This episode has a strange dramatic opening, everyone on
the ground posing with various weapons, something happening on the moon base –
and a man begging Botha for help with some kind of alien thing on his chest
(all with the background sound of ragged breathing and a loud heartbeat). He’s
just one of many suffering horribly in an odd, foggy swamp place.
Everyone else is all tense and looking at the moon and
hearing some very very loud wolves. Botha had left with a scouting team and
returns alone and late – and not looking so good. He describes what he saw and
Ben realises it’s a mobile mutation plant – a way for the Espheni to mutate
people without dragging them to a factory first.
That foreshadowed (and some brief hints at Maggie/Hal
breaking up and being friends thrown in with some Pope angst) a Beamer drops an
ominous, fog producing thing. When the fog touches people’s feet they become
glued to the floor – and then it releases chest sucking creatures into the fog.
An extra is caught and gets a chest sucker on her and becomes all feral and
evil. E
Everyone gets caught and glued by the fog. Matt manages to kill the chest sucker after him with a throwing knife. He and Weaver are stuck together
Maggie frees Ben and they both work to help Hal showing
he has to truth them (despite his snark)and how well they work together.
Botha chews out Pope for his endless, ridiculous charging
into danger (which got them both stuck. And yes, Pope has been needed this
lecture for some time) but then Botha gets a chest sucker but Pope manages to
kill it by chewing through the tube that connects it to the foggy thing. And
yes that’s disgusting. Sarah then returns from parts unknown to help kill the
chest suckers going for Pope – awww she foes care. Unlike me. Damn it Sarah, I
thought Pope was finally going to be killed off.
Anne discovers the fog doesn’t like flares. Conveniently, she happens to have a flamethrower. Which runs out of fuel as she gets to Matt and Weaver, making it a pretty awful rescue attempt as she, too, is trapped. Weaver begins despairing so now there’s more “don’t give up” speeches.
On the ship to the moon, the broken technology we saw
last episode turns out to be the bomb – bombs don’t like cold it seems. Lexi
still upset that one guilt dream doesn’t make Tom trust her implicitly and Tom
actually reassures her. He wants to use her super powers to destroy the power
plant but she can’t – her powers rely on twisting natural forces all of which
are absent or weaker on the moon.
We get some science as to what the power plant actually
is (using a form of Helium the moon has lots of apparently) and why this made
the Earth an ideal target. Exposition interrupted by a bigger ship rumbling
them and pulling them to it.
They go onto the big ship and find that Mira is now fully
harnessed (seriously, they brainwash the kids THEN harness them. Really?) as a mouthpiece of an Overlord (the scorched
one who hates Tom so much) who smacks Tom across the room – and uses Lexie’s
necklace to strangle her, he just points at her and it contracts. A safeguard
to control her. She tries to convince the Overlord she’s on their side.
While Scorched Overlord obsesses in burning Lexi, he
turns his back on the completely unrestrained Tom who gets up and stabs the
Overlord. Setting him on fire was a minor inconvenience. A small knife kills
it. What an anti-climactic death! He removes Lexi’s necklace and they decide on
Plan B – ramming the ship into the power source
Couldn’t you search the ship for a bomb? No? Ok then
This also means Tom has to go and turn off the tractor
beam (which Lexi can’t do remotely because REASONS) so they have an escape
route. But also so they can split up and, I bet, Lexi can nobly sacrifice
herself proving she’s good after all.
And yes, when Tom releases the tracking beam she nobly tells him how she’s going to sacrifice herself because it’s so utterly and completely predictable. Touching goodbye scene follows.
For ominous foreshadowing for the next season, Cochise
contacts his dad and asks for help - but says he has something important to
tell him about the Earth’s moon. I’m guessing it’s going to be “super precious
resource, come and get it!”
But this does help Tom whose Beamer is being chased by a
horde of enemy Beamers – which are then destroyed by the returning Volm ship.
Lexi completes her dramatic suicide and destroys the
power source. The destruction turns off the foggy machine on the ground along
with the rest of the Espheni technology – saving everyone. Everyone gathers all
happy and safe and Pope and Sarah have a moment
Tom’s Beamer isn’t doing so well – the explosion knocked
it away from the homing beacon which presumably then was deactivated. Cochise
tells Anne that they’ve now lost the Beamer and don’t know where he is. Hal and
Anne both make dramatic speeches about having to finish what they started and
kill the Espheni now they’re helpless
Tom wakes up in a very normal-pre-apocalypse room. Only
his hand goes through the picture he tries to pick up. Between random radio
broadcasts a voice says “we come in peace” and “the enemy of my enemy is my
friend.” They greet him by name and a door opens – another alien species
appears. It’s blurred but Tom calls it beautiful.
And that’s the season over. I think the ending really did
continue the themes of the whole season – broken plot lines, massive
coincidences, little common sense and no actual regard for canon while at the
same time being grossly predictable with its tropes.
In some ways there’s not much to say with this season
finale review because I’ve been saying it repeatedly all the way through the
season – and, to a lesser extent, all through Falling Skies run. The writing is terrible, plot lines work through
atrocious coincidences or the characters making decisions that don’t make any
sense at all. Yet they all still work because of plot armour. Past seasons and
established canon are just thrown away or convolutedly thrown into the background
because REASONS. Anything that didn’t fit, anything that didn’t make sense was
just ignored and the characters just didn’t bother to mention it because it was
convenient to do so. This continued even to hold up really dubious scenarios
like the Lexi cult and the Espheni Youth camp– it works because no-one bothers
to challenge it, no-one bothers to raise the obvious illogical flaws.
Then we have the Masons as the super duper leaders
especially Tom who can never be challenged ever. I almost like how Anne called
Tom out for being arrogant and not listening to anyone but it resulted in no
change in behaviour. Even his dramatic failing – trusting Lexi – is spun to be
more Anne’s issue than his and absolutely no-one ever truly holds Tom
accountable except Pope (who is cast as eternally wrong and an arsehole even
when he’s asking reasonable questions). Nor does the plot, Tom never has
consequences for his arrogance, his decisions or his recklessness and people
questioning him are just wrong. What made Tom so damn special? Why is Tom so
damn special?
Then we have a shed load of dull predictability hammered
on everything. Lexi’s death (and
the fastest redemption train I’ve seen for a while), Sarah returning to Pope,
Mira turning out to be a traitor. Honestly, did anyone not predict every damn
thing in this season? Frankly between the awful writing and worshipful trope
adherence I think the writers may have phoned this one in.
Marginalised characters was similarly terrible. For a
fourth season we have no LGBT people, it looks like the Espheni belong to an
odd branch of the Westboro Baptist church and hunted down LGBT people first.
POC
I’ve already spoken about – but add Mira and Lexi dying to the huge death
count. And Deni and Anthony being nearly non-existent for the whole season.
The women of this show aren’t much better – with Lourdes,
Lexi and Mira all dying and all of them and Anne having the ridiculous flaws I
pointed out in that piece as well. They’re all too trusting, too naïve and, of
course, very very emotional and not sensible or rational or very effective.
Maggie ran through a lot of high emotion against Lexi (but still needed Ben to
guide her into actually doing something) before landing her in the middle of a
love-triangle plot line. And Sarah? She could have been a character with growth
and development but we didn’t spend that much time on her – she became Pope’s
love interest and not much more. Sarah’s place in the group, everything about
her, is defined by her relationship with Pope.
