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Taken (mini series)
Encyclopedia
Taken, also known as Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, is a science fiction
miniseries
which first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel
in 2002 and won an Emmy Award
for Outstanding Miniseries. Filmed in Vancouver
, British Columbia
, Canada, it was written by Leslie Bohem
, and directed by Breck Eisner
, Félix Enríquez Alcalá
, John Fawcett
, Tobe Hooper
, Jeremy Paul Kagan, Michael Katleman
, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bryan Spicer
, Jeff Woolnough and Thomas J. Wright. The executive producers were Leslie Bohem
and Steven Spielberg
.
The show takes place from 1947 to 2002 and follows the lives of three families; the Crawfords who seek to cover-up the Roswell crash and the existence of Aliens, the Keys who are subject to frequent experimentations by the Aliens, and the Clarkes who sheltered one of the surviving Aliens from the crash. As a result of the decades-long storyline, not a single actor or character appears in every episode of the series. Reception was positive, and the series won a Emmy Award.
When the show was launched, the Sci-Fi Channel used the simultaneous establishment of the organization Coalition for Freedom of Information
in its promotion campaign. Both the Sci-Fi Channel and the Coalition for Freedom of Information are clients of Washington, D.C. public relations firm PodestaMattoon, and this apparent co-mingling of clients garnered criticism. The Coalition for Freedom of Information is a group which seeks the release of classified governmental UFO files as well as scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of this subject.
Actors appearing in the program include Julie Benz
, Emily Bergl
, Terry Chen
, Steve Burton, Eric Close
, Heather Donahue
, Dakota Fanning
(who narrates, as well as starring as Allie Keys), Matt Frewer
, Joel Gretsch
, Ryan Hurst
, Adam Kaufman
, Ryan Merriman
, Michael Moriarty
and Anton Yelchin
.
during World War II haunt Russell Keys; the Roswell incident transforms Owen Crawford from ambitious Air Force captain to amoral shadow government conspirator; and an alien visitor impregnates an unhappily-married Sally Clarke. As the decades go by, the heirs of each are affected by the machinations of the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys, the final product of the aliens' experimentation and the key to their future.
, and most of its crew died. The Artifact itself was thrown clear of the ship and left half-buried in the ground. It was found and retrieved by Sue, a local woman who was the estranged girlfriend of ambitious Air Force Captain Owen Crawford.
Sue, seeing the small scrap of metal had alien writing on it and hoping it would rekindle her relationship with Owen, takes it to him. Owen, who is being phased out of the investigation into the crashed alien spaceship (which itself was retrieved), brutally murders Sue and takes the Artifact. Owen then shows the Artifact to his superior, Colonel Thomas Campbell, and blackmails him into promoting him to Major and making him head of the Roswell UFO Investigation Project.
Over the next 50 years, the Artifact remains in the possession of the Crawford family, and acts as the guide to each member's efforts to understand the aliens' mission on Earth.
The Artifact's true nature isn't revealed until 2001, when the head of the Project, Mary Crawford, discovers new writing is still being formed on the Artifact's surface. This reveals to the government that the Artifact is the recording device of the aliens' great genetic experiment: to create a hybrid being possessing the aliens' powers and more-evolved consciousness and humankind's emotional core, which will lead them to the next step in their evolution. It has been continuously recording the events of the aliens' experiments over the decades since its arrival on Earth.
When the hybrid Allie Keys departs with the aliens, the Artifact is teleported away with them.
The implants remained undiscovered until 1962, when Russell Keys' head was x-rayed to determine the cause of his seizures. The doctors treating him initially believed it was a tumor, but his son Jesse, suspecting it might be related to the aliens, demanded he have the same x-ray, and a similar implant was discovered.
Hoping to find a way to neutralize the implants and be free of the aliens' interference, Russell and Jesse arranged a meeting with Colonel Owen Crawford. Russell, in private, offered up his implant in order to save his son from grave harm, despite knowing it would most likely lead to his death to have it removed. Owen accepted, and Russell was escorted to a secret surgery facility. Upon his arrival, Russell realized Owen had betrayed him, but he was overpowered by the guards and sedated. The project's doctor successfully removed the implant from Russell's brain. Seconds later, it was revealed that the implant exerts some form of negative psychic effect on human minds. The scientists and guards were driven insane. One guard fires his machine gun at nearby oxygen tanks, causing the entire trailer to explode, killing Russell, Kreutz, and all within.
Learning from their mistakes, the UFO Project took precautions while retrieving and analyzing more implants from other test subjects or from their corpses. Eventually, a sophisticated tracking system was created by Doctor Chet Wakeman, which was used with great effect in tracking down abductees. Essentially, the implants give off a tracking signal based on the frequency of the basic element hydrogen, which once discovered made it relatively easy for the government's UFO project to track the abductees as well.
