Alien Nation

I am usually quite wary of big screen movie adaptations to TV series. Most seem opportunistic and end up badly executed. This cane be because of miscasting for the TV version, bad scripts, cheap effects and sets, you name it, but the fact remains, a lot of these things tank for very good reason. This is of course, not always the case, so if I like the movie, I try to give the TV series a fair shake to see if it is any good. In 1988, Alien Nation came to the big screen, and I saw it at the base cinema with several of my Army buddies. I was impressed by the unusual take on the alien comes to earth story, and so when a year later, the re-cast TV spin off ...  Read the complete review

ALIEN NATION was adapted for television by Kenneth Johnson, who had previously created the original mini-series of 'V', amongst other things. Based on the film from 1988 starring James Caan, the premise of the series has some similarities with 'V'. An alien race lands on Earth and assimilates into its culture. The difference is that here, the aliens are predominantly benign in nature, and their ship has crash landed, whereas in 'V' the Visitors wanted to eat humans and steal their water! The storyline of the show has one of these assimilated aliens (the race are called the Tenctonese), called George Francisco, becoming a police ...  Read the complete review