictation – “THE WHISTLE OF A FALLING BOMB ON THE NERVES IS UNPLEASANT.” Diaries of the head of the operational communication station

“THE WHISTLE OF A FALLING BOMB ON NERVES IS UNPLEASANT”

Diaries of the head of the operational communication station of the Leningrad Front

The Germans blockaded Leningrad on the 79th day of the war.On the same day, the invaders marched through the Leningrad suburbs, but they could not go further. Together with residents of suburban areas, more than 2.8 million people were in the blockade ring. The siege of Leningrad is the hard truth of the Great Patriotic War, which is difficult to remember, but even more difficult to forget. We continue to share with you the diaries of the residents of the besieged city. The author of today’s lines is a Leningrader, the head of the operational communication station of the Leningrad Front, Viktor Isaakovich Zhitomirsky.

^{Source: https://leningradpobeda.ru}

From the diary of Viktor Isaakovich Zhitomirsky, head of the operational communications station of the Leningrad Front :

04/25/1942 … On the Petrograd side I was caught by an air raid. He took refuge from the debris in the entrance of a house. Two bombs fell pretty close. The whistle of a falling bomb has an unpleasant effect on your nerves.Everything is tense. Whistle, break. Shaking the soil and plaster falling off the wall of the house. It fell pretty close. Everything goes on calmly. The audience gathered at the entrance busily discusses the actions of the planes combing the clouds. The clouds are large. There are many planes in the sky. The impression is that the sky is roaring. The planes are not visible. Only the roar of the motors is heard. How Leningraders got used to bombing, shelling! The young woman calmly says: “Never mind, they have already run away – they were scared!” After a moment, she said to another woman without any connection with the previous one: “My daughter is dying in the hospital,” and her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry.She spoke very calmly about the girl’s illness that she could not find a doctor. Then, when the anti-aircraft guns subsided a little, she went on about her business.

04/27/1942 Again air raid. The weather is sunny. Not a single cloud in the sky. The anti-aircraft guns are still silent. The air is filled with the hum of engines … Anti-aircraft guns begin to operate. An announcement by the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense Forces is being broadcast on the radio: it is proposed that the population stop walking the streets. Police and air defense posts strictly monitor compliance with the rules provided for air raid . .. Silence …
Air defense reports: one Ju-88 broke through into the city.Today the sky is amazingly beautiful. Deep, deep and indescribable blue. Dark blue. This color can be seen in the south. In Leningrad, the sky is usually whitish. Today, a bright, juicy, deep ultramarine dome is spread over the city. But “goodies” begin to fall from this dome again, destroying houses, killing and maiming women, children, and residents of Leningrad. The battles in the Nevsky direction are going on with varying success. Ours have moved beyond some highway. There is still silence. The alarm has been going on for over an hour.Probably, there will be a lights out soon. 12.10 Clearing the air raid.
23.24 The Neva Group is fighting a strong battle. The Germans are counter-attacking. Fights are going on at Arbuzovka and Pesochnaya. The Germans obviously want to close the ring around Leningrad. Sailors enter the institute and take all connections. It is very possible that we will be left without a telephone. Received a postcard from Vali. She did not receive my letter dated 14.04. There are no letters from Tolya. At 19 o’clock there was still an air raid alert. Radio intercepted the order of the Germans to make a raid on Leningrad at 19 o’clock. Exactly at 19 o’clock an air raid alert was announced.German accuracy.

To read the full diaries of a resident of Leningrad, Viktor Isaakovich Zhitomirsky, please follow the link

Collapsed Skies / Falling Skies (2000)

The film “Collapsed Skies” (2000) is set in the summer of 1944, in Tuscany. Two little sisters, Penny and Baby, lose their parents in a car accident. The girls find themselves in the house of their relatives, aunt Katchen and uncle Wilhelm, a German Jew, intellectual, landowner.With difficulty, but girls get used to new conditions, find friends. Away from military events, children experience interesting adventures that bring them many childhood joys. Over time, a brutal war invades Tuscany. In the face of danger, many residents flee to Switzerland. The girls’ uncle, despite the advice of relatives, decides to stay at home with the whole family. From now on, the life of the family is in danger …

Film “Collapsed Skies” (2000) watch online:

Alternative source of the film “Collapsed Skies” (2000):

Obituary

What to expect from cinema, when it is known in advance that “everyone has died” in it? A cruel time, wrong order, an ordinary family that fell victim to the war.Will the director limit himself to the intimacy of a particular case, or will he follow the path of generalizations? No, generalizations are clearly not going on here.

A fearless person recklessly ignores danger, remaining in the face of an insidious adversary, recklessly hoping that he will dashingly pass his house, irresponsibly refusing to hide until the powder smoke clears: the war is coming to an end and the denouement is close.

Adopting orphaned nieces, the owner makes a real headache for himself, faced with the whims and instability of a frightened child, whose childish naivety takes on the features of a new threat to family peace and security.

Psychologically traumatized by the loss of her father, the constantly cocked girl Peeni dreams of outbursts of her imagination, altering what she saw, transforming reality into the illusion of her fevered thoughts, and her adoptive parents are unable to curb or control her spontaneous actions.

Trouble from an uncontrollable girl. Nothing more than a fatal accident is offered to us here. Moreover, from all sides, a positive owner becomes a lamb to be slaughtered, which a stupid girl gives up to an unsuspecting enemy.

It remains perplexed how clever and intelligent people overlooked the danger of childlike spontaneity, failing to curb the fantasies of an unbalanced child that bring trouble to their entire large family.

