Roswell is a show that aired briefly on the WB, later crossing over to another network.  It was one of those shows that lived longer than it ordinarily would have, thanks to a passionate, devoted fanbase and a few mail-in campaigns.  It takes place in Roswell, NM, and centers around Liz Parker, your typical pretty bio nerd who works as a waitress in her father’s alien-themed diner.

Liz’s life is irrevocably changed when she’s hit by a stray bullet in a shooting at work.  As she lays dying on the floor, one of her classmates, Max Evans, runs up and heals her (turns out he’s an alien, along with his sister and best friend).  Now that he’s effectively blown his cover, all manner of villains come out of the woodwork: the Sheriff who’s too smart for his own good, evil government agents, other aliens, and obnoxious ex-boyfriends.

It was equal parts Romeo & Juliet and The X-Files, at times representing the worst of both elements – a soap-opera-esque chain of relationships and an incredibly convoluted mythology.   But that was also what made it such good fun – the jaw-dropping moments, the ones where you’re yelling at the screen, and the suffocating intensity of puppy love erm, true love.  Right.  And it could also be flat-out funny – while it’s got its moments of super-awkward teenage drama, it doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as, say, Twilight.

Hmm, while we’re on the subject of Twilight – I know that it cribs from the same source as Roswell, Romeo & Juliet, but some of the similarities in the TV show pilot are eyebrow-raising.  A scene in a biology class particularly reminded me of Twilight, only in this instance, the fact that they have bio together has a point.  In fact, imagine Twilight, only with humor, and Edward wants to make sweet alien love instead of eat Bella’s face.  There, doesn’t that sound better?  I mean, if you’re going to indulge in teen melodrama, might as well have more fun.

While the show certainly has its moments poking fun at geeks – the gullible tourists who come looking for evidence of a government cover-up, the conspiracy nuts who run alien museums – it’s always in a loving way (Jonathan Frakes was an executive producer, and has a cameo in the pilot).  It’s always done with a wink – because, after all, in this show aliens do exist, and the government is out to get you.

Now, how did it affect me at the time?  Well, it served the same function a lot of sf serves – something to relate to even under the fun frosting of escapism.  As a teen, I was dramatic as all teens are, and my relationships seemed as important and star-crossed and fated as anything served up in fiction.  The show is often bookended with a voiceover of excerpts from Liz’s diary, and it probably could have come from the diaries of any teen, whether or not they were trying to hide the presence of alien life.

Practically, I was an unabashed fangirl, even reading the novels the TV series was based on (good but different).  I collected alien ephemera with even more zeal, and I bought some Native American silver jewelry because it reminded me of stuff on the show.  I squealed and giggled about the show with my girlfriends, mother and sisters; during the commercials on broadcast nights, the phone didn’t stop ringing as we called each other to squeal some more.

Unlike some other shows, Roswell was allowed a proper end – that is to say, they knew it was coming and planned accordingly.   I have mixed feelings about the last season, and the end of the series, but I don’t know if that’s because the third season was disjointed and sub-par – though it would certainly be understandable, given the network change and the uncertainty about the show – or if it was just me.  You see, for the final season I was in my freshman year of college – in a much different frame of mind than the hormonal 16-year-old who started watching the show.  My interest was fading even as the show was canceled.

Still, for that brief moment in time, it was the perfect show for me.  And now that the show is available on Netflix Instant, it’s a fun way for me to reminisce and be nostalgic.  It does show its age a bit – not in terms of how long ago the show was made, but the age of the intended audience.  If you know a teen who you’d like to wean off Twilight, this might be a perfect first step.  And if you’re tired of indulging your inner teen with shows about vampire love, why not give this one a try?  It’s got all the elements of a guilty pleasure – with less cognitive dissonance.

Independence Day

The bad guys: greys in tentacle suits

Independence Day is the classic us vs. them film, served up with some apple pie and a giant helping of US patriotism.  Yes, cities around the world get torched, but we focus on the ones in the US, and it’s the combo of a “cool nerd” and various brave soldiers and citizens that bring about victory.

But what about the government?  Oh, a top-secret section of higher-ups (that don’t include the President) knew about the evil aliens all along – they’ve got their secret Area 51-type bunker in the desert.  But other than providing a crashed ship for Will Smith to fly, all their knowledge is relatively useless.  Shady and useless, the ID4 government.

E.T.

The bad guys: the government. And science teachers.

E.T. taught me to have a good, healthy suspicion of the government early on.  We have some kids who rescued the completely benign E.T., only to have the entire family terrorized by both national and local law enforcement (those were guns, not radios, revisionists).  Oh, and there’s also that totally creepy frog dissection scene that probably put me out of a career in the field of biology forever.  Who watches their dissection subject die first?  Yikes.

