Alien Nation
October 28, 2015 10:32 AM   Subscribe

The film Alien Nation was a hit in 1988, so the fledgling Fox Network figured building off its success with a human-alien buddy cop show was a can’t-miss concept....

The Storyline
250,000 genetically-modified refugee alien "Newcomers" crashed on Earth in a massive slave ship. They were quarantined for three years, and released in 1988. Now, it's 1991 and they're slowly, reluctantly, being accepted as humanity's new neighbors.

The Newcomers have two hearts and bald, spotted heads. They're extremely strong. They're highly intelligent. They get drunk on sour milk. And seawater burns them as if it were hydrochloric acid.

Our show opens with police officer Matthew Sykes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, fighting crime in Los Angeles.

History
Alien Nation: The Series was one of Fox’s few initial successes. But a financial shortage hit the network in their first year, and their executives cancelled all of their dramatic series for the 1990-91 season. Season One of the show ended on a cliffhanger, infuriating fans.

Fast-forward. Four years later, the network has had a change of management, who decide to produce a series of five, two-hour tv movies (with the entire original cast) that picked up where the series finale cliffhanger left off. All five are linked below.

Opening Narrative
"That was the scene in California's Mojave Desert five years ago -- our historic first view of the Newcomers' ship. Theirs was a slave ship, carrying a quarter million beings, bred to adapt and labor in any environment. But they'd washed ashore on Earth, with no way to get back to where they came from. And in the last five years, the Newcomers have become the latest addition to the population of Los Angeles."

The Cast
* Gary Graham played Matthew Sykes.
* Eric Pierpoint played George Francisco
* Michelle Scarabelli played George’s wife Susan. Scarabelli had previously been known for playing Jo Santini on Airwolf and Connie Hall on Dallas.
* George's baby daughter Vessna was a puppet, as it would have been illegal to use the heavy alien rubber-headed makeup on an infant. Between the first and second movies, the puppet was destroyed, so the writers threw in a storyline about her being encased in a cocoon, presumably so they wouldn’t have to bother with the character any more.

Racism and Language
An ongoing theme in the show is human xenophobia, and the sociological impact of a diverse alien civilization of recently-freed slaves merging with our own. Many episodes, especially the pilot, make reference to the civil rights movement, America's history of slavery and oppression of African Americans. Characters sometimes use slurs (the "n" word and others) to make "they're just like us" points about the Newcomers.

The Show (1989-1990)
1) Pilot
2) Fountain Of Youth
3) Little Lost Lamb
4) Fifteen With Wanda (With Lori Petty as Wanda)
5) The Takeover
6) The First Cigar
7) Night of the Screams (With Mitch Pileggi)
8) Contact
9) Three To Tango (With Alan Scarfe)
10) The Game (With Andreas Katsulas)
11) Chains Of Love
12) The Red Room (With Patricia Heaton)
13) The Spirit Of '95
14) Generation To Generation
15) Eyewitness News (With Angela Bassett)
16) Partners
17) Real Men
18) Crossing The Line
19) Rebirth (Alan Thompson reprises his role as “Peter Rabbit” from the 1988 movie.)
20) Gimme, Gimme (With Alan Fudge and Armin Shimerman)
21) The Touch
22) Green Eyes

Bonus Feature
Alien Nation: Behind the Scenes

The Movies
* Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994)
* Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995)
* Alien Nation: Millennium (1996)
* Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996)
* Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997)

Links
* TV Tropes’ page for the show. Contains spoilers.
* The Tenctonese Alphabet. Also see Omniglot
posted by zarq (86 comments total) 64 users marked this as a favorite
 
I liked this show and its movies much more than I ever cared about Star Trek. It was cheesy, but a good sort of cheesy.
posted by Foosnark at 10:38 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Was it a fever dream, or were there also several fake advertisements for household items / food / etc. that featured Newcomers instead of humans?
posted by emelenjr at 10:45 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have such vivid memories of this show, it's hard to believe it ran only one season. The seawater thing -- I remember an episode with a subplot about some sort of extreme gambling thing, basically Russian roulette with a water gun full of salt water.