The unhappy child appears in the film “Collapsed Skies” as a snake warmed up on his chest, a traitor-Judas who has surrendered his noble patrons, and the Germans who have come to the post are business executors of the doctrine lowered from above, acting according to a strictly established list of measures, dispassionately carrying out the duties assigned to them . ..

Well, cinema allows you to discern the routine and everyday life of the nightmare of war, but in connection with all the events, it gives rise to the feeling of an absurd accident, error, omission and oversight that could and should have been avoided.

The child’s defenselessness and the impotence of adults, the lack of the necessary educational approach at a critical moment in the life of a little person – everything is so, without generalizations, just an isolated case. Good people. It’s a pity. It is a pity that the movie just beats on pity, without delving into images and circumstances.

Instead of an obituary, it will do.

Stone falling from the sky

Every year over 16 tons of large meteorites arrive at the Earth’s surface. Surprisingly, until the end of the 18th century, scientists did not believe that meteorites fell from the sky. Indeed, according to the dogmas of the Catholic Church, it was impossible. Although even in the first millennium BC, coins with the image of tailed comets were issued in the Roman Empire.

Only at the beginning of the next century, when in the small town of Aigle near Paris there was a “cosmic rain” in front of numerous eyewitnesses, the French Academy of Sciences was forced to officially admit that these were indeed “stones from the sky.”

Almost half a century ago before this event in the Krasnodar Territory, the blacksmith Yakov Medvedev and the miner Johann Mettich, while searching for iron ore, accidentally discovered the first meteorite in Russia weighing about 700 kilograms. Since no one knew about the existence of stones from space at that time, the men could not realize the value of their find, which went down in history under the name “Pallas Iron”. Only five years later, when the sample was delivered to St. Petersburg and studied in detail, it became clear that its composition and structure differs from all terrestrial formations.As a result, a scientific substantiation of the idea of ​​the appearance of unearthly matter on Earth appeared. All such meteorites, consisting of grains of olivine cemented with iron, have since been called pallasites.

© Outpost North-West / Mining Museum

The collection of meteorites of the Mining Museum belongs to the oldest world collections and one of the largest in Russia (it is described in detail in scientific work Edita Obolonskaya “Collection of meteorites of the Mining Museum of St. Petersburg Mining University” ).It includes samples of the legendary Pallas Iron and one of the three thousand fragments of “rain” that fell on Egle in the distant 1803, which was received from the Royal Natural Museum.

No less famous exhibits of the collection are the Augustinovka and Borodino meteorites. The latter, although it belongs in composition to the most common class of stone meteorites, has an interesting history of falling. After all, his flight happened on the eve of the Battle of Borodino in 1812. He landed at the location of the Russian artillery troops, where the sentry found him, and then handed him over to his superior.After the authorities found out about the incident, an order was issued prohibiting any mention of the fall of an unknown body. The officers feared that rumors of a bad omen before battle would spread among the soldiers and sow panic. Subsequently, the stone changed owners several times, and soon the main part of it ended up in the museum.

© Outpost North-West / Mining Museum

An unusual story is connected with the iron meteorite “Augustinovka” – the second largest in the collection. At the end of the 19th century, residents of one of the villages of the Yekaterinoslav province discovered a large piece of iron at the bottom of a pit from which clay was mined.The find amazed by the fact that it was impossible to budge. When the rumor about this reached St. Petersburg, it was decided to conduct a special investigation of an interesting sample and deliver a 400-kilogram meteorite to the museum.

© Outpost North-West / Mining Museum

Iron meteorites, unlike stone ones, fall to the Earth much less often. They account for only 6%, while stone – 92% and only 2% for iron stone.

Legends have been preserved according to which the Sumerian and Indian kings made weapons from “cosmic” iron, attributing magical properties to it. According to legend, the sword of Tamerlane was also made of “heavenly stone”. Alexander the First also possessed a sword with an admixture of unearthly iron.

© Outpost North-West / Mining Museum

The rare group of meteorites is dominated by iron, with less nickel, as well as cobalt, phosphorus, carbon, sulfur and copper. At the same time, many “space” stones have not yet been studied in detail. So, in 2020, during the study of the Augustinovka meteorite, a new mineral was discovered – xenophyllite. As it turned out, it is capable of revolutionizing the battery industry.

The largest specimen of the museum’s celestial collection is a 450 kg specimen of the Sikhote-Alin meteor shower. This is one of the ten largest fragments of an iron meteorite, the fall of which in 1947 was observed by residents of many villages of the Khabarovsk and Primorsky Territories. On a sunny morning, they noticed a bright glowing fireball in the sky, moving at great speed, after the disappearance of which from the field of view, strong blows, roar and rumble were heard. The trail left in the sky after its flight in the form of a smoke strip remained visible throughout the day.As it turned out, its fall was observed over an area with a radius of more than 300 kilometers, and the sound was heard at an even greater distance. The landing site of the meteorite was found a day later by pilots from a height of seven hundred meters.

© Outpost North-West / Mountain Museum

The Sikhote-Alin meteor shower is one of the unique natural phenomena. After all, it surpasses all known meteor showers in the number of specimens and in their total mass. The largest piece weighs 1,745 kilograms.

© Northwest Outpost / Mining Museum

Also in the collection of the Mining Museum is a 40-kilogram specimen of the Kunashak stone castle, a piece from the Peekskill stone meteorite, when a car fell through the hood in the USA; individual specimens of the Chelyabinsk meteorite; a fragment of a huge iron meteorite “Canyon Diablo”, sawn into two pieces, which formed a crater more than a kilometer in diameter and 174 meters deep in the state of Arizona.