To be fair, there was that one nice government agent, but in general we still don’t view the government as a collection of individuals.

Doctor Who and Torchwood

The bad guys: Depends on the week

The Doctor has dealt with more than his share of governments, both on Earth and abroad, but he has a particularly special relationship with a few located in the U.K.  First, there’s U.N.I.T., an international military organization.  U.N.I.T. typically means well, but they tend to shoot first… or shoot redundantly… or, well, shoot.

Then there’s the Torchwood Institute, which is one step higher.  Unlike U.N.I.T., Torchwood is “above the UN,” and they also collect alien technology for the benefit of mankind.  Torchwood became its own spinoff show, and is relatively unique in that its members pretty much are the higher-ups, so it’s lacking some of that conspiracy/corruption that has become familiar since The X-Files (though the latest season is covering it in spades).

The X-Files

The bad guys: everyone else

The X-Files is the ultimate in delicious paranoia.  Yes, the aliens and other monsters of the week don’t seem too friendly, but the governement – including the FBI, who created the X-Files division in the first place – is full of grumpy old men who want to silence Scully and Mulder (and whoever else wanders in before the end of the series).  Trust No One!

Taken

The bad guys: depends on your perspective… but definitely the government

This lesser-known Sci-Fi Channel miniseries is basically following a few families through history, starting with the Foo Fighters of WWII and the 1940s alien crash.  The government knows that aliens exist, and in fact even collect some tech over the years, but don’t have many successful face-to-face encounters, due mostly to the fact that the ET division is run by people who are creepy and evil as hell.   Sure, every so often the aliens abduct people, they might be doing experiments in cross-breeding, and you’re not really sure what their motives are… but you also meet some nice E.T.s.  Meanwhile, a government agent is putting a hamster in a microwave.  I’m not even joking.

MIB

The bad guys: aliens… but only the bad ones

For a good ten, twenty years or more, the Men In Black or MIB were shadowy characters, ostensibly sent by an authority (ours or maybe an extraterrestrial one) to intimidate or silence people who had seen proof of alien life, or talked about their alien abduction.  Drawings of these guys were often freakier than the depictions of the aliens themselves.

However, now we tend to think of Will Smith. In the movie MIB, the MIB are an Earth institution who know full well about the presence of alien life – and their job is to keep it from us normies.  Luckily for us, most aliens quietly live out their lives in the suburbs or (I presume) on reality TV shows.  Also luckily for us, they silence us not by intimidation, but a simple flash device that wipes our memories.

They are the ultimate good guys, saving the world without ever getting acclaim.  They have access to fun alien tech, and heck, they make government work look fun.

So what have we learned?  Well, a cynic might say that we don’t trust the government and we trust the general public even less.  But I think it says a lot more that in our fiction, the government almost always knows about alien life.  So there’s some part of us that takes comfort in the idea that if there’s something scary or huge out there (even if it’s fictional), someone’s already worrying about it.

Now, take a step back from real-world politics, and pop some popcorn.  Because aliens totally aren’t partisan.

You see, I wanted to really ruminate on this premiere story before I wrote a review about it – not to mention give you all time to see it too.  Because I admit it: when the credits rolled last Saturday, I was grumpy.  Sure, I followed the plot well enough, but I was not happy with some of the conclusions one could make.  And all the loose ends!  And after that epic story, we were going to take a break to visit pirates next week?  Ooh, I was downright surly for at least a good half-hour after that one.

But upon my second viewing, I’ve restored my personal faith and I’m back to existing in my general happy-go-lucky state, which is somewhere between Vince Noir and Candyland (seriously, I’m really like this – don’t let my Syfy trolling fool you).  So let’s talk about the 2-part premiere of Doctor Who!  Warning: If you haven’t watched the first two episodes, spoilers abound.

In the weeks leading up to this premiere I embarked on a New Who Review, watching every single episode of the last five seasons.  The first thing that struck me about this new season compared to the previous ones is the use of color.  The RTD-era episodes made use of lots of jewel tones, bold and high-contrast.  These could look vibrant and larger-than-life, or cartoonish, depending, if you’re like me, on how you’re feeling about RTD at the time.  The first season to feature the 11th doctor looked slightly more muted to me, giving it an old-fashioned feel, like a book of fairy tales with watercolor illustrations.

This sixth season (or at least this two-parter) is something else altogether.  It’s much more… cinematic.  I felt much more like I was watching a blockbuster film than a British family TV show.  Granted, this was probably wholly intentional, given the iconic American settings and grand, 2-part premiere; I’ll be interested to see if this season maintains the same visual feel or goes back to the coziness of last season.

