Alien Nation : The Series (1989-1990)

Following on from the original film , the Alien Nation TV series continues the story of a "future" (the series is set roughly in 1991/1992) United States which becomes inhabited by 250,000 aliens after their ship crash lands in the Mojave desert.

Although the series was intended to be a direct follow on to the film, there were numerous small changes made to characters and back story, for example, the two main characters, Matthew Sykes (renamed "Sikes" in the TV series) and "newcomer" Sam "George" Fransisco (renamed simply "George Fransisco" in the series, his original pun name said to have been foisted on him by a bored immigration official) are now played by Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint as opposed to James Caan and Mandy Patinkin respectively.
In addition, Georges family was slightly changed, With his son now being named "Buck" instead of "Richard" as given in the film.

I first encountered this show as part of Yorkshire televisions "late night" weekend slot, as it usually aired on a friday or saturday night during the early/mid 90s. Itwas strange as i thought that there were at least 2 or 3 series of this show made, the series itself consisted of a single series of 22 episodes, each lasting 47 minutes, and the concept is explored further than it was in the film.
Several new aspects are added to the background of the "newcomers", whose race is named officially as the "Tenctonese", although the pejorative terms "Slag" or "Spongehead" are used by people to refer to them on occasion, a point which in the first episode, George explains to Sikes that calling him a Slag is the equivalent of calling someone a "nigger" or a "kike". Although the newcomers show they too have prejudice by referring to humans as "terts".

The series does have a couple of plot arcs, and each episode generally consists of two story lines running simultaneously in some way.  Themes explored include:-

• The culture shock that ensues from humans suddenly having 250,000 completely alien people dropped on them, which leads to various racist themes being explored, such as jealousy that the newcomers are generally stronger, smarter and more resilient than  humans. So much so that during the course of some episodes, a human centric "purist" movement is shown to exist, which spreads various rumours and lies about the newcomers. The irony of this is is that many black, oriental and Hispanic people end up repeating the same things about newcomers as what was once said about themselves, for no other reason than to express hatred towards something different.
• The new types of crime that spring up once the newcomers begin integrating into human society. Although a lot of this crime is pretty much the same as human crime (drug traffiking, prostitution, theft, murder, gang warfare etc) the problems end up becoming more complex being as that they involve an alien culture, and as such, many of the human characters do not always understand what is happening. 
• Inter species relationships are also explored, with Sikes slowly becoming more and more attracted towards his newcomer neighbour "Cathy", as well as a few episodes depicting both aliens and newcomers in mixed or same sex relationships (it is also shown that the newcomers have no taboos about same sex relationships amongst either their own people or inter species, although some do have prejudice about mixed sex inter species relationships).
•  An interesting sub plot throughout the series is the introduction of a ruling class of newcomers called "overseers", nearly all of whom went unnoticed on their arrival on Earth and all of whom seek to once again take control of the "lesser" newcomers. George finds the overseers detestable, as do most of the other newcomers once they have been freed from their influence. One episode deals with a terrorist obtaining a cannister of the mind control gas that the overseers used to keep the slaves in line, and several episodes deal with the police finding and closing down operations to create "Jabroka", a drug which has roughly the same effect on newcomers as crack cocaine does on humans.
• Sikes and Georges ongoing struggle to make arrests despite interference from the ambitious and somewhat buffoonish Captain Grazer.

The series is unashamedly a "buddy cop" type program, but also has elements of being a sci-fi soap opera, with many of the "B" plots being little more than simple "aliens/humans not understanding each other" type affairs, but for some reason, it really works well, and quickly establishes a core group of likeable characters performing believable actions within their almost normal environment.
There are numerous examples of comedy in there as well, ranging from simple cultural misunderstandings (such as Georges wife being utterly repulsed by the concept of Halloween), right down to instances of heavily satirical and/or black humour. 

But, despite how well the series was received, its days were numbered as after only a single series. This came as somewhat of a surprise to viewers, and to the production crew, who had expected to at least get a second series based on the shows approval ratings. The problem was, the show aired on FOXs "Fox Network" during its early days as a prime time TV channel, and, due to the network not attracting as much investment from advertisers as they had expected, cuts had to be made to the network budget, and, Alien Nation, being an expensive show to make due to the large amount of special effects and make up needing to be applied to actors playing aliens, ranked as one of the shows which had to go in order to save money.

The story didn't end there though, with five feature length TV movies being produced between 1994 and 1997 which picked up from where the series left off and resolved all the unfinished story lines.

The show still enjoys somewhat of a cult following today, and is one of my firm favourites.

War Of The Worlds - The series (1988-1990)

The War Of The Worlds TV series was first envisaged as a concept in the 1970s by Director George Pal and was intended to be a direct follow on the the 1953 movie, however the series did not make it to screens due to no interest in it.
In 1988 however writer/director Greg Strangis managed to pitch a similar concept which found favour amongst US TV executives who were, at the time, quite keen on making TV series based on successful films, as the same year saw a "Friday the XIII" TV series and a "Nightmare on Elm Street" TV series.

Two full series were made, however there are massive differences in the settings and tone of the second series compared to the first, so much so that barring a couple of shared characters, the second series could be considered to be something entirely different based on a similar premise.

