Weather an alien touch for Falling Skies’ crew
Rain off-putting, but Vancouver scores for location
This has been physically the most demanding work I’ve ever done.
NOAH WYLE
Falling Skies’ alien space invaders have returned. But on a bitterly cold early-spring evening at a half-finished Vancouver-area construction site, actors Noah Wyle — bearded, thinner and looking more haunted and harassed than he did during his years as ER’s young, idealistic Dr. Carter — Will Patton, guest star Terry O’Quinn and newly minted showrunner Remi Aubuchon are just trying to get through the night any way they can.
Sure, Falling Skies is a postapocalyptic, U.S.-made sciencefiction saga about a ragtag band of human survivors set six months after a devastating alien invasion — but how did Vancouver get so fricking cold all of a sudden?
This is what Vancouver crews are all about, Aubuchon says. A veteran of the short-lived, critically acclaimed Vancouver-based sci-fi drama Caprica, Aubuchon says the local crews are hardened from years of 16-hour days working outdoors in a perpetual drizzle and freaky winds.
Besides, Aubuchon says, with a cheerful wave of his arm: This is indoors. This is the good times.
“Believe me,” Aubuchon says, “we’re overjoyed to be out of the cold today. The crew is just happy we’re indoors today.
“One of the things Vancouver has, that not many people talk about, is incredibly versatile locations. I don’t think people realize just how much you can get just by driving 20 or 30 kilometres. This city is just crazy that way; it’s wonderful.
Falling Skies returns Thursday on SuperChannel in Canada, just days after it returns in the U.S. on the resurgent cable network TNT — Turner Network Television — home of the Emmy-winning Southland and The Closer.
Falling Skies bowed last year to largely positive reviews. The premiere drew six million viewers, one of U.S. cable television’s biggest launches of the 2011 season. The series went on to be nominated for a pair of 2012 Saturn science-fiction awards, including a best-actor nod for Wyle, and a citation from the Broadcast Critics’ Television Choice Awards as one of 2011’s most exciting new series.
Aubuchon says that where the first season dealt with the emotional fallout from an alien invasion and how a small band of survivors dealt with their world being turned upside-down, the second season will be more about day-to-day survival and a world at war.
“This season is all about unexpected left turns,” he says. “It’s a speedball. There’s a real urgency in the drama. That said, it’s always a challenge to find the right balance between the light and darkness. The premise is that 90 per cent of humanity has been destroyed, so how do you find the light there? It’s a challenge because it’s very easy to go dark.
The family element will remain, but now it will be about how parents raise their children to live full and productive lives in times of stress. It’s a message, Aubuchon believes, that will resonate during these present times of economic and socio-political uncertainty.
Aubuchon says one big differ- ence this season is that the survivors will be on the move much of the time, rather than being hunkered down in one location, hiding.
Wyle, for his part, is just glad the long, cold, wet season of Falling Skies is coming to an end. As the clock ticks toward two in the morning on this night, he finally settles into a director’s chair and talks about the past few months.
“I can honestly say that, after 12 years on ER and more than 200 episodes, I’m more exhausted after shooting the last nine (episodes) of this than I have been in my entire life,” Wyle says. “I don’t know if that’s a function of shooting in all different kinds of locations and not doing any studio work, or this season really being focused on our group being mobile, which means we’re outside in the elements a lot more, but we’ve got through it.
“We’ve shot in the rain and we’ve shot in the snow, and we all got soaked and we all went to work. This has been physically the most demanding work I’ve ever done. It’s about survival, though, end-of-the-world stuff, so it’s perfect for it.
“In a lot of ways we have a much stronger season than last year.”
Wyle’s character, a widower with three young sons, is pressed into reluctant service as the leader of a militia of resistance fighters who are trying to overthrow their new overlords and restore some semblance of their former lives.
Wyle says he hasn’t given much thought to whether life on other planets may exist, or whether Falling Skies’ doomsday scenario might actually come to pass.
“I really don’t know,” Wyle says, with a rueful laugh. “When I was a kid, I found a crop circle once, with my cousin, just outside Lexington, Kentucky. I really don’t know the answer to that question. It’s not totally implausible. Stephen Hawking said it wasn’t implausible, and who am I to argue with Stephen Hawking?”