-Caveat Lector-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61897-2002Dec1.html
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Sci Fi's 'Taken' Grabs You and Doesn't Let Go
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page C01
"Taken" is mammoth, imaginative and thrilling in more than one sense of
that word. It's certainly the most ambitious sci-fi epic ever produced
for cable TV, or maybe any kind of TV -- a 20-hour miniseries that
constitutes a landmark for the Sci Fi Channel, which will air it over
the next two weeks. It might even qualify as cable's "Roots."
Be warned, however, that even though children figure prominently in the
plot -- the last six hours are dominated by a beguiling star-child named
Allie -- the miniseries includes graphic and nightmarish violence that
makes it unsuitable for little kids.
The official full-length title is "Steven Spielberg Presents Taken."
Yes, that old dreamy-eyed spacenik Spielberg is back, but he didn't
exactly produce the miniseries, nor did he direct any of the episodes.
He is one of the executive producers and he "presents" it -- starting
tonight at 9 on Sci Fi, continuing for nine weeknights and ending
Friday, Dec. 13.
Although it deals with aliens from outer space, these are by no means
the friendly neighbors who dropped by for "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind" or, by a long shot, the cuddly and homesick sweetie of "E.T., the
Extra-Terrestrial." Even so, "Taken" has many Spielbergian traits,
mixing intense suspense with a stubbornly sentimental streak.
Emblematically, the final chapter is a riveting combination of the
heart-pounding and the tear-jerking, and there'll be a spectacular light
show as well.
To buy the show, you have to buy the premise, one that is hardly new:
For years, aliens from another world have been swooping down and
scooping up Earth people, taking them to some sort of medical laboratory
in space, experimenting on them and then depositing them back in their
homes. "Taken" envisions an entire UFO subculture consisting of multiple
abductees, their families and others who qualify as believers, and a
covert part of the military-industrial establishment that mercilessly
pursues the takers and the taken for their own nefarious schemes.
The aliens are highly advanced and yet even after 50 years of tinkering
with earthlings, they still feel the need to do more "tests," which
include inserting snarky tentacles up their victims' noses so as to
implant tiny mysterious doohickeys in their frontal lobes -- creating a
species of "test subjects" who can be re-snatched and re-studied and
even re-snarked at any time. But then they don't just want to examine
us. They want to interbreed. And do.
A story spanning half a century and telling the sometimes interweaving
tales of three alien-involved Earth families isn't easy to summarize. At
times, "Taken" seems refreshingly challenging and at others, simply hard
to follow. But the scope of it is awesome and the tension levels
sometimes astronomical. The aliens aren't "monsters" as in a '50s sci-fi
horror film, but they haven't come down to Earth just to say howdy and
borrow a cup of sugar, either.
The first episode, "Beyond the Skies," was directed by Tobe Hooper
("Poltergeist") and opens high over Germany in June of 1944. American
pilots fighting an aerial battle are bedeviled not only by Nazi fighter
planes but also by strange blue lights whizzing all around them. On
seeing the blue lights, one American pilot says -- in a line of dialogue
that does not ring true -- that the good guys may as well "surrender
right now" because they have "no chance of beating that." Jeez, the
lights haven't done much but zoom about and twinkle at this point.
Returning home from the war to a typically Spielberg idealized American
town -- that is, something derivative of Norman Rockwell and Frank Capra
-- Capt. Russell Keys (Steve Burton) is haunted by nightmares in which
German doctors perform ghastly surgery on him. Eventually he realizes
those aren't Germans in his dreams; they're spindly, prying gray aliens,
and he's in some kind of hovering hospital.
However menacing they become, the aliens never achieve the status of
pure evil represented by Col. Owen Crawford (Joel Gretsch), a vicious
and murderous Air Force officer. He takes over the military's
investigation of UFOs after a saucer is found in Roswell, N.M. -- where
many people believe a saucer really did once land. There are five seats
in the craft, but only four dead aliens are found at the crash site.
Meanwhile, in the countryside near Lubbock, Tex., a woman named Sally
Clarke finds a beguiling stranger hiding in a shed, a man who identifies
himself only as John. Sally and John not only hit it off, they get it
on. Sally becomes pregnant. What she didn't know but rather suspected is
that John is an alien in human form. Sally's half-alien son has the
power to give people awful migraine headaches -- and to make them see
"all their memories and all their fears" flash blindingly before them.
As is the case throughout the miniseries, the casting of Sally and John
-- two of the most pivotal characters -- is ideal, Sally played by the
angelically pretty Catherine Dent and John played by the angelically
handsome Eric Close. You'll think you've seen the last of John by Part
2, but don't be too sure. He'll be back. So will Sally's little farm in
Lubbock.
The loathsome Col. Crawford chases aliens with a berserk vengeance,
largely because he fears their advanced technology will fall into the
hands of the Soviets. He's a Cold Warrior of the old school, determined
to capture any Americans who, like Russell Keys, appear to have been
abducted and tinkered with. Crawford is one of the vilest villains in
movie memory. I kept watching because I wanted to see him killed, or at
least die a miserable death. Later, though, in next week's episodes, an
equally villainous figure will emerge: Heather Donahue as Mary, a
similarly obsessed and misguided scientist who doesn't mind being
described as "one cold and nasty bitch" by Gen. Beers (James McDaniel),
one of the Army's more effective alien-pursuers.
Mary wouldn't necessarily mind shooting her own boyfriend in the back,
either.
In the third episode, "High Hopes," set in 1962 (and airing this
Thursday), Col. Crawford authorizes brain surgery on an abductee he's
managed to kidnap -- a man who becomes open-minded in a very literal
sense. This sequence may be the most terrifying I've ever seen in a
movie made for television, one that roughly recalls the moment when
madness overtook the Nazis who opened that forbidden crate in
Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
There are plenty of scares to come, but perhaps none to equal this
grimly chilling pip.
Along the way, real names are dropped -- Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy
(derisively called a "pretty boy" by Col. Crawford) and Nixon -- and
past decades are evoked with loving or amusing details, like the song
"Purple People Eater" playing on the radio, or a clip from what looks
like the stone-age space-age adventure show "Captain Video" on an old
black-and-white TV set. Sally touchingly tells her part-alien son Jacob,
"Oh, I love you -- every day and twice on Sundays," a sentiment that
will echo through the years.
Allie enters the story in the seventh episode, and she also narrates
many of the other chapters. Dakota Fanning, who plays her, has the
perfect sort of otherworldly look about her, an enchanting young actress
called upon, as is Allie, to carry a great weight. Matt Frewer, so long
ago "Max Headroom," shows up, too, as a slightly daffy but fiercely
determined scientist named Dr. Wakeman.
Obviously the miniseries has similarities in theme and treatment to many
other works for film and TV, including "The X-Files" (though it's not
nearly that pretentious or morbid), but it also has a sanguine spiritual
appeal that makes it particularly welcome in particularly troubled --
even, arguably, hopeless -- times. "Taken" is a fascinating and
fantastic adventure set against a panorama of America in the second half
of the 20th century. It asks a lot of viewers just in terms of couch
duty, but once you get hooked, you may find yourself on the edge of that
couch much of the time.
C 2002 The Washington Post Company
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