The aliens kept using the implants as part of the experiment, ultimately using them to bring the Clarke and Keys families together to produce Allie Keys.
After John taught Allie how to remove the implants, she used the ability on everyone that came to protect her at the farmhouse so they wouldn't be taken anymore, and would no longer be afraid.
The reason the aliens are abducting humans is part of their hybridization experiment. When the aliens initially crashed in Roswell, it was just a scouting mission. However one surviving alien, "John", evaded capture by the army and (after assuming a projection of human form) was given shelter by Sally Clarke until he was retrieved by another ship. As Dr. Wakeman eventually pieces together, and the alien "John" confirms, Sally's simple act of kindness awoke an echo of something long dormant in the aliens. They had evolved to be millions of years in development ahead of humans, but the evolutionary tree is a branching path, so in the process they had evolved away from some of their more "primitive" aspects, such as emotions. John's encounter with Sally made the aliens realize they had evolved away from emotion and morality, and even with this knowledge they could not simply re-attain it. Therefore, the aliens decided to hybridize themselves with humans to try to recover these qualities that they had lost. While their abductions were considered frightening and invasive by humans, John explains that the entire problem was that the aliens simply had no concept of "good" or "evil", and were incapable of making such a value judgement.
Unfortunately, long-term contact with the aliens and their extra-dimensional technology leads to various health problems in most humans. For reasons even the aliens aren't quite sure of, the Keys family is genetically able to be unaffected by these problems. Sally Clarke did not possess these genetic traits, and thus her hybrid child fathered by John was unable to fully harness his alien powers. All of this culminated in Allie Keys, the daughter of Charlie Keys and Lisa Clarke, who was capable of fully using her alien abilities.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
which first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
in 2002 and won an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for Outstanding Miniseries. Filmed in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada, it was written by Leslie Bohem
Leslie Bohem
-Biography:Les Bohem's writing credits include the miniseries Taken, Dante's Peak, Twenty Bucks, Daylight, and The Alamo. Bohem also played bass in the 1980s with the pop groups Sparks and Gleaming Spires. He also wrote the storybook of the Steven Spielberg produced mini-series Nine Lives.-External...
, and directed by Breck Eisner
Breck Eisner
Michael "Breck" Eisner is an American television and film director.-Early life:Eisner was born Michael Eisner in California, the son of Jane Breckenridge, a business advisor and computer programmer, and Michael Eisner, the former Walt Disney Company chief executive...
, Félix Enríquez Alcalá
Félix Enríquez Alcalá
Félix Enríquez Alcalá is an American film and television director.-Career:...
, John Fawcett
John Fawcett (director)
John Fawcett is a Canadian director of film and television. His best known films are the 2000 werewolf movie Ginger Snaps and the 2005 horror film The Dark...
, Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...
, Jeremy Paul Kagan, Michael Katleman
Michael Katleman
Michael Katleman is an American director and producer. He has worked on Smallville, Tru Calling, and Gilmore Girls as well as many other programs.-Director:* Primeval * Tru Calling * Smallville * China Beach...
, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer is an American director of film and television.As a television director some his credits include Castle, 24, Day Break, Bones, House, Heroes, Killer Instinct, Vanished, Prison Break, Invasion, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen, In Plain Sight, Eureka and...
, Jeff Woolnough and Thomas J. Wright. The executive producers were Leslie Bohem
Leslie Bohem
-Biography:Les Bohem's writing credits include the miniseries Taken, Dante's Peak, Twenty Bucks, Daylight, and The Alamo. Bohem also played bass in the 1980s with the pop groups Sparks and Gleaming Spires. He also wrote the storybook of the Steven Spielberg produced mini-series Nine Lives.-External...
and Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
.
The show takes place from 1947 to 2002 and follows the lives of three families; the Crawfords who seek to cover-up the Roswell crash and the existence of Aliens, the Keys who are subject to frequent experimentations by the Aliens, and the Clarkes who sheltered one of the surviving Aliens from the crash. As a result of the decades-long storyline, not a single actor or character appears in every episode of the series. Reception was positive, and the series won a Emmy Award.
When the show was launched, the Sci-Fi Channel used the simultaneous establishment of the organization Coalition for Freedom of Information
Coalition for Freedom of Information
The Coalition for Freedom of Information is a group which seeks the release of classified governmental UFO files as well as scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of this subject....
in its promotion campaign. Both the Sci-Fi Channel and the Coalition for Freedom of Information are clients of Washington, D.C. public relations firm PodestaMattoon, and this apparent co-mingling of clients garnered criticism. The Coalition for Freedom of Information is a group which seeks the release of classified governmental UFO files as well as scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of this subject.