Are the movies any good? Curious if this merits a full-on rewatch.
posted by tocts at 10:48 AM on October 28, 2015 [13 favorites]


This was a greater tragedy than firefly.
posted by garbhoch at 10:51 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


As a kid who was too young to find a cop show with themes about xenophobia interesting, I mostly remember being confused by Alien Nation. It was a show about aliens that I didn't enjoy! How could that be? I definitely watched more than I should have trying to solve that puzzle.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:52 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


Did I miss it, or is there no mention of the original theatrical movie with Mandy Patinkin and James Caan?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:57 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


And there it is in the first sentence. Jeez Louise.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:57 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


One wonders if they were any relation to the Signs aliens, who were also fatally allergic to water (in spite of which fact they were somehow going to harvest humans for food, presumably by making jerky).
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:02 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Was it a fever dream, or were there also several fake advertisements for household items / food / etc. that featured Newcomers instead of humans?

No, I remember that. Alien babes in bikinis, alien dudes hawking...milk drinks? Maybe?

I liked it quite a lot, but in those dark days, if you didn't catch it when it was on, you missed it (I had no VCR). So there's lots of these I haven't seen. I'm kind of afraid to go watch it again and be disappointed.

One wonders if they were any relation to the Signs aliens, who were also fatally allergic to water (in spite of which fact they were somehow going to harvest humans for food, presumably by making jerky).

Only saltwater, not regular water. So only salt, I guess? I don't think that was spelled out. Hard to eat human food if salt acts on you like an acid. They may possibly have not thought this idea all the way through.
posted by emjaybee at 11:05 AM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


Was this the show where they had sex by humming against each other, leading to probably the first network TV show to use the term "gave him a hummer"? Am I thinking of another show?
posted by bondcliff at 11:07 AM on October 28, 2015


Alien Nation = Alienation.
Pretty darn corny, but I've always been a fan of titles with a double meaning. (The current standard-bearer, of course, being Transparent.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:10 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


I had no idea it was a movie! Or rather, I thought it was one of those TV movies that acted as a two-hour pilot. Don't see those anymore, do you?
posted by infinitewindow at 11:10 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


* George's baby daughter Vessna was a puppet, as it would have been illegal to use the heavy alien rubber-headed makeup on an infant. Between the first and second movies, the puppet was destroyed, so the writers threw in a storyline about her being encased in a cocoon, presumably so they wouldn’t have to bother with the character any more.


Rapidly aging a kid on soap operas or Happy Days Chuck Cunningham has nothing on this as a writer's way to get rid of a character.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:11 AM on October 28, 2015 [15 favorites]


Was it a fever dream, or were there also several fake advertisements for household items / food / etc. that featured Newcomers instead of humans?

I remember an ad for Advil or Tylenol or something featuring an alien. As a kid, it really messed with my developing sense of fiction vs reality. If aliens are fake... how are they in ads for real products?
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:17 AM on October 28, 2015


This was a greater tragedy than firefly

I really liked Alien Nation. It might have been the MASH of its day, with a bit of care and some understatement. George was a better student of humanity than Data ever was. Putting a clever understory in bogus commercials was brilliant.

But, no, it wasn't a greater loss than Firefly.

Just: No. Don't say that, ever.
posted by mule98J at 11:19 AM on October 28, 2015 [11 favorites]


the puppet was destroyed, so the writers threw in a storyline about her being encased in a cocoon, presumably so they wouldn’t have to bother with the character any more.

Huh. The Family Ties producers tried the same thing with Tina Yothers and none of the viewers ever noticed.

(This was originally going to be a Tempestt Bledsoe joke, but goddamn Bill Cosby had to go and ruin everything for everyone.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:22 AM on October 28, 2015 [16 favorites]




Oh I haven't thought of this show in years! I can picture the characters perfectly. I wonder if I have time to change my Halloween costume...
posted by areaperson at 11:26 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Chrysostom: Did I miss it, or is there no mention of the original theatrical movie with Mandy Patinkin and James Caan?
and then...
And there it is in the first sentence. Jeez Louise.

I make that mistake all the time. :D

I actually considered going into more detail about the differences between the movie and the show, but decided against it. There's no free video online for the movie, so talking about it at length would only have highlighted that it's missing.

One thing I probably should have mentioned but didn't: Rockne S. O'Bannon (creator of seaQuest DSV, The Triangle, Farscape, Cult and Defiance) wrote the movie, created the characters, etc. Fox asked him to help develop the series. He's credited as a series writer.
posted by zarq at 11:28 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Just: No. Don't say that, ever.

