When Skitters come from the past.

credit: Me

Speaking of Falling Skies (the TNT tv drama produced by Steven Spielberg): those sparkling spikes on the back don’t get out of my mind. The point is that watching them lighting up clicked something in my head.

Let’s start from the beginning. The skitters, freakish alien creatures, put on Ben’s back (the second-born child of the “story hero” Tom Mason) an implant that makes him a sort of slave. The implant, when removed by humans, leaves some painful marks: spikes that start from the neck and go down on the back of the poor Ben. A fact, this one, that makes him an outcast forever, specially because his spikes every now and then light up hypnotizing and throwing him elsewhere.

At this point something clicked in my head: I see in this image a giant human metaphor. Getting out from the tv show, I look around and among mortals like us I can see a lot of people that under their shirts, blouses or jackets hide Ben’s spikes.

These people have been hurt by their past so much that they carry a permanent trace of it. Apparently they look like the others, they get muddled with them. The truth is that they really are outcast and they know that very well, especially when their spikes suddenly light up. It can happen everywhere, when they are alone or among others: the result doesn’t change. Every Ben on this earth, with his heart, head and soul, for a little while goes away, recalled with no denial possibility, from his personal freakish skitter of the past.

After all an implant is an implant. Right?