Growing up, I have always had an affinity for the Sci-Fi genre. More so than Horror movies and gore, Science Fiction takes you to that place of “What If?” My favorite Sci-Fi movie of all time is Aliens (Yeah, it still holds up) my favorite Sci-Fi TV series is The X-Files. I’m an avid reader of a multitude of comic books, and one of my favorites is Planetary. Have watched and consumed all forms of Sci-Fi for the last 30 years. (Bit of a long time). Through out my years of watching and reading Sci-Fi, I have always noticed the absence of or the sudden death of most minority characters in said series or movies. At the same time, many important movies (Alien) and TV shows (Fringe, LOST) have been at the forefront of introducing strong minority characters, even though most would go the way of the all to familiar dirt nap. That brings me to the current TNT series Falling Skies. It’s one of those shows I had not gotten around to seeing, for what ever reason. For a time I would here nothing but good things about Falling Skies. I mean it starred one Noah Wyle from ER, and was produced by Steven Spielberg…can’t go wrong there. So I decided it was time to check out all the hype on this Sci-Fi show. Falling Skies is currently ending its second season, so I’m thinking, I guess somebody’s watching this show. Now, one thing that is extremely essential in Sci-Fi TV is storyline. Sci-Fi movies can sometimes get away with not having the best of scripts, but they can sometimes get away with other stuff like all that extravagant CGI and all. TV usually works the other way around. Limited budget, so you need an excellent script. With Falling Skies, You kind of get both. Earth has suffered an invasion by an Alien life form bent on taking over the earth. Most of the worlds armies have been decimated, governments have fallen and all that is left are rag tag regiments that act as militias trying to survive on this new world. On top of that. The Aliens are harvesting and rounding up you children and applying “Harnesses” on their backs that make them zombie like and puts hem under the control of the aliens. One of the on going storylines is the attempted removal of said harnesses with out killing the children. Let’s just say those harnesses play a major role in Falling Skies. Noah Wyle plays a former history professor who is the second in command of The Second Massachusetts. The first season of the show seems to try and find it’s footing with the building of several characters. I’m not going to go into a full review of the show as Falling Skies has been out for a couple of years. What I am going to go into is the apparent blatant disregard of the African American characters on the show. Falling Skies seems to go out of its way to write out their African American characters from the show. In the first season, there are three African America characters, two major to the first season and pivotal to the show. The first is Mike played by Martin Roach. A gruff militia member protecting large segments of the rag tag survivors. We begin to get to know more about Mike when we discover his son; Rick played by Daniyah Ysral is one of the harnessed children. In one episode, Mike sees his son on a recon mission and rescues his him from the aliens. This storyline stretches several episodes as Rick plays a major role in the first season. Suffice it to say there is an incident where Mike perishes saving the children. The second season sees Ricky has disappeared from the survival group. Ricky then returns in the middle of season two just to see his demise as well. While this is happening, A new African American character is introduced in season two… Jamil Dexter played by Brandon Jay McLaren. He becomes the resident mechanical expert/engineer kind of know it all guy. Jamil gets an expanded storyline as he begins to fall in love with a young medical assistant Lourdes played by Seychelle Gabriel. So you would think Jamil has a shot at sticking around a bit on Falling Skies, well you would be wrong. Jamil meets one of the more gruesome ends a character has met on the show. That leaves a not so important character that has been on Falling Skies since season one. A militia member named Anthony, played by Mpho Koaha. As good as Anthony’s character is he really doesn’t have much of a storyline. It is somewhat limited to “soldiering”. So there you go…four prominent African Americans, three killed. Falling Skies has a small array of other minority characters, a Native American, a Mexican and an Asian that round out the cast. Noah Wyle, of course is the star of the show along with veteran character actor Will Patton. (Punisher, The Postman) Both are solid leads on the show. But this really is a concerning matter for a show that is developing these characters and then killing them off. It still surprises me in this day and age that e keep feeding the stereotype of young minority characters continually used as the “Go To” killed off characters on TV shows. Yeah, yeah, most will argue that the show is an apocalyptic survival show and yes…characters die. Well I would say, sure, s@#t happens. But, when you wipe out 75% of one race from your TV show and have no significant major characters left representing that race of people, that sounds a little apocalyptic to me.
