TNT’s Alien-Invasion Drama Rewards Fans Who Endured Chaotic First Year. Two Syfy Shows – ‘Alphas’ and ‘Lost Girl’ – Heading in Opposite Directions.

(Left to right) Sarah Sanguin Carter, Drew Roy, Noah Wyle, Colin Cunningham and Will Patton on patrol in ‘Falling Skies.’

I stuck with TNT’s Falling Skies throughout last season – though I’m not entirely sure why.

It struck me as silly, derivative pseudo sci-fi. While the idea of life after an alien invasion was intriguing, the show appeared to be a disorganized mashup of items taken from shows we’ve seen before.

But if the show was lightweight, at least lead actor Noah Wyle (ER) was able to pick it up and carry it on his shoulders. Playing Tom Mason, a history professor trying to shepherd three sons while serving as a leader of the resistance, Wyle consistently delivered strong, nuanced performances that kept the series moving when it seemed about to sputter.

The show also had some compelling crazies: Will Patton (Armageddon) as Capt. Weaver, commander of Mason’s regiment, and Colin Cunningham as John Pope, an outlaw with questionable motives who can be a big asset to the resistance when he finds it expedient.

And then there was Sarah Sanguin Carter (Shark), one of my favorite young actresses. Carter excels at playing tough women hard exteriors but soft hearts – sort of a blond version of actress Constance Zimmer (Entourage, Boston Legal). Her character, Maggie, is a cancer survivor who was captured and sexually assaulted by members of Pope’s gang. Here survival instincts propelled her to become one of Pope’s fighters, but giving her a gun was a big mistake. When one of her comrades gets grabby with captured resistance fighter Karen (Jessy Schram from American Pie Presents The Naked Mile), Maggie turns that gun on him, frees captive resistance fighters and joins the regiment. That was a great episode, but the writers didn’t give her much to do the rest of Season 1.

Still, I stuck with Falling Skies. And, much to my surprise, I’ve been rewarded in Season 2.

The plot has been more focused, with each episode advancing the main story enough to leave viewers waiting expectantly for the next. It’s starting to address some core questions about the alien invaders – who they are and what they want from Earth – the humans’ dwindling prospects for survival and how one can keep up hopes when those hopes are dashed again and again. And, in the midst of all that, who can be trusted on a day-to-day basis.

Wyle remains the force to be reckoned with, but the writers and many of the other actors have stepped up their games. Drew Roy (Hannah Montana) has come into his own as Hal, Mason’s college-age eldest son. Hal has taken on a lot in Season 2: becoming an emerging leader within the regiment; trying to guide his two younger brothers; and igniting a smoldering romance with Carter’s character, Maggie.

Connor Jessup has had a strong second season as Ben, Mason’s teenage middle son. Ben was captured in Season 1 and later rescued, but he still has spikes in his neck and back following the surgical removal of a harness the aliens had placed on him. Why the aliens are harnessing human children is a mystery carried over from Season 1, though recent episodes hinted that an explanation may be forthcoming. Meanwhile, the other characters – Hal, Weaver, Pope and even Tom – wrestle with the extent to which they can trust Ben. Is he still in communication with the aliens? Controlled by them? The credibility issue comes to a head when he brings news of a rebellion among the “skitters” – the octopus-like NCOs of the alien invasion – against their tall, fish-headed “overlords.”

Then there is Karen. The writers didn’t give Schram much to do in Season 1. As Hal’s nominal girlfriend, she basically just looked good riding a motorcycle until she was captured and harnessed. Now she’s back as a sort of double agent, wreaking havoc with the regiment and the Mason boys’ hormones.

A consistent theme in Falling Skies is how one can come to terms with loss and still carry on:

• Weaver mourned his ex-wife and daughters in Season 1, only to find one of the daughters and lose her again in an episode this season.
• Tom mourns his wife and worries about the impact on his sons. But this season has seen him become romantically and sexually involved with the regiment’s doctor, Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood), a mother who lost her son.
• Glass’ assistant, Lourdes (Seychelle Gabriel from The Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender), was an annoying religious harpy in Season 1. This year her faith is put to the test when she is told that the part of Mexico where her extended family lived was wiped out in the alien attack. She begins a romance with regimental fix-it guy Jamil (Brandon Jay McLaren from The Killing and Harper’s Island). Does the romance between the Catholic-named Lourdes and the Muslim-named Jamil symbolize a decline in the power of religion, if not faith, among the survivors?

The writers also have gotten daring at killing off what I would call major secondary characters, including Jamil last week. And I suspect that Karen isn’t long for this world now that her true loyalty, to the aliens, has been exposed. That, and the fact that she recently tweeted a photo of herself at a table reading for the upcoming ABC series Last Resort.

Despite the improved writing, Falling Skies still borrows heavily from earlier science fiction:

• When Tom was brought before the overlord on the alien ship in the Season 2 premiere, the set looked like the interior of a Cylon base ship from the original Battlestar Galactica – a circular chamber with a towering alien atop a throne-like structure.
• From the more recent BSG, Falling Skies takes a dwindling human population and the dilemma about whether to believe in and support a purported rebellion among the enemy.
• And the “mechs,” the robotic infantry of the alien force, look a lot like the Cylon centurions from both BSG series.
• When Ben disabled attaching mechs by broadcasting an specific audio pitch in Season 1, it reminded me of young Lukas Haas making Martians’ heads explode by blasting Slim Whitman music in Mars Attacks!
• Jamil is clearly the Montgomery Scott (“Scottie” on Star Trek) of the regiment. But, alas, he doesn’t live long and prosper. He dies gruesomely as a new species of tiny robo-insect aliens burst from his body a la Alien.
• When the aliens what to communicate with humans, they speak through Ben or Karen – just as the an alien in Independence Day spoke by stimulating the vocal cords of the dead scientist played by Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation). And when the humans captured an overlord in last weeks episode, they brought it back to their base in the back of an open truck, as Will Smith’s character did in Independence Day.

With just three episodes to go this season, Falling Skies 2.0 has me glued to my couch. I can’t wait to learn more about the aliens’ secret agenda and how the humans in the regiment will manage to get on with their lives while keeping up the fight. I really wish this show wasn’t limited to 10 episodes per season.

Lost Girl

Bo (Anna Silk) and Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) tap into one another in a scene from ‘Lost Girl’ on Syfy.

I came across Syfy’s Lost Girl while scanning the TV listings on my iPad. The description piqued my interest. Let’s face it, what part of a show about a smokin’ hot bisexual succubus isn’t going to appeal to the male demographic? As it turns out, there is plenty of eye candy for female viewers as well.

The plot centers on Bo (Anna Silk), a stunning brunette who was reared by adoptive parents somewhere in the Midwest. When teenage Bo goes all the way with her boyfriend the first time, he winds up dead. Thinking she is some kind of freak, Bo flees and spends her young adulthood on the run.

Lost Girl is a Canadian import that is running on Syfy one season behind its actual production – meaning that viewers north of the border are seeing Season 3 while Syfy is presenting Season 2. That it’s an import also means that most of the actors are unknowns. The only cast member I’ve seen before is Ksenia Solo (Black Swan, Life Unexpected), who plays Bo’s sidekick, Kenzi.

I criticized Falling Skies for being derivative, but at least the show borrows bits and pieces from a whole raft of earlier sic-fi and weaves them into its own narrative. Alphas, starting its second season on Syfy, is a cross between the former NBC series Heroes and the X-Men movies. It raises the same questions – whether people with special powers are genetically gifted or simply mutants, and whether they can be accepted in society – but with a less-talented cast than its predecessors.

Alphas‘ lead actor, David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck and the Bourne movies), is so much more talented a than his no-name costars that his earnestness sometimes comes across as scenery chewing. He plays Dr. Lee Rosen, a psychiatrist who leads a team of “alphas” – “people with the unique power to stretch the capabilities of the human mind giving them superhuman physical and mental abilities,” according to Syfy’s website. The group investigates alpha-related incidents but must cope with distrustful government handlers as well as rogue alphas who don’t share Rosen’s vision of alphas gaining public acceptance.

The other standout performer on Alphas is Ryan Cartwright (Bones, Mad Men) who plays “the autistic young man who can ‘see’ energy and communication signals in the air, making him a walking antenna and the world’s supreme electronic eavesdropper,” as the Los Angeles Times describes it. It’s not an easy part, and Cartwright does a good job of portraying the character’s dueling complexity and innocense.

As with Falling Skies, I barely made it through Season 1  and will be looking for significant improvement if I’m to stick with it. Based upon the Season 2 premiere of Alphas, that looks doubtful.

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.