While the plot itself wasn’t terribly difficult to understand, the complexity in which it was presented was ramped up a notch as well.  After a fair bit of doubling-back and double-crossing, the basic gist of it is:

Two hundred years in his future, the Doctor is dead; can Amy and friends prevent it?  Should they prevent it?  Meanwhile, they discover an alien race called the Silence has been subtly influencing the course of the planet for who knows how long.  The Doctor encourages their departure fairly neatly, but what machinations have already been set in place?  Amy thought she was pregnant, and then she didn’t; the TARDIS scanner can’t seem to decide if she is or not, either.  Oh, and there’s a strange child wandering around who may have ties to Amy; at the end of the show, she regenerates.  But how?

Oh, I’m sorry, that’s a list of questions instead of a plot description, isn’t it.  Well now you know how I felt.

Not only did the 2-parter provide an epic beginning to the season, it probably set up the plot arc for at least the first half of the split-series, if not the whole thing.  It’s unclear if the Silence will make a return themselves, but so far they’ve led the way to more questions than answers.  Now let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

The Good

Early on in the first episode, we were given perhaps my favorite bit of Matt Smith’s acting thus far.  I’m talking about the TARDIS scene, where a surly Doctor confronts his companions instead of blindly following them to 1969.  It’s a perfect example of what happens when you combine fantastic acting and smart writing.  Matt Smith, showing the dark side of the Doctor, is chilling.  Even better, he’s logical.  He’s asking perfectly sensible questions: Is Amy being coerced?  Why in hell should he trust River Song?  This is the sort of keen intellect that we often hear about, but rarely see.  It’s funny to watch the Doctor forgetting and spitting and shouting and acting silly, but this is the sort of Doctor who demands respect too.  I hope we see more of him.

My second favorite scene of the two-parter comes in the second episode.  In a scene possibly in homage to The X-FIles, Amy and Canton visit the Little Orphanage O’Horrors.  It’s a surreal ten minutes, with blood-graffitied walls, mysterious women with eyepatches, and a “perfectly normal” nursery featuring a picture of Amy and a baby.  Was it all a dream?  Who cares!  It was fun and creepy.  Let’s see some more of Amy in that cool pants suit (so nice to see “period” costumes on the companions, by the way).  I hope they have something along these lines up their sleeves for a Halloween episode.

The wardrobe wasn’t the only thing allowed to expand; each of the characters were given the ability to stretch and grow in these episodes.  I honestly could barely stand River Song in previous seasons, but not this time.  She went from making me feel a little compassion in the first episode, to nearly heartbroken in the second.  I suspect this was a smart move, because I imagine she’ll have some behavior that’ll make us feel ambivalent soon.  And Rory!  No longer a tin dog, his character is getting fleshed out as well.  Now, if only he could shake that insecurity… Which, in fact, leads me to:

The Grumbly

Only one thing really bugged me: anything that could be read as a love triangle between Amy, Rory and the Doctor.  Yes, I know that in retrospect it all works out.   In fact, when I watched the episode a second time, I wondered if they included these scenes to reinforce that Amy cares about Rory and wouldn’t cheat on him, that the child couldn’t be some sort of love child between her and the Doctor.  However, thing were more muddled upon the first viewing, and I wondered if they were trying to imply exactly the opposite.  And that was what made me grumpy; the Doctor is better than some soap opera plot, and so are the writers.  Now, if the child is Amy and the Doctors via some Silence experiment (since we all know that’s what greys do) I’d be strangely fine with that.  For now I’m betting on a case of Time Head.

There were other, minor lines here and there that elicited an eye roll, but nothing that compared to the sheer terror of having My Doctor’s rep besmirched.  And really, that says something about the quality of the episode as a whole.

The Future

We have an entire season ahead of us! Well, a handful of episodes, really, before the summer break.  Too few, and I suspect this summer’s wait will be even more agonizing than the one from the last year.  But I think there’s one thing we can count on, based on the evidence thus far: that mid-season cliffhanger, the one that Moffat, who threw Time Head at us in the first story, described as a “game-changer”?  It must be a doozy.

What did you think of the Doctor Who premiere?  Let’s hear your thoughts, opinions, and conspiracy theories!

I was an early adopter of Netflix; my queue began in 2001.  I can’t remember the last time I got a DVD, though – I’ve been getting more than my money’s worth just using Instant.  In recent months, I’ve switched from primarily watching movies, to taking massive doses of TV shows.  And, luckily for me, every week seems to bring the entire catalogue of a great show I never got around to watching, or one I’ve seen and loved.