August 10th, 2012 at 5:47 am
After reading this I must say wow; because that is the most superficial, biased, and just plain useless article I’ve read in a long time.
Judging from your synopsis your understanding of the show is quite limited. Usually if I’m going to make a claim, particularly one as strong as what you suggested, I do some research so that I’m certain I know what I’m talking about.
For one thing the show is about the Mason family, so of course it centers on their characters & the characters closest to them. They’re white…and so what? Then there’s a Native American, a Mexican, and “an Asian” (because they’re one generic grouping without much difference between say, someone Korean and someone Chinese)and then more white people because they’re making a point to kill off all the characters of different races.
Wait…who is the Native American??
I’m guessing you went with Dai as the Asian (even though the actor is really Canadian) and obviously the Mexican is Lourdes since she can speak Spanish and said she had relatives there- though that doesn’t automatically make her Mexican since she and her family could have come from freaking Venezuela and just moved to Mexico for all we know. But naw, let’s just assume she’s playing a Mexican (even though she’s more Sicilian & French than Latina.)
So then the Native American has got to be Anne since she has some color to her. Although I can’t recall her ever saying or doing anything that would lead me to think her character was supposed to be Native American…Could you tell me how you came to that conclusion- or if it isn’t her, then who you were talking about?
Because the actress that plays the character Dr. Anne Glass- Moon Bloodgood- is actually half white and half Korean.
As for the death of the character Jamil, there was a lot more to it than just “Oh lets kill off the black guy!”
He was leaving the show in order to start filming a new TV series on another network where he had a bigger role. Also- HE didn’t have any complaints about how they handled his character:
“Honestly, I have to say I’m really pleased with the way that the writers handled my character on Falling Skies and focused not only on Jamil’s technical skills and responsibility, but also his feelings for Lourdes.That was a sweet, earnest love story,” notes McLaren. “In a world as crazy as the one that these characters live in, I appreciated the fact that the show’s writers took some time to concentrate on the personal relationships developing throughout all this chaos.”
And you did say it yourself- people die on a show about war all the time! That little white kid who’s been there since the beginning got a tree put through him, & the Berserker sharp-shooter guy got killed pretty horribly by that Mech.
The show is supposed to be about putting aside things like racism & sexism & just being us humans versus the aliens. If there’s any racial message being told through the bigger picture of the writing it’s that cheesy bullshit- not that Falling Skies hates black people (nicely sensational headline, there too.)
I think you should spend a little more time actually paying attention to the show and trying to follow and figure everything out and a little less time obsessing over race and what ethnicity you assume everyone is; then cataloging when/if and how they bite it. It’s really a pretty good show.
August 10th, 2012 at 5:59 am
Totally didn’t go back and see who wrote this until after the comment- probably not very smart- but I’d still be just as irritated about it and say basically the same things.
Damn! I had an article I’ve been working on about TNT trying to compete with AMC by making Falling Skies more like The Walking Dead in really, really obvious ways- it had ratings comparisons & advertising budget info, plus my Wonder-con pic collection, too. I should’ve given you a head’s up.
August 12th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
No problem. I have no objection with anyone giving feedback. I will post a rebuttle soon. As I think you’re wrong on most of your response. And by the way, the writing on Walking Dead is light years beyond anything Falling Skies has done.
October 15th, 2012 at 12:45 am
Hi Kahuna you sound like someone I would get along with in real life…
The truth is…Science-fiction has never treated minority characters with a whole lot of respect. I’d also like to highlight your mention of falling skies going out of its way to eliminate the black characters. We don’t even get to see how Jamil dies…To be honest I couldn’t believe they named the only black character this scene with the most dialogue “Jamil” I guess next season we’ll have Shaniqua and after that a De-Shawn.