Firefly was deeply over-rated.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:30 AM on October 28, 2015 [21 favorites]


Metafilter: [your favorite show] was deeply over-rated.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:32 AM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]


Firefly was deeply over-rated.

Pistols at dawn, sir.
posted by zarq at 11:33 AM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]


I can't wait for the next telemarketer to call my house so I can tell them that I'm encased in a cocoon.

Beats the do not call list, in any event.
posted by dr_dank at 11:37 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]






I recall one of the oddities of the movie was it had people running around with Armsel Strikers, a weapon not frequently seen or available in the US.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:44 AM on October 28, 2015


Was this the show where they had sex by humming against each other

I'm pretty sure I remember a scene where the different placement of the genitals also mattered. One of those classic, "hit him between the legs, nothing happens" scene. I think they implied the genitals were in the armpit or something?
posted by Panjandrum at 11:53 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


"We're the aliens, man. We're the savages." -Slater
posted by Bob Regular at 11:55 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Loved this show, and was crushed when it didn't return following the cliffhanger ending. Not sure if I ever watched the movies, so I'll have to check them out when I get home.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:00 PM on October 28, 2015


Firefly was deeply over-rated.

While I agree, I generally avoid speaking about it, as it seems to cause problems and people take it very personally. Much like the old cliche of leaning over to someone and advising them in a hushed whisper "pssst... don't talk about the war" if there were Germans about, I advise a similar course of action for Firefly. It just leads to fans bending over backwards to explain how deeply wrong the non-fan is, and just leads to unnecessary arguments. It ends up making things weird. It's okay to like it, it's okay not to. (cue scene reminiscent of "It's not your fault" from Good Will Hunting) Seriously, it's going to be okay. It's okay.
posted by chambers at 12:16 PM on October 28, 2015 [11 favorites]


I loved this series, though I don't think I'd ever seen the original theatrical film version. I remember enjoying the followup TV movies too. At least one of them had, as unremarked background, a male/male human/Tenctonese couple, attending classes at the human/Newcomer sex clinic (humans ran the risk of injury if they attempted sex with a Newcomer without prior instruction). I thought that was a nice, relaxed scripting and casting choice to make, especially in the mid-90s when there could still be so much Very Special Panicky Episode-itis involved with having gay characters on TV.

And I can't be sure, but the Tenctonese half of the gay couple might have been named "Walt Whitman". (Many of the Newcomers were assigned famous or funny names by human immigration personnel, if I remember my canon correctly.)

There are some touches to the show that feel ahead of their time...having the opening theme sung in the Tenctonese language, for instance, that's something I can totally imagine today, in, like, a higher-budget HBO version of the show, and it would be studied and lauded.
posted by theatro at 12:28 PM on October 28, 2015 [10 favorites]


theatro: "higher-budget HBO version of the show"

Take my money.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:34 PM on October 28, 2015 [8 favorites]


This was one of the first shows that taught me the horrible lesson that sometimes stories end before they are over. I adored this show and would tune in regularly only to discover that it just went away. Thanks for posting this, when I get some of that mythical free time I will do a massive rewatch.
posted by teleri025 at 12:35 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


OMG I'VE BEEN SCOURING USENET FOR THESE FOR YEARS!!!!

I can't believe I never thought to check youtube...

Thank you, kind poster!
posted by butterstick at 12:54 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


On reflection, a Human/Newcomer buddy-cop story sounds like something ripped from the pages of a Discworld Night Watch book.
posted by traveler_ at 12:58 PM on October 28, 2015


Didn't the Newcomers all snicker when they heard the main earthling character's name "Sykes" cause it sounded like "sai-ka" some kind of Tenctonese curse word?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:01 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


And I can't be sure, but the Tenctonese half of the gay couple might have been named "Walt Whitman". (Many of the Newcomers were assigned famous or funny names by human immigration personnel, if I remember my canon correctly.)

Yes. In fact, George's real first name is "Sam" ("Sam Francisco" get it) but Sykes refuses to call him that so renames him George.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:04 PM on October 28, 2015


But no, it wasn't a greater loss than Firefly.

One human's cheesy is another human's cheez whizzy.
posted by y2karl at 1:10 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


Didn't the Newcomers all snicker when they heard the main earthling character's name "Sykes" cause it sounded like "sai-ka" some kind of Tenctonese curse word?