In the past few months, I’ve watched:

LOST – I may be watching the new episodes live on TV, but until a few months ago I had never seen a single episode of LOST.  Thanks to Instant, I caught up in no time.  This is really the show that got me going on watching entire series at once.

The X-Files – Okay, I love The X-Files.  Big time.  But I’ve actually never seen the last few seasons, and the DVDs were always pretty expensive.  Now that the ENTIRE nine seasons are available, I intend to rectify that situation.  But first, I’m going to watch the whole enchilada.  I’ve only re-watched the pilot so far, and it was still awesome.

Torchwood – Despite my love for Doctor Who, I never got around to watching Torchwood.  I really like it, much more than I thought I would.  I’m in the middle of the second season, now.

Jekyll – Because I’m a Moffat fangirl, I decided to try Jekyll, a miniseries that I had never heard of.  LOVE IT.  And apparently the version I saw (which would be the version released to DVD) was a little more scary and violent than when it was broadcast on TV.

The Dresden Files – I’m not sure what was going on when this show was on TV, but it completely slipped me by.  I heard more than one positive review of it since it’s been canceled (not to mention all the positive stuff about the books) so when I saw it pop up in the “New TV” section of Instant, I decided to give it a shot.  So far, not bad!  It kind of reminds me of Charmed, actually.

Other shows I’ve noticed but have not re-watched (yet): Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Roswell, Robin Hood.  I’m trying to keep the re-watching to a minimum because that’s an impressive X-Files backlog, but I might give in and watch the first season of Roswell again.

Since Netflix Instant can be watched in a variety of ways – on the computer, XBox Live, even an iPad app – I’m sure some of you out there use it as well.  And I’m looking for suggestions for new shows and movies to watch.  So, is there an old (or new) TV series or movie I should look up?

The year was 1993.  I was a ten-year-old, starting the fifth grade.  While I had grown up watching Star Wars and my parents were avid readers of speculative fiction, I hadn’t really hopped on the boat myself yet; my main hobby was reading, and there weren’t many sf novels aimed at kids, especially girls.  It never occurred to me to give the genre a shot.  In TV, I had seen Alien Nation, Star Trek: TNG, and most recently, Sightings, an awful Unsolved Mysteries-type show that covered everything from Nostradamus to MIBs.  That show had me fascinated and terrified.

My mother snared me one Friday afternoon after school.  “I think we should watch this show that starts tonight,” she said casually.  “It looks good.”

Since that was the year I lived in a neighborhood with other kids, kids who climbed trees and played outside, I had no idea what show she was talking about.  Still, that evening we settled down to watch the pilot.

Oh.  My.  God.  There was an alien body in that first episode.  Mulder was into conspiracies (some of which I knew about, thanks to Sightings) and Scully was a kick-ass doctor/FBI agent.  By the end of the first episode, I was hooked, hooked like I’d never been before.

Really, X-Files was the first time I was involved in a fandom, as much as a ten-year-old with no Internet could be.  I scoured TV Guide and the local newspaper, collecting clippings about the show.  That first year, for Christmas, my mother gave me an X-Files t-shirt, with a design I’ve never seen since (sort of a lime and purple shadow standing in a doorway, very abstract).  She’s still proud of that find; she tells me, Do you know how difficult it was to find that, two months after the show had started?

The next year, I had started sixth grade and middle school, and I invited several girls over for a sleepover… to watch the season premiere of the show.  Funnily enough, there was a power-out in the neighborhood that started just minutes before the show started.  It came back on just minutes before it ended.  We spent the hour running wild around the darkened neighborhood rather than watching the show, which, in retrospect, was better for my social life.  Still, to this day I’ve never managed to catch the second-season premiere.

Had I been just a few years older, or maybe had the Internet, I know I would have been even more involved with the show.  As it was, my intense interest lasted through most of middle school, when it slowly waned as my social life grew (and, really, as the show got worse, imo).  Even today, I have more affection for this show than any other.  It’s carried into my adult life: I was always more interested in monster-of-the-week episodes than the mytharcs, and today my preferences are evident when I watch current shows like Doctor Who.  I was thrilled about the recent X-Files movie, and even though the movie itself proved to be somewhat of a disappointment, I know I’d be back in line for another one.

I really can’t understate the effect that the Scully character had on me.  I don’t normally give much conscious thought to women’s study topics, but honestly, having strong, interesting role models, both in life and pop culture, are so much more meaningful when you feel you can relate.  I might not have had an interest in medicine, but I was at an age where I was feeling self-conscious about my intelligence, even dumbing down my vocabulary.  Scully’s confidence and cool intellect were gratefully appreciated.  I didn’t know I was missing a Scully until I had one.  There’s still a part of me that wants to be Scully when I grow up.

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched The X-Files, and I’m not sure how it holds up, almost 20 years later (though talking about it is making me want to go back and find out).  If you haven’t seen it before, it might seem commonplace in a TV world that’s now full of detective teams and supernatural events.  Still, I like to think that this one still has something special.  I know that, more than possibly any other movie or TV show combined, it’s molded me into the geek I am today.

No, I’m not talking about that movie with Liam Neeson.  Technically, the Taken I’m talking about is a miniseries that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (RIP) in 2002.  It was a relatively big-budget Spielberg project that followed in the wake of Band of Brothers but didn’t get near the popularity or acclaim.

And I totally love it.

I was in college when it first aired, so it completely slipped past me.  I came home for a school break, and my mother and one of my sisters insisted that we watch it.  They’d taped it, you see, on more than one VHS.  I was slightly annoyed; I was in college, watching good films, and wasn’t particularly thrilled  with the idea of a Sci-Fi-produced miniseries (I’d seen more than one D-grade Sci-Fi creature feature).

It only took one episode to get me totally hooked, and I spent the next few evenings watching as many episodes as I could before passing out (and then I had Taken-themed dreams for a few nights).

The basic idea behind Taken is that it’s a look at history, with the premise that aliens are real.  The series begins in World War II, with a foo fighter sighting, and follows three families whose lives intertwine at various points over 50+ years.  All major paranormal trivia is covered: Roswell, Area 51, abductions, crop circles, Rhine-Zener cards, and more.  It’s a fun, clever look at the “history” of aliens in pop culture, woven around the pain and triumph of individuals.

In retrospect, it’s no surprise that I liked this miniseries so much.  It has the essential content of every show I loved growing up – The X-Files, Sightings, Are You Afraid of the Dark – with the expansive, comprehensive feel of an epic film.

The cast featured barely-known actors, which, in my opinion, allows the viewer to become even more absorbed in the story and further suspend disbelief.   Nowadays, the best-known Taken alum is probably Dakota Fanning, but I react with fondness whenever I catch one in another project - Dexter, The 4400, Watchmen, etc.

The show might border on sappy from time to time, and it might not be cinematic art, but it’s a major staple around my home, I assure you.  It’s also one of my “comfort” DVDs – my memories of my wisdom teeth extraction pretty much consist of hazy DVD-episode changes and psychedelic alien-themed dreams.

If you haven’t seen Taken, give the first few episodes a shot – it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like to think “what-if,” you might have just found a new favorite.

Here’s a review of some of the most notable, plus my Dream Revisit.

Notable Revisits

Star Trek- The original show only aired from 1966-69, and the first movie didn’t come out until ten years after that.  The first film might not have been perfect, but there was enough love for the Star Trek crew to bring them back for several film sequels, to say nothing of the many spinoffs and their successes.

The X-Files – The most recent X-Files movie came out six years after the show ended, and a good ten years or more since the show was at the height of its cult success.  Alas, this movie was a little more thriller, a little less monster-of-the-week, but it was so great to see Mulder and Scully again that I still hope for another film.

Indiana Jones – Almost 20 years after Indiana Jones’ “Last Crusade,” he embarks on a new adventure.  I like the 50′s sensibility of aliens, but unfortunately this movie is now reminiscent of every movie influenced by the original Indiana Jones trilogy, like, say, The Mummy.  At this point, I’d almost rather have a re-imagining than another sequel.

Doctor Who – Technically, it’s not a reimagining, but it was definitely a burst of new life into a well-loved, well-worn series.  I may have my personal issues with Russell T. Davies (the Slitheen? Really?), but that he created a success is unquestionable.  And while this new version gets slightly darker and more adult at times, the adorable Sarah Jane Adventures is there for the youngest viewers.

Star Wars – Let this be a cautionary tale for green screen-lovers everywhere.  I like that the second trilogy of films spawned a new generation of kids who love all things Star Wars, and even several babies with names like Anakin.  However, he just may have traumatized the previous generation beyond repair.  And, for crying out loud, George, stop messing with your older films.  Didn’t your mother ever tell you to stop picking at yourself?

Dream Revisit

Ghostbusters - A video game is a good start, but I want something really epic, something I can absorb with my Cherry Coke and Twizzlers without having to play.  They need to get on it now, before they have the same problems as the Indiana Jones films.

Your Thoughts?

What revisits have you loved or hated?  What do you want to see come back?