Actors appearing in the program include Julie Benz
Julie Benz
Julie M. Benz is an American actress, best known for her roles as Darla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and as Rita Bennett on Dexter, for which she won the 2006 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television...
, Emily Bergl
Emily Bergl
Anne Emily Bergl is an English-born American film, stage, and television actress. She is best known for her role as Rachel Lang on the film The Rage: Carrie 2 , Annie O'Donnell on the ABC television show Men in Trees , Beth Young on Desperate Housewives and Tammy Bryant on the TNT drama series...
, Terry Chen
Terry Chen
Terry Chen is a Canadian movie and television actor.Chen was born to ethnic Chinese parents originating from Taiwan and mainland China in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. After an education at schools in his hometown and in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he attended college in Calgary and...
, Steve Burton, Eric Close
Eric Close
Eric Close is an American film and television actor.-Early life:His father is an orthopedic surgeon, and Close is the eldest of three brothers. His family moved to Indiana, then to Michigan, and finally settled in San Diego when Close was seven years old.Close graduated with a B.A...
, Heather Donahue
Heather Donahue
Heather Donahue is an American writer and actress who first came to public attention after appearing as the lead character in Haxan Films' 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project...
, Dakota Fanning
Dakota Fanning
Hannah Dakota Fanning , better known as Dakota Fanning, is an American actress. Fanning's breakthrough performance was in I Am Sam in 2001. As a child actress, she appeared in high-profile films such as Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, and Charlotte's Web...
(who narrates, as well as starring as Allie Keys), Matt Frewer
Matt Frewer
Matthew "Matt" Frewer is a Canadian American stage, TV and film actor. Acting since 1983, he is known for portraying the 1980s icon Max Headroom and the retired villain Moloch in the film adaptation of Watchmen.-Life and career:...
, Joel Gretsch
Joel Gretsch
Joel James Gretsch is an American actor. His roles include Tom Baldwin on the USA Network series The 4400, the monstruous Capt./Maj./Col. Owen Crawford in the Steven Spielberg produced 2002 sci-fi miniseries Taken and Father Jack Landry on V.-Early life:Gretsch was born in St...
, Ryan Hurst
Ryan Hurst
Ryan Douglas Hurst is an American actor who perhaps most notably starred as Gerry Bertier, an All-American linebacker in Disney's Remember the Titans and as Alison's brother, Michael, in the show Medium. He also played the role of football player Lump Hudson in The Ladykillers, appeared in the...
, Adam Kaufman
Adam Kaufman (actor)
Adam Kaufman is an American actor, who portrayed Charlie Keys in the science fiction miniseries Taken from Steven Spielberg. He made his first TV-appearance in the show Brookfield....
, Ryan Merriman
Ryan Merriman
Ryan Earl Merriman is an American actor. He began his acting career as a child actor during the mid-1990s and has appeared in several feature films and television shows.-Background:...
, Michael Moriarty
Michael Moriarty
Michael Moriarty is an American-Canadian actor of stage and screen, and a jazz musician. He played Benjamin Stone for four seasons on the TV series Law & Order.-Early life:...
and Anton Yelchin
Anton Yelchin
Anton Viktorovich Yelchin is an American film and television actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television roles, as well as the Hollywood films Along Came a Spider and Hearts in Atlantis...
.
Synopsis
Taken spans five decades and four generations, and centers on three families: the Keys, the Crawfords, and the Clarkes. Nightmares of abduction by extraterrestrialsExtraterrestrial life in popular culture
In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...
during World War II haunt Russell Keys; the Roswell incident transforms Owen Crawford from ambitious Air Force captain to amoral shadow government conspirator; and an alien visitor impregnates an unhappily-married Sally Clarke. As the decades go by, the heirs of each are affected by the machinations of the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys, the final product of the aliens' experimentation and the key to their future.
The Artifact
The "Artifact" is a mysterious device connected to the aliens. The Artifact was initially on one of the alien ships flying over Earth in 1947, but the ship collided with a weather balloon and crashedRoswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
, and most of its crew died. The Artifact itself was thrown clear of the ship and left half-buried in the ground. It was found and retrieved by Sue, a local woman who was the estranged girlfriend of ambitious Air Force Captain Owen Crawford.
Sue, seeing the small scrap of metal had alien writing on it and hoping it would rekindle her relationship with Owen, takes it to him. Owen, who is being phased out of the investigation into the crashed alien spaceship (which itself was retrieved), brutally murders Sue and takes the Artifact. Owen then shows the Artifact to his superior, Colonel Thomas Campbell, and blackmails him into promoting him to Major and making him head of the Roswell UFO Investigation Project.
Over the next 50 years, the Artifact remains in the possession of the Crawford family, and acts as the guide to each member's efforts to understand the aliens' mission on Earth.