Yes. Apparently his name means "excrement" and "cranium" in Tenctonese.

Shit head.
posted by zarq at 1:10 PM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


theatro: "higher-budget HBO version of the show"

Take my money.


Gladly, Rock Steady! Should I ever win the TV-financing lottery, I would invest in a high-end HBO production of Alien Nation, and a high-end HBO production of Space: Above and Beyond. I think they would do great as modern pay-cable prestige series; they both have a lot going on under the surface.
posted by theatro at 1:13 PM on October 28, 2015 [8 favorites]


a high-end HBO production of Space: Above and Beyond.

Now I'm just wistful.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:28 PM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]


My dad loved this show back when it aired, but I mostly remember thinking it was boring (I was young and not interested in serious things). I've always wanted to give it another go, because everything about it sounds really great. Thanks for posting this!

Also, the fact that I never, for a second, realized that "Alien Nation = Alienation" just reminds me that I am absolutely terrible at Getting Things. It's like English class in high school all over again.
posted by teponaztli at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Shit head

Yes! That was it!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:49 PM on October 28, 2015


This is my favorite TV show of all time and I have consumed every single piece of AN media ever. Day of Descent was a huge influence on my second book. Hollywood, if you ever want someone to write some licensed Tenctonese stuff, call me!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:55 PM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


Somehow in all my computer changes, I lost the MP3 I had of the theme. It was a great piece, and I know it was sung in what was supposed to be Tenctonese, but I really loved it. Like I loved the show. It was a police procedural variant, I know, but the actors made it work.

Also, the part in the opening of the show, when it rises to a crescendo, then you see Sykes yell and pound the dash on the car as George looks at him in a kind of amused-but-understanding-the-frustration way you'd expect a cop in the buddy-cop shows to look.

Finally, the fact that as it went on, both human and Newcomer characters became comfortable enough with each other to be able to say, "hey, this thing with your people, I don't understand it, give me a hand here?" and not getting met with sarcasm, but with both sides getting that the other was trying to understand. I loved the episode where you find out about the Tenctonese reproductive cycle, and George explains why the (apparently not too bright) janitor in the police station is important to it, and Sykes just stares for a moment, and then goes, "OK, Newcomer stuff like that is weird to me. I guess human stuff is weird to you, too." George nods. "Yes, it is." Then he smiles. "When we first started, you'd have been complaining for hours." "I got better."

The fact that Sykes sees acceptance of their differences as 'getting better' is awesome to me.

And then he helped George give birth to the infant, and the last scene of them lying on the floor of a warehouse, laughing with joy, was just wonderful.
posted by mephron at 2:05 PM on October 28, 2015 [13 favorites]


One of my earliest purchases at a Star Trek convention was a wallet card of the Tenctonese alphabet. I'm pretty sure it wasn't even canon but I totally used it to code messages.

To myself.

I loved this show as well and this thread has been a beautiful walk down 90s sci-fi memory lane.

(I wasn't as impressed with the follow up series because they got a lot more scifiey, as I recall. Weirdly, I loved the sociocultural fiction almost more.)
posted by abulafa at 2:09 PM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]


Should I ever win the TV-financing lottery, I would invest in a high-end HBO production of Alien Nation, and a high-end HBO production of Space: Above and Beyond.

Meanwhile, I will spend my TV-financing lottery on hunting down everyone involved with bringing Mercy Point air and kicking them all square in their chicken pot pies.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:22 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow, I haven't watched this show since the initial air date. I remember it being wildly uneven in quality. One episode stands out to me to this day, though. "Real Men" had an interesting take on masculinity and closes the episode with a surprisingly tender moment between Matt and George after the birth of George's child (that he carried, seahorse-style, to term). I'll have to read-watch that episode and see if it still holds up.
posted by Eikonaut at 2:33 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


The gender stuff is all really, really interesting and so so progressive for the time.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:42 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


mephron: "Also, the part in the opening of the show, when it rises to a crescendo, then you see Sykes yell and pound the dash on the car as George looks at him in a kind of amused-but-understanding-the-frustration way you'd expect a cop in the buddy-cop shows to look."