Look at The Walking Dead. Two seasons and only two black characters with the least amount of dialogue in the entire cast. One actually interesting the other hanging around for no reason by the name of “T-Dawg”. Keep in mind he has about only one or two lines every episode.
I find it quite humorous that Seychelle Gabrielle seems to always get caught in productions that mistreat minorities. You may recognize her from 2010′s major flop The Last Airbender which white-washed the entire cast as M. Night Shyamalan (a minority himself) defended the casting decision.
I’m not too surprised to be honest but I am a bit shocked that in this day and age people still don’t understand why “minority” and “science-fiction” can get a long perfectly. Do you remember how big of a stir Idris Elba caused when he was cast as Heimdall in Thor? He actually did a great job but when it comes to minorities in science-fiction I think both producers and part of the audience seem to become very uncomfortable.
On the last note season 3 of The Walking Dead is tonight. The new character Michonne is a black female. We’ll see how many lines she has or if they kill her off in episode 2.
December 8th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I won’t tell much , all i have to say is that if i came to this page, this was because i wanted to have other opinions on something which was bothering me since season 1 in Falling Skies. THERE IS a real problem, and i hope guys like you don’t stop denouncing them because of guys like the first commenter.
Sorry for my poor language.
January 20th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
Actually, I just started watching this show today. I’m on the first season and I noticed the trend, too. Not just with main characters getting killed, but thus far everyone who has been killed with the exception of one character (the evil doctor) has been black. There was a guy who was killed by Pope’s men, a black sentry in a school bus with Jimmy, and of course Mike. It’s funny because a group of us watched the first 9 episodes and every time a black person comes on screen with more than two lines, we know he’s going to die, lol. The other thing I dislike is that they have allowed a sexist, racist, murdering, rape condoning convict more character development than any of the non white characters (aside from Ann) and allowed him to join their ranks as an intelligent hero. By which I mean Pope. The show is entertaining and interesting, but I really dislike that.
February 19th, 2013 at 6:14 am
This show killed off more than just Mike in the first season. I just started watching the first season on hulu and practically every time a couple of people die one of them is black. Hollywood in general is always doing this but, this is the worst case of it I have seen and I am only up to the sixth episode. It is not a biased opinion, it is called counting. It made me sick and I so I looked online to see if I was the only one noticing, I am glad I wasn’t. I just think producers in hollywood should have corrected this racist problem way before now, since it has been pointed out as a problem for quite awhile now.
June 8th, 2013 at 9:14 am
I thought I was the only one that notice this, that I had to look it up on the net.it’s not even that they kill off the black guys but the black guys have no power even the professors nine year old kid had more pull than jamil.also the main black guy can’t remember his name he was a cop before the war and yet he has a lower military rank than a professor.I know this is a militia but I know off aliens attacked right now themilitia would be in the hierarchy of power.first the military then civilian protective services (fbi.cia,nsa police officers) then every body elsethen maybe a professor and his kids.they treat that guy like he is a kid and don’t know much about anything.even pope who killed some guys in the resistance have more pull than all the minorities in the show.season three starts tommorow hopefully they do this better but I doubt it.
poor jamil they had spiders come out of the guys mouth wtg
June 9th, 2013 at 11:18 pm
Yeah I’m concern as well, because I really like the show, but there is this ultra Eurocentric chauvinistic john Wayne vibe, where are the masculine, strong witty Alpha African American men, Like they don’t exist, every major and successive war in American history consisted of great brave African American Soldiers The American Revolution was sparked by the valiant and courageous acts of an African American man, I mean it always seems like mainstream America wants to ignore the positive image of a strong intelligent, masculine African American Male, who is just as capable as the professor, in reality the professor would probably be African American given the circumstances, and the acts of character.