The Artifact's true nature isn't revealed until 2001, when the head of the Project, Mary Crawford, discovers new writing is still being formed on the Artifact's surface. This reveals to the government that the Artifact is the recording device of the aliens' great genetic experiment: to create a hybrid being possessing the aliens' powers and more-evolved consciousness and humankind's emotional core, which will lead them to the next step in their evolution. It has been continuously recording the events of the aliens' experiments over the decades since its arrival on Earth.
When the hybrid Allie Keys departs with the aliens, the Artifact is teleported away with them.
Implants
As part of their experiment, the aliens abducted thousands of innocent humans (exactly 46,367), mostly at night or while on airplanes, in order to find suitable breeding pairs and humans compatible with their DNA, to begin the process of creating the ultimate hybrid of human and alien. The implants also served as tracking devices, to allow the aliens to abduct their human test subjects wherever they may be. The implant was placed in an area of the brain that made it impossible to remove without killing or inflicting critical brain damage on the person (at least by the standards of human science). The implants also had a hand in manipulating a person's memories following their abduction.The implants remained undiscovered until 1962, when Russell Keys' head was x-rayed to determine the cause of his seizures. The doctors treating him initially believed it was a tumor, but his son Jesse, suspecting it might be related to the aliens, demanded he have the same x-ray, and a similar implant was discovered.
Hoping to find a way to neutralize the implants and be free of the aliens' interference, Russell and Jesse arranged a meeting with Colonel Owen Crawford. Russell, in private, offered up his implant in order to save his son from grave harm, despite knowing it would most likely lead to his death to have it removed. Owen accepted, and Russell was escorted to a secret surgery facility. Upon his arrival, Russell realized Owen had betrayed him, but he was overpowered by the guards and sedated. The project's doctor successfully removed the implant from Russell's brain. Seconds later, it was revealed that the implant exerts some form of negative psychic effect on human minds. The scientists and guards were driven insane. One guard fires his machine gun at nearby oxygen tanks, causing the entire trailer to explode, killing Russell, Kreutz, and all within.
Learning from their mistakes, the UFO Project took precautions while retrieving and analyzing more implants from other test subjects or from their corpses. Eventually, a sophisticated tracking system was created by Doctor Chet Wakeman, which was used with great effect in tracking down abductees. Essentially, the implants give off a tracking signal based on the frequency of the basic element hydrogen, which once discovered made it relatively easy for the government's UFO project to track the abductees as well.
The aliens kept using the implants as part of the experiment, ultimately using them to bring the Clarke and Keys families together to produce Allie Keys.
After John taught Allie how to remove the implants, she used the ability on everyone that came to protect her at the farmhouse so they wouldn't be taken anymore, and would no longer be afraid.
Aliens
The Roswell Gray aliens depicted in the series are about as large as a child, but possess incredible psychic powers. According to Dr. Wakeman, they do not even originate from our dimension or plane of reality, though while here they are subject to our physical laws (accidentally hitting a weather balloon during a storm was enough to make the Roswell saucer crash). Their "technology" is so far advanced that it is essentially an extension of their minds, capable of being reformed at will. The aliens can also create utterly realistic hallucinations in humans, and often use this to try to interact with abductees. Sometimes they get a bit confused however, and re-use mental projections for one family member on another.The reason the aliens are abducting humans is part of their hybridization experiment. When the aliens initially crashed in Roswell, it was just a scouting mission. However one surviving alien, "John", evaded capture by the army and (after assuming a projection of human form) was given shelter by Sally Clarke until he was retrieved by another ship. As Dr. Wakeman eventually pieces together, and the alien "John" confirms, Sally's simple act of kindness awoke an echo of something long dormant in the aliens. They had evolved to be millions of years in development ahead of humans, but the evolutionary tree is a branching path, so in the process they had evolved away from some of their more "primitive" aspects, such as emotions. John's encounter with Sally made the aliens realize they had evolved away from emotion and morality, and even with this knowledge they could not simply re-attain it. Therefore, the aliens decided to hybridize themselves with humans to try to recover these qualities that they had lost. While their abductions were considered frightening and invasive by humans, John explains that the entire problem was that the aliens simply had no concept of "good" or "evil", and were incapable of making such a value judgement.
Unfortunately, long-term contact with the aliens and their extra-dimensional technology leads to various health problems in most humans. For reasons even the aliens aren't quite sure of, the Keys family is genetically able to be unaffected by these problems. Sally Clarke did not possess these genetic traits, and thus her hybrid child fathered by John was unable to fully harness his alien powers. All of this culminated in Allie Keys, the daughter of Charlie Keys and Lisa Clarke, who was capable of fully using her alien abilities.
Episodes
| # | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
External links
- Official wiki hosted by Wikia