I have not been able to stop thinking of that exact moment since this post went up. It might be my favorite moment in all of TV history.
posted by Rock Steady at 2:45 PM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


Also, Sikes looked unnervingly like Mick Jagger, and his girlfriend Cathy made 13-year-old Rock Steady think some very interesting things.
posted by Rock Steady at 2:46 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


That's okay, Buck got me all riled up as a teenager despite the blouses he wore. Or maybe because of them.

Also I dressed like a Tenctonese for Halloween in 9th grade way after the show was popular (this would have been 1999 or so, so it was airing on Sci-fi) and I really wish I had that picture. I was wearing a bathing cap with spots drawn on it and everything.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:50 PM on October 28, 2015 [11 favorites]


PhoBWanKenobi: "I dressed like a Tenctonese for Halloween in 9th grade way after the show was popular (this would have been 1999 or so, so it was airing on Sci-fi) and I really wish I had that picture. I was wearing a bathing cap with spots drawn on it and everything."

Flagged as fantastic.
posted by Rock Steady at 2:55 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]


There are two things that the mention of this show stirs in me:

1. Aliens in business suits

2. V
posted by rhizome at 3:37 PM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]


Oh man, I knew a lot of people that loved this show, but I was about 9 and found it absolutely terrifying for no concrete reason that I can remember now. Something to do with the aliens being too realistic to me. I was very concerned about extra-terrestrial beings at the time.
posted by jenjenc at 4:31 PM on October 28, 2015


I looooooved this show. I wonder if my cirrent partner has seen it or not. We should re-watch!

I remember it being very progressive in a bunch of ways including the police not being absurdly rules bending (if not outright thugs) as in many cop shows these days. And I love that Sykes was kind of an impatient asshole with having to handle differences but "got better" as noted upthread. Definitely too bad it didn't get more seasons - such fertile ground for exploring all the usual concepts without being quite so threatening to (white) people.
posted by R343L at 5:29 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


No one make an Alien Nation rewatch FanFare club because it will kill my NaNoWriMo plans.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:23 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Man, I loved this show when it was on. Here's a fun little semi-related story:

I grew up in suburban Chicago and got my drivers license in 1991. To celebrate, my two best friends and I drove to downtown Chicago and spent a Saturday at the Battletech Center. When we got there, my friends chose the handles "Kaneda" and "Zamfir" (yes, the master of the pan flute). I wanted something more alien sounding and didn't want to go for the obvious (Spock, Worf, Chewbacca, etc.).

I chose Vessna.

We're spread all around the country now, but whenever we get together, the story of Kaneda, Zamfir, and Vessna usually gets told (with our wives and children all rolling their eyes).
posted by zooropa at 6:53 PM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


I would be remiss if I didn't share the fact that I just found a pile of Alien Nation fanfic. I didn't check to see if it's slash or not, so caveat emptor.
posted by zooropa at 7:00 PM on October 28, 2015


I adore Alien Nation. I've got all the DVDs, the books, and the odd old fanzine squirreled away somewhere.

I'm firmly in the "This was a greater tragedy than firefly" camp, because in those pre-internet, pre-DVD-set days, that was one of the worst cliffhanger cancellations I had ever experienced. They had every bad thing possible happening to the characters, relationships wrecked, lives in jeopardy, and then it was goodbye forever. The writers were somehow blindsided by the cancellation, swearing later that they would never have ended so bleakly if they'd known they were on the bubble. It seemed like there was hope for it being wrapped up via tv-movie specials, and a bunch of scripts or script treatments were written over that summer, but the network didn't commission it to go forward, so, it seemed like that was it. Nothing but fanfic, VHS bootlegs, and memories.

But then someone came up with the idea of turning those tv-movie script treatments into novels, and in 1993 Pocket Novels came out with Day of Descent, followed by another 7 books over the next couple of years. ("Day of Descent" picks up from the events in the cliffhanger but is mostly all told in flashback about what everyone was doing in the lead-up and aftermath of the ship crashing in the desert. It doesn't actually resolve the cliffhanger the way the next book & first tv-movie "Dark Horizon" does, but it was so deeply emotionally satisfying, it is still a favorite re-read.) I'm not sure if they already had the green-light on the tv-movies before the books came out, or if they looked at the book sales to see if audience demand was still there before they okayed the movies. My memory is that it was the latter, but I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure I remember a scene where the different placement of the genitals also mattered. One of those classic, "hit him between the legs, nothing happens" scene. I think they implied the genitals were in the armpit or something?