Series 1 (1988-1989)

The back story goes that both the events of the 1953 Film and the 1938 Radio Broadcast were actually real attempted alien invasions, however following the end of the 1953 invasion, the aliens (note - the aliens are not referred to as "martians", as a rule in all episodes, as the concept of life on Mars had long since been disproved and thus useless as a believable plot point) did not die when exposed to Earths bacteria, instead, the aliens entered a state of torpor, and thus, after the 1953 war ended, thousands of "dead" alien bodies were sealed into oil drums and sent to storage areas all over the world, supposedly for scientific research purposes, but in reality they were quickly hidden away along with any spacecraft and artifacts so that the worlds governments could quickly and quietly rebuild and forget about the horrifying events of the invasion.
35 years pass and in present day (1988) a group of environmental terrorists attack and take over a military storage compound, which they intend to hold for ransom due to it being used to store nuclear waste. Unfortunately for them the facility is also one of the places that sleeping aliens are stored, and, in the process of their assault on the facility, the terrorists cause the aliens to become exposed to radioactive waste, which reanimates them. The aliens quickly counter attack, and demonstrate that they have the ability to merge their bodies with a human body, thus allowing them to appear as human (This was actually a cost saving measure so that numerous difficult to produce alien costumes didn't have to be made and maintained, plus it also allowed the aliens to directly influence the plot. It should also be noted that throughout the entire series, the aliens are never seen clearly).

The aliens are discovered when they make a transmission requesting orders from their superiors, and this leads to the introduction of the series' main characters:-

Dr. Harrison Blackwood  (Jared Martin) - The adopted son of Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia van Buren. Harrison is an eccentric scientist who carried on Dr. Forresters work on the aliens, even though after the great cover up no one believed in aliens any more. He becomes head of "The Blackwood Project" a secret group dedicated to finding and stopping the aliens before they take over the world. Blackwoods curiosity quite often gets the team into trouble.

Norton Drake  (Phillip Akin) - A paraplegic computer genius who intercepted the aliens first transmission. (In the pilot episode of the series, Norton sported a faux Caribbean accent, however this was dropped for the series proper, although in the first few episodes he still uses it, however the actor playing him re dubbed his lines in his own voice) Norton, as well as being a top notch research scientist is also an expert hacker, and helps the team get access to information by bypassing governmental "red tape" from time to time with his skills.

Lt.Col Paul Ironhorse  (Paul Chaves) - A US army special forces operative of native American ancestry who serves as the liaison between Dr. Blackwood and the military. Ironhorse is a staunch conservative and generally prefers military action over scientific investigation, putting him at odds with the pacifistic Dr. Blackwood, however over time the two grow to hold a respect for each other.

Suzanne McCullough (Lynda Mason Green) - A Microbiologist and single mother who comes to work for Dr. Blackwood prior to the arrival of the alien threat. Throughout the series Suzanne works on numerous biological methods of identifying or attacking the aliens, as well as finding out more about them. Suzanne is a very "by the numbers" scientist, which causes problems with Blackwoods eccentric approach to science.

The Blackwood team are tasked with researching and finding ways to combat the aliens, however the aliens themselves face numerous problems. Firstly, although they have been resurrected by the radiation, its effect of killing the germs that harm them also causes their bodies to break down from radiation sickness, meaning the aliens can only spend short periods inside a human body before they too begin to disintegrate. Secondly, the aliens do not have access to their advanced weapons or technology this time round, so therefore have to make do with crudely adapted human technology, or hopefully be able to scavenge some of their own equipment from secret storage facilities, or left over from previous visits to Earth.
Over the course of the series the aliens revive more of their own kind and try numerous strategies to subvert and kill mankind, some of which end up being horribly successful (yes that's right, the baddies win sometimes), but the series does end on a fairly high note, as it turns out that humans may have allies from space as well as enemies, although by the end of the series, it is established that an alien colonisation fleet will arrive within a few years.

Series 2 (1989-1990)

Series 2 saw some major changes to the shows format. Firstly, the setting was changed from "present day" to "almost tomorrow", this allowed for the timeline to be moved on to accommodate the arrival of the alien colonisation fleet.
Also, and more bizarrely, the aliens from the first series (the "Mor-Tax") were replaced with another set of completely different aliens, the "Mothren", with little to no explanation given as to why.
Also, Ironhorse and Norton are killed off in the first episode, and instead replaced by a mercenary called John Kincaid (played by a pre-Highlander: The Series Adrian Paul).


In this series, Earth has fallen into a period of chaos and great social upheaval, leading to an almost total breakdown of civilised society.
The Mothren arrive on Earth, and, unlike their predecessors the Mor-Tax, have no trouble whatsoever adapting to the environment, however they find it inconvenient that the humans haven't been massacred, allowing them to begin full colonisation procedures, however, over the course of the series they try to complete their mission of finding a new home world, despite their many internal conflicts.



Overall Thoughts



While the series' original concept, and thus the first series itself was quite good, it completely went to pot with the changes made for the second series.
The first series mixed sci-fi with elements of adventure and horror, and was genuinely scary to me when I first saw this series as an 11 year old, especially some of the gruesome ways that the aliens killed people.
A nice touch was that Jared Martin was instructed to copy actor Gene Barrys mannerisms in his portrayal of Harrison Blackwood, so as to make another link between the film and the series.
Another nice touch was the episode "An eye for an eye", which first aired on the 50th anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast and pays tribute to it by having the Blackwood team visit the setting of the radio play and tangling with aliens with help from some of the town militia who fought them during the 1930s.
The series also had a lot of environmentalist themes, as well as some cleverly crafted bits of satire and black comedy, most notably that each episode of series 1 was titled after a biblical quote, which had an ironic connection to the plot for the episode.
Series 2 was just awful, with far too many plot and character changes to make the two series' related in any way, even the episodes of it themselves are boring, save for one episode which involves Blackwood travelling back in time to the 1950s.

This is a good series, so long as you only really watch series 1, well acted, and for the most part well scripted. Some of the special effects are a bit bargain basement, and any instance of alien war machines appearing in the series is simply repurposed footage from the 1953 film, but, even though the program is very 1980s in its stylings, and thus may be a little difficult for younger people to get their head round, it is still watchable and entertaining.