With the Falling Skies Season 3 finale set to air tonight on TNT (next Sunday on Super Channel in Canada), let’s step back into their press room at last month’s San Diego Comic-Con – which our superstar intern Emily took part in – and see what stars Noah Wyle and Will Patton had to share about the epic sci-fi series!
First, “Strange Brew,” also known as the “flashback” episode, was a challenging one to put together and included a technological achievement that Wyle wanted us to know about. He shared, “There were more notations on that particular script than I’ve put into any script I’ve done. It really required tonally just being right on the money. You [know that] something’s wrong – you’re in the world, you’re out of the world – not to mention the fact that there was a technological achievement in that episode that no one is going to be able to appreciate except the people who did it, which is the scene between Moon and I in the coffee shop. We shot her side of it in October on a sound stage because she was pregnant, and I had to be clean shaven for that scene. So we shot her side of it over a photo double of me, so I’m standing behind a pillar doing my dialogue for her and telling the guy how I want him to move and reach for the coffee cup. Three months later, we went to a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver and shot my side of it over a body double for her. Then they cut it together.”
He also told us a bit about his character, Tom, going into Season 3:
“It got crazy at the beginning [of the third season]. There were some secrets that I was keeping, and we had to redefine our roles. Putting Tom in the power seat is a real role reversal in the dynamic of these characters.”
Wyle also talked about the family dynamic of the series and how family goes beyond flesh and blood in this world:
“It’s the most important thing as far as I’m concerned, and we define family in to different ways: we define it in the nuclear sense among the Masons; and with the 2nd Mass which is our group within the larger Charleston community. Will [Patton] had this wonderful idea early on [when] somebody asked us what role does religion – what role does God – play with these characters in this world? Will said, ‘Well, the 2nd Mass is our religion. That’s where we find our faith, that’s where we find our enduring strength, it’s in the relationships that they have created among the original core group of characters.’ They may find themselves in a larger population, but they identify themselves singularly as the 2nd Mass first and foremost, and that gives the show a heart, it gives it a spine that we can hang on to and keep going back to as an anchor as we take the storytelling farther. Having that to go back to keeps it based in reality.”
Patton also had some thoughts on the relationships in the series, particularly between Tom Mason and Weaver:
“Since the beginning, Tom and Weaver have exchanged certain things about each other. He’s become more of a warrior, developed more of an armour, become more of a soldier. And Weaver’s heart has begun to open. He’s become a little more responsible, caring – the things that Tom originally was, Weaver is now the same.”
Wyle is quite pleased with what they’ve accomplished with Falling Skies so far, considering there have been some challenges behind the scenes. He remarked, “I’m amazed that we’ve been able to make 30 really strong episodes given the fact that we’ve only made 30 hours of television and now we’re on our fifth showrunner. It’s a lot of turnover on the writing staff who are all starting basically from scratch. It’s not like they’ve been handed a bible. They have to re-conceptualize the show and make it their own. The fact that we’ve been able to keep a thread of continuity through that kind of personnel change has been really impressive.” He went on to say, “I’m very excited about welcoming David Eick into this fold. We had a great creative meeting with him and I’m really excited to sit down with him and find out what he’s got for the [fourth] season.”
With this season coming to an end, it’s time to look forward, and Wyle spoke enthusiastically about Season 4:
“I’m really excited about next season. I feel in a lot of ways like we’ve figured this show out. First season, we had a good idea. Second season, we figured out how to make it better. Third season, we’ve established the characters, we’ve established the world, and we got to play a little bit with our narrative. And now, we know these characters, we know this world, the threat’s gotten bigger and bigger, and I’m really excited to see what we come up with for next year.”
Patton chimed in, “I think we’ve gotten to know who these people are in a kind of way that you feel that their skin is real against this thing that is almost this other skin, these human beings that are fragile in this alien world and I think that it’s a very interesting conflict. What is it to be an alien and what is it to be a human being, where does Earth fit into this war that doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with us but we find ourselves in the middle of.”
Be sure to watch the Season 3 finale of Falling Skies, “Brazil”, tonight at 10/9c on TNT. Canadian fans – you’ll be able to catch it next Sunday night on Super Channel.