It wasn't that the genitals were in the armpit, just that a kick to a Newcomer's groin didn't cause the kind of pain that it would to a human (maybe no external testicles?), but there was a nerve cluster on the ribs below the armpit which would have the equivalent effect when hit. Not sure when it was established in the show, but it's definitely a scene in the original movie, when they question the guy at the bar.

Are the movies any good? Curious if this merits a full-on rewatch.

The movies suffer from some continuity issues I think, but, I don't think you can watch the series and not watch at least the first two. I mean, the first one has the cliffhanger resolution, and the second one has the resolution of Matt+Cathy. (And Matt having to go Newcomer+Human sex classes with Cathy and a bunch of other mixed couples is comedy gold.)
posted by oh yeah! at 7:05 PM on October 28, 2015 [10 favorites]


Oh memories. Thanks for mentioning this! Watch out for that salt water!!
posted by Muncle at 7:40 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have the gag reel on a hard drive... somewhere.

I'll try to find it and upload it for y'all.
posted by tzikeh at 9:27 PM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'd all but forgotten about this show! I remember getting drunk on milk, salt water being lethal and them being quite intelligent, but I couldn't for the life of me visualise what they looked like.
posted by flippant at 10:42 PM on October 28, 2015


Loved the hell out of this as a kid and will be re watching them all next week!
posted by Iteki at 12:07 AM on October 29, 2015


Holy crap. I remember watching reruns of this on scifi some time during the final seasons of voyager. It sort of blended together in my head with a lot of the crappier and much weirder scifi shows, and i couldn't even remember if it had really existed or not.

I was probably something like 12, and had a huge fixation with cheesy scifi movies and shows. My parents had an unlimited netflix-style membership at one of the two huge video stores in town, and i'd constantly check out weird stuff.

Watching this again, there's no way the costume of Alan Rickman's character in galaxy quest wasn't at least riffing on this a little bit. Especially the way it fit with his forehead kinda inconsistently.

What other shows that died quickly or went in to tv-movie land really fast had this much lore and backstory and such? I never even realized this did, having maybe watched one of the movies and a few episodes of the show when they happened to be on. I had no idea it was such A Thing.
posted by emptythought at 4:38 AM on October 29, 2015


In the one hand I will hold Alien Nation, and in the other Firefly. I do not need to compare the tragedies.

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:55 AM on October 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


Ok, now that I've got my declaration of undying love for the series out of the way, more thoughts.

One thing I probably should have mentioned but didn't: Rockne S. O'Bannon (creator of seaQuest DSV, The Triangle, Farscape, Cult and Defiance) wrote the movie, created the characters, etc. Fox asked him to help develop the series. He's credited as a series writer.

Although O'Bannon deserves credit for the original concept, the series is very much producer Kenneth Johnson's (Bionic Man, Bionic Woman, Incredible Hulk, & V) baby. It's definitely to Johnson's credit that there are bonus features on the DVDs, and though I haven't listened to his commentary tracks in years, I remember how it was clear that he loved the show and the cast. (One of the wonderful things about the tv-movies was how he got everybody back - not just the main cast, but even the minor recurring cast like Detective Zapeda). On the negative, Johnson could get pretty heavy-handed/preachy on the message of the week. I remember the speechifying about violence in the media/games/porn leading to violent crimes in the "Little Lost Lamb" episode being an egregious one.

Another thing that may date the show on re-watch is that it was supposed to be set 5 years in the future from when it aired - hence the joke "Rocky 6" movie marque in the opening credits, and other bits scattered throughout the series & movies.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:02 AM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


oh yeah!: "hence the joke "Rocky 6" movie marque in the opening credits"

Rambo 6. Get on my level.

I only knew that because I watched the credit sequence like three times last night.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:42 AM on October 29, 2015


Still, not as cool as the King Lear with Arnold Schwarzenegger poster in the dvd store window during the Tyrannosaurus mama rampage in San Diego in Lost World: Jurassic Park.
posted by y2karl at 8:09 AM on October 29, 2015


Rambo 6. Get on my level.

Celine! And I had just tabbed over from the youtube pilot link to check, must have mentally reversed them in correcting myself. Oh well.

No one make an Alien Nation rewatch FanFare club because it will kill my NaNoWriMo plans.

Yeah, I've got way too many new shows & ST re-watching going on now, but, I'd love to do an Alien Nation FanFare re-watch in the spring/summer maybe. And I could do another re-read of the books when we got to the tv-movies -- there were always great Susan sub-plots in the books that didn't make it into the show.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:54 AM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


From what I've researched, the reason that the Alien Nation cancellation was so tragic was that it was not a flop. At all. It was both critically popular and a ratings success. But then a new head of the network, who hated scifi, took over and canceled very abruptly. No one expected it, not in the least the fans.

(My parents, who liked scifi, but were not huge scifi nerds or anything, religiously watched. I wasn't allowed to, because there was alien sex and I was like 6, but I remember asking my mom about the alien baby being born and having this prevailing sense that it was real, like they were actually filming an alien man giving birth on network TV.)

I prefer Day of Descent to the TV movies, even though the novels go rapidly off the rails later--the one where Matt and Cathy have a child was awful, and insensitively written, particularly for a series that handled child loss very well earlier (it's implied that George and Susan lost a child who was born before Buck to the overseers). But in Day of Descent, we at least get a resolution to Buck's cliffhanger where he falls in love with his teacher, believably (intellectually, they're peers). I'm not sure I ever fully believed his transformation to a police academy student--given another season or two, maybe I would have. And I thought the series true developing myth arc, where whoever owned the Tenctonese was coming back to claim them and enslave humanity was dismissed wayyy too easily. The show was interesting in part because of the inherent tensions they built into the species building. It's implied that the newcomer's physical reaction to salt water is an artificial constraint built in by their (owners? designers?) and that, given the time, they'll adapt perfectly well to the Earth--perhaps even better than humanity. The purists are right in that the aliens are really likely to take over. But they're not the real danger. The real danger is lurking, unseen, in space.

My head canon reboot: Buck is injured in the line of duty and becomes some sort of academic specializing in forensics. Emily is a stay at home mom with a traditional Tenctonese family. Vessna joins the force as a new rookie cop under an assumed name, because she doesn't want favored treatment because of who her father, now mayor of LA, is. There's a will-they-or-won't-they romance between Vessna as her partner. Tone is slightly darker than the original, police procedural. As the seasons progress, though, it becomes clear that Earth really is being invaded, not by the Tenctonese, but by the people who once owned them. Everything becomes bigger and more epic and you don't even have to do much work for this because it's all there in the groundwork Johnson laid.

Never going to happen, though. Even when they were talking about the reboot, it was going to be based on the original movie and not the (much richer) shower.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:05 AM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


I dunno, PhoBWanKenobi. The mayor of Los Angeles is named Sam Francisco?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:31 AM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


:D Can't you see the campaign banners?
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:34 AM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


From what I've researched, the reason that the Alien Nation cancellation was so tragic was that it was not a flop. At all. It was both critically popular and a ratings success.

It was oftentimes Fox's TOP-RATED SHOW.

TOP.

RATED.

SHOW.

Fuck that dude.
posted by tzikeh at 11:39 AM on October 29, 2015 [6 favorites]


Right, and it's like, Firefly fans, I get the sadness. But Firefly was not popular at the time it was aired. This wasn't the fault of Whedon--Fox's mismanaging and schedule changes didn't help. But this would be like if Lost was cancelled after one season and given a series of licensed novels and TV movies years after the fact and decades later mostly treated as a jokey thing and we NEVER FOUND OUT WHAT WAS IN THE HATCH. Or we did but there were a ton of continuity errors introduced because it was hastily finished years later and Walt was put in a space pod because the actor was now forty (which okay, kind of happened, but I digress).

God, it actually really kills me that the reboot of this show was squashed. There is none better science fiction.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:51 AM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


A VOTE FOR SAM FRANCISCO
IS A VOTE FOR LOS ANGELES
posted by Rock Steady at 12:29 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


I loved this show. There were some spots I think were rough - the salt water vulnerability bothered me quite a bit - but it was such a neat piece of science fiction, and I really loved how it dug into two cultures trying to find some balance instead of being just action all the time. Even as a kid, that really appealed to me.

(Also, my brother-in-law now owns a .454 Casull, and I sounded so nerdy explaining why that was awesome when he was showing it off at a family gathering last year.)
posted by mordax at 12:37 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


The great thing is how much of the weird alien details tie into the worldbuilding. So either the slaves come from a planet (or shipboard ecosystem) without significant salt water or the overseers wanted vulnerability to salt water as a way to control them.

You see that in the wacky alien sex, too. It's ridiculously convoluted. Every couple can copulate, but they need a binnaum to reproduce. But the binnaum are a priestly caste who are kept separate from the ordinary family unit and disallowed families of their own. On top of that, the pod needs to be transferred to the father halfway through the pregnancy, or it will die. This is all incredibly inefficient and makes no sense for a means of a species to evolve. But it does make a lot a lot of sense for an engineered race with population and stringent social control. Their captors can carefully decide who has children and who doesn't and can even cause fetuses to die halfway into a pregnancy by breaking up families.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:06 PM on October 29, 2015 [5 favorites]


You guys I have so many Tenctonese feels right now.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:06 PM on October 29, 2015 [4 favorites]


*puts my fist on your temple*
posted by Rock Steady at 1:13 PM on October 29, 2015 [4 favorites]


Wikipedia says the following, but no cites are provided.
"The weekly series ran for one season, from 1989 through 1990, and was one of the few successes the fledgling Fox Network had at the time. However, the network suffered from financial shortage caused by lower-than-expected advertising income. As a result, Fox executives cancelled all of their dramatic series for the 1990"1991 season. A second season of Alien Nation was clearly expected by the producers, as the season ended with a cliffhanger. The show built a strong fan base, and popular demand led to "Dark Horizon", the episode that would have begun the second season, being novelized and adapted as a comic book as well as spawning a series of novels. Four years later, after a change of management at Fox, the story of Alien Nation continued with five television movies (including all the original cast), picking up with the cliffhanger."
This claim is repeated on several other sites, but in all of them it appears to have been lifted originally from Wikipedia.

There's an extensive article about the way the execs back then were trying to brand the network and figure out what programming would attract the most viewers here. 1990-91 was the third season of "America's Most Wanted" and the first of DEA and COPS, but those weren't drama series. Neither was the short-lived David Lynch/Mark Frost documentary series "American Chronicles." All four were documentaries and reality tv shows, and the first three were produced using cheap, non-union writers.

Perhaps the only true drama on the network at the time was "Beverly Hills 90210," and 1990 was its premiere season.
posted by zarq at 1:30 PM on October 29, 2015


and it was sour milk, wasn't it? And the cruel captors had overseer tattoos they kept covered, like a reverse auschwitz. and the main human guy had a hot alien neighbor that helped him come around to the idea that they weren't all bad.

there was one where an alien video phone sex operator was killed and they had to track down her clients from credit card records.

and the song "hate" by organized konfusion a few years later actually sampled that opening scene with the human supremecists protesting.

man, i have to go re-watch all this stuff now, don't I?
posted by lkc at 2:57 PM on October 29, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's interesting to compare this and Firefly. Firefly should be right in my sweet spot, I love Whedon, the cast is stellar, I'm a sci-fi buff. But I could never really dig it, and the main reason is that I don't think you get to construct a metaphor of the civil war and ignore what the civil war was about.

Contrast this with the (sometimes heavy-handed) connection of this show to the Civil Rights Movement.....

I think it's time for a re-watch. Great post!
posted by lumpenprole at 3:27 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]


Somehow in all my computer changes, I lost the MP3 I had of the theme. It was a great piece, and I know it was sung in what was supposed to be Tenctonese, but I really loved it.

mephron - the series soundtrack album is on iTunes and Amazon. I bought the CD back in the pre-mp3 era, it's lovely. (Though, the opening theme always feels a bit incomplete without that few seconds of Matt yelling and punching the car.)
posted by oh yeah! at 3:47 PM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]


I primarily remember the episode where the subtext suddenly became text. George had moved his family to a human neighborhood and they were running into everything from overt harassment to well-meaning yet still amazingly insulting racism and they thought about pulling their kids out of school and moving back to the slum. A black woman pulled them aside and gave them a rant about how black humans had been and still were experiencing the same sort of thing and don't you dare let those assholes win.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:45 PM on October 31, 2015


Thanks for posting this. I love this series.
I taped the opening theme and play it in my car sometimes and beat on the roof like Sykes.
AAAAAaaaaa!
posted by Gadgetenvy at 7:49 PM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]


« Older Behind the Bizaare and Tragic Story of Shaye St....   |   "played music upon it such as the ears of Men had... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments