Roswell (TV series)

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Roswell
Genre Sci-fi
Teen drama
Developer(s) Jason Katims
Starring Shiri Appleby
Jason Behr
Katherine Heigl
Majandra Delfino
Brendan Fehr
Colin Hanks
Nick Wechsler
Emilie de Ravin
Adam Rodriguez
William Sadler
Narrated by Shiri Appleby
Opening theme "Here with Me" by Dido
Country of origin Flag of United States United States
Language(s) English
No. of seasons 3
No. of episodes 61 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Kevin Kelly Brown
Jonathan Frakes
Jason Katims
David Nutter
Lisa J. Olin
Running time 42 minutes (approx.)
Broadcast
Original channel The WB (1999-2001)
UPN (2001-2002)
Original run October 6, 1999 – May 14, 2002
Links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Roswell is a sci-fi series created by Jason Katims. The series ran between October 1999 and May 2002. Described by one reviewer as "a star-crossed teen-age love story with an otherworldly twist" (Roberts, Associated Press, September 29, 1999), the series focused on teenaged aliens hiding in plain sight as humans in Roswell, New Mexico. The aliens are survivors of the 1947 UFO crash popularly known as The Roswell Incident. The love story comes into play when Max Evans (an alien), played by Jason Behr, and Liz Parker (a human), played by Shiri Appleby, fall in love.

The series pilot was based on the Roswell High young adult book series, written by Melinda Metz and published by Pocket Books. In some countries, the TV series aired under the Roswell High title.

Contents

[edit] Cast

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Main

[edit] Recurring

  • Julie Benz - Kathleen Topolsky, undercover FBI agent
  • Jim Ortlieb - Nasedo, the aliens' protector
  • John Doe - Jeff Parker, Liz's father
  • Jo Anderson - Nancy Parker, Liz's mother
  • Garrett M. Brown - Philip Evans, the adoptive father of Max and Isabel
  • Mary Ellen Trainor - Diane Evans, the adoptive mother of Max and Isabel
  • Diane Farr - Amy De Luca, Maria's mother
  • Devon Gummersall - Sean De Luca, Maria's cousin

[edit] Season One

"September 23rd", Journal entry One, "I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. After that things got really weird..."

Liz, Maria, and Alex are high school students and best friends residing in Roswell, New Mexico. While waitressing at her parents' restaurant, the Crashdown Café, Liz witnesses an argument between two customers and is accidentally shot. Max Evans rushes to her side and heals the wound simply by placing his hand over it – bringing her back to life. Liz later discovers a silver handprint on her stomach. During a biology class experiment, Liz sneaks a sample of Max's saliva and examines it under a microscope, discovering that Max's cells look nothing like human cells. She confronts Max, who then admits that he, his sister Isabel, and their friend Michael are aliens whose spaceship crashed at Roswell in 1947. Max divulges that he saved her life because he has strong feelings for Liz. She is immediately drawn to him, even though she is dating the sheriff's son Kyle Valenti. Later in the season, Max and Liz fall in love and start a relationship.

Liz is initially sworn to secrecy, but she eventually tells Maria and later Alex the truth. The group of six reluctantly become friends as they struggle to protect the alien trio from mysterious government agents, curious UFO-seekers, and Sheriff Valenti, who is suspicious of them. Michael and Maria engage in a romantic relationship, and Alex develops a crush on Isabel. Max and Liz's relationship however becomes a focus of the season. Early on, it is revealed that the aliens had emerged from incubation pods long after their spaceship crashed. They were able to survive as they were not yet born. When they hatched from the pods in 1989, they emerged as human six-year-olds.

Toward the end of the season, they learn of a fourth alien named Nasedo, who is a shape shifter. He has a violent, murderous past, and nearly causes Max's demise at the hands of a vengeful alien hunter who had lost his wife and unborn child to Nasedo. The gang initially believes Tess Harding is Nasedo as she seems to have a strange effect on Max, but it is revealed that she is a fourth alien-hybrid, like the other three. Unlike them, she possesses knowledge of their past lives and the concept of their supposed destiny. At the end of the season, we find out that Max, Isabel, Michael and Tess are clones of the royal four: Max is the King, Isabel his sister, Michael is second in command, and Tess is Max's wife. Their essence was kept alive in the clones, and taken to Earth where they assumed human form. Their mission is to one day come back to their home planet Antar and retake the throne. As a result of this revelation, Liz breaks up with Max, as she believes that she can't get in the way of destiny, and she runs home.

[edit] Season Two

The second season premieres with the introduction of the Skins, a race of aliens who have been searching for the alien hybrids since they hatched. Their mission is to locate and turn them over to Kivar, the alien who took over Antar, where Max had ruled in his past life. It is revealed that Liz's new boss, Congresswoman Whitaker is a Skin, and her brother Nicholas is the leader of the Skins. Along with a renegade Skin who believes that Michael, not Max, should have been in charge of Antar, Courtney (a Crashdown Café waitress), the pod squad travels to the Harvest to destroy the Skins.

Nasedo, the shape-shifter who was protecting the teens as well as acting as a father to Tess, was killed by a Skin towards the beginning of the season. As Tess has nowhere to go, she moves in with Sheriff Valenti and his son Kyle, who was healed by Max in the first season finale. Shortly after, the pod squad destroys the Harvest. It turns out that some of the Skins were followers of Michael and believed that he was their hope. More importantly, it is revealed that Isabel was the Princess of Antar, formerly named Vilandra. Vilandra was in love with Kivar, Max's enemy and rival and betrayed her family for Kivar. This haunts Isabel so much that it creates a rift between her and Max when they find out that there were also two sets of the royal four. The other set known as the 'dupes' are exact copies of Michael, Max, Isabel, and Tess, only they grew up in the sewers of New York city. Their names are Rath (Michael's clone), Zan (Max clone), Vilandra (aka Lonnie, Isabel's clone), and Ava (Tess' clone).

This storyline is first mentioned in "Summer of '47" episode and later fully discussed in "Meet the Dupes" and "Max in the City". After killing Zan, Rath, Vilandra and Ava come to Roswell to convince Max to return with them and represent the family, at a summit meeting of the families of the five warring planets. Both Max and Tess go with Rath and Vilandra to NY, Ava stays in Roswell because she is haunted by the death of Zan. Nicholas returns as a voice for Kivar, and it is revealed that the owner of the UFO museum, Brody Davis was used by an alien many times to communicate on earth (acting as a puppet, explaining why he believes he was abducted by aliens since he has no memories of the incident). Rath and Vilandra tell Tess and Max that if they give Kivar the granilith they can go home to Antar. Max remembers what Liz told him before he left that "the granilith could be dangerous if in the wrong hands" and so he does not take Kivars deal. Lonnie shows her betrayel as she meets in secret with Nicholas discussing her desire to return to Antar (because she remembers more about her past life and wants that life again) reguardless if the others go too or if Kivar gets the granilith. Nicholas tells her that can be arranged as long as Max is dead. Needless to say that attempt fails and Rath and Lonnie sort of just 'disappear' and arent mentioned again in the series, Ava still in Roswell presumably goes to live a 'normal' life and is also not mentioned again, however she does reveal to Liz that since Max healed her and brought her back she has 'changed' and will be different from now on.

Colin Hanks returns at mid-season, after taking a break from filming the show Band of Brothers. His return is short-lived when his character is killed off. It is discovered that Tess killed him accidentally while trying to use Alex to translate the aliens' mysterious destiny book, found in the first season. The season closes when Tess, whom Max has become even closer with after finding Liz in bed with Kyle Valenti (Max is unaware that is was all staged since Liz was visited by future Max who told her that she had to make his present self fall out of love with her or the world would end), who is pregnant with Max's child, activates the Granalith within the pod chamber and returns to Antar.

Throughout the season, relations between Max and Liz are sketchy. Even though they love each other, their situations keep them apart. In an episode where a Max from the future persuades Liz to find a way to make the present day Max fall out of love with her, she succeeds by staging a situation where Max believes that Liz has slept with Kyle, breaking Max's heart. The death of Alex also has a severe effect on Liz. She goes into denial and becomes determined to solve Alex's death, since she believes that he was murdered by an alien. This makes Max and the other three very angry and causes a rift between the humans and aliens. In the end, Liz finds out that Tess killed Alex. She stops Max from leaving Earth to go to Antar with Tess, since Tess has a deal with Kivar to return Max to Antar in exchange for being allowed back home.

[edit] Season Three

The third season opens with Max's hunt to find his son. He and Liz are arrested after holding up a convenience store. They both end up getting out of jail, but their actions have serious consequences for the rest of the season. Max during the holdup found an Alien ship which was being stored in the basement, but when he went back, the ship was gone. An incident in L.A involving a supposed 5th Alien leads Max to L.A. Knowing that the alien is a shapeshifter and in the Film industry, Max tries out a stint in acting and auditions for a role in Enterprise. The 5th alien is in fact a very successful producer, and Max forces him to help him find the ship, which is at a military base, they attempt to fly it but the ship is too damaged from the crash in 1947. Max leaves L.A disappointed, and he feels as though he has let his son down.

Isabel is revealed to be haunted by Alex's ghost. She begins a new relationship with Jesse Ramirez, an attorney who is several years older than Isabel and works with her father. As the season unfolds, Max and Isabel's father is diving deeper into the past of his children, due to Max not giving him a satisfactory reason as to what happened in Utah, or why Max was even there in the first place. Mid-way through the season, Isabel gets married, much to the disappointment of her parents, Max, and Michael. While on honeymoon with Jesse, Kivar comes in contact with Isabel. He awakens Isabel's past life's dark side, Vilandra, who betrayed Max and Michael in their previous life for her love with Kivar, which is the reason the four of them died in their first life. Kivar tries to compel Isabel (now re-awakened as Vilandra) to travel through a portal back to their home world, and Max and Michael attempt to stop them. In the end, Isabel pushes Kivar into the portal.

Michael takes a job as a security guard during the night at a local pharmaceutical factory. But little does he know that the owner of the company has been going to the trash to obtain Michael's DNA, and they find out that he is an alien in an attempt to heal a dying millionaire. Michael and Sheriff Valenti find a room with all of Michael's things and realise what the company have found out, Valenti however is captured. Michael enlists the help of Max and Isabel go back to rescue Valenti. Max is captured and coerced into healing the dying millionaire. Max is at first wary of doing so, as the millionaire has lived out his life and will die of natural causes, but Max attempts anyway. Max ends up transferring his age and the millionaire takes Max's body, killing Max. Michael and Isabel come to grips with Max's death, but a patrol of guards come. Michael and Isabel use their powers to destroy their vehicles, but Isabel is shot. The millionaire is at his house in Max's body when he receives a memory of Liz. He can't stop thinking about her, and decides that he must kill her. Michael manages to heal Isabel, because Max is essentially dead, and Max's powers were transferred to Michael as his second in command. As the millionaire is about to kill Liz, they both fall from a building window. Seeing that Liz is about to die, Max uses his powers to save her life, while Max hits the ground. The millionaire dies, and Max miraculously survives. The group heads back to Roswell.

The FBI has also been studying the group for many months and is closing in on them. When Tess returns with Max's son Zan, the gang has to group together and try to escape Roswell. In an effort to protect her son, Tess blows up the Army base and sacrifices herself. The baby is revealed to be fully human, as Max's and Tess's human sides of their DNA were the sides that produced the baby. So Max realising that the baby could have a normal life, gives him up for adoption. He uses his father's help to get the baby into a good family. The series closes when Liz, Max, Michael, Isabel, Maria, and Kyle escape from their high school graduation and hit the road in a bus, where there are a few goodbyes, especially between Kyle and his father, Jim Valenti. The final shots of the show are of Max and Liz getting married and Liz's father reading the infamous journal that Liz wrote, chronicling the last three years. The final scene has Liz peering out of the van in her wedding dress saying, "I'm Liz Parker and I am happy" - bookending the first line of the first episode of the series.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Roswell episodes

[edit] Airing history

Roswell High was originally developed by 20th Century Fox Television and Regency Television for the FOX network, though it landed on the WB (re-named simply Roswell) thanks to the latter network's offer to extend a full 22-episode upfront commitment. The series premiered on October 6, 1999 in the USA to generally favorable reviews. Although it quickly garnered an outspoken fanbase, the series almost immediately entered a steady ratings decline that would keep the show under constant threat of cancellation.

In response to the ratings problems, the network ordered the relationship-driven standalone episodes of the early first season to be replaced with more sci-fi themes and multi-episode plot arcs. Starting with the second season, veteran sci-fi writer Ronald D. Moore was brought in to join Katims as an executive producer and showrunner, and to further develop the sci-fi elements. During seasons two and three, members of the fanbase increasingly grew divided between those who had preferred the original style (criticized by opponents as too soapy or melodramatic) versus those who preferred the newer style (criticized by opponents as too dark or convoluted).

In the United States, Roswell lasted for two seasons on the WB. On May 15, 2001, the WB cancelled the series, a move widely anticipated due to the disappointing ratings. However, Fox was able to persuade United Paramount Network to pick up Roswell for a third (and ultimately final) season in a deal packaging the underperforming series with Fox's coveted property Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which UPN had just managed to steal away from WB in a heated bidding war. However, Roswell failed to hold onto enough of the audience from its new lead-in, Buffy. So once again it faced cancellation. Roswell's final episode aired on May 14, 2002. Shiri Appleby has been quoted as saying that the decision of the writers to go away from the basic love story of the first season, to a more convoluted sci-fi plot in season two played a large role in the cancellation, and that at least she felt the finale "gave the audience what it wanted," which was Liz and Max together as the final season more or less returned to the original season's plot lines.

US fan-site with episode/character guides etc. [1] In the UK, Roswell (High) was shown on Sky TV but only the first two seasons were shown by the BBC. The BBC website has an explanation for their failure to show the third season.

In France, Roswell was shown on M6.

In Spain, Roswell was shown on FDF, Antena3.neox & FOX

In The Netherlands, Roswell was shown on V8, which is currently known under the name of 'Veronica'.

In Germany, Roswell was shown on Pro7 ,first broadcast 3/2/2001, the show is broadcast in HD since November 2006 on Anixe HD.

In Poland, Roswell: W kręgu tajemnic (Roswell:In a circle of secrets) was shown on Polsat.

In Malaysia, the show was shown on TV2

In Latinoamerica, the show was shown on FoxLatino.

In India, the show was shown on Star World.

In Indonesia, the show was shown on SCTV

In Italy, the show was shown on Rai Due.

In Japan, the show was shown on NHK.

In Croatia, all three seasons were aired on Nova TV.

In Australia, all three seasons were aired on Channel Seven, although its affiliate station Prime Television finished each season much later than the parent station due to "highly criticised" scheduling of the program which could see the program air anytime from 10pm to 3am with weeks and in some cases months between each broadcast (due mainly to sports programming). The only commonality was the episodes would air on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning. The final for season three was shown over a year later than on the parent station, even though both began broadcasting season one at the same time.

Roswell was also shown in many other countries around the world, including New Zealand.

[edit] DVD releases

Season Episodes Originally aired Release date and image
Region 1 Region 2 Region 4
1 22 1999 – 2000 February 17, 2004
 April 26, 2004
 April 2, 2004
2 21 2000 – 2001 October 5, 2004
 August 9, 2004
 February 7, 2005
3 18 2001 – 2002 August 9, 2005
 October 11, 2004
 March 15, 2006
1-3 61 1999 – 2002 — October 31, 2005
 April 19, 2006

A Region 1 boxed set of all three seasons is available.

Note: Each DVD release had many songs on the soundtrack changed from the original broadcast versions as a result of license fees.

[edit] Original Novels

Other than the original Roswell High book series that inspired the TV series, a range of novels were published based on the events depicted in the show. These however, largely ignored the continuity of the original novels, and acted to embellish on events that largely went unexplained on screen.

[edit] The Pocket Books Novels

While Roswell was still on air, three novels were published by Pocket Books. When the show was cancelled, this range ceased publication.

  1. Loose Ends by Greg Cox (June 2001)
  2. No Good Deed by D.A. Stern (October 2001)
  3. Little Green Men by D.W. Smith and K.K. Rusch (April 2002)

[edit] Simon Spotlight Entertainment Novels

Later in 2002, Simon Spotlight Entertainment (a division of Simon & Schuster), picked up the Roswell range and published a further eight novels. Following low sales, this range was also terminated a year later. The first four novels act a bridge between Seasons 2 and 3. The last four are set after the events of the series, and are considered by many fans to be 'Season 4'.

  1. Shades by Mel Odom (September 2002)
  2. Skeletons In The Closet by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin (November 2002)
  3. Dreamwalk by Paul Ruditis (January 2003)
  4. Quarantine by Laura Burns (March 2003)
  5. A New Beginning by Kevin Ryan (June 2003)
  6. Nightscape by Kevin Ryan (July 2003)
  7. Pursuit by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin (September 2003)
  8. Turnabout by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin (November 2003)

[edit] Trivia

  • The television series was based on the Roswell High series of books created by author Melinda Metz under editor Laura J. Burns. The pair eventually joined the show in the 3rd season as staff writers. The episode "A Tale of Two Parties" marked their television-writing debut.
  • Despite being set in New Mexico, the series was filmed entirely within Los Angeles and its surrounding districts. Most of the exterior shots were filmed in the city of Covina, California.
  • The alien pod chamber (disguised as a rock formation of distinctive slanting rocks) are actually Vasquez Rocks, located outside of Los Angeles.
  • One notable quirk was the aliens' favorite condiment, Tabasco brand hot sauce, which they liberally sprinkled on nearly every meal. It was finally explained in the third season that when the aliens came out of the pods, for the first few months they couldn't smell or taste anything except for strong flavors such as Tabasco sauce. Although their sense eventually matured, they kept the Tabasco habit. The Tabasco sauce connection was later highlighted by fans who sent thousands of the tiny bottles to network executives along with pleas to save the show.
  • Delfino — who was pursuing a musical career off-screen — sang several times on the series, including the Phil Collins single "In the Air Tonight" and the gospel classic "Amazing Grace."
  • Jonathan Frakes, an actor well known for his role in Star Trek: The Next Generation, was an executive producer, and directed several episodes. He also appeared in the pilot episode as an MC, then as himself in two other episodes, "The Convention" and "Secrets and Lies."
  • Another link with the Star Trek franchise occurs in the third season episode "Secrets and Lies" in which Max auditions for a role in Enterprise while staying in Los Angeles.
  • Yet another link to Star Trek was the guest appearance of J.G. Hertzler as teacher Mr. Lafeber in the episode "Ask Not." Hertzler is best known for his work in various Star Trek roles, most notably as the General/Chancellor Martok of the Klingon Empire in Deep Space Nine.
  • Show creators went to great lengths to ensure accuracy between the show and the real town of Roswell, New Mexico. License plates on cars, driver's licenses, and even state seals were used in the series.
  • Native American actor Michael Horse plays deputy Owen Blackwood in the first episodes of season 1. He was deputy Hawk in the series Twin Peaks and sheriff Charles Tskany in an episode of the X-Files.
  • In the Pilot, Maria tells best friend Alex that Liz sat next to Pam Troy, who she openly hates. Pam Troy is a character that was also referenced in Jason Katims's other hit, My So Called Life.
  • The Tabasco that the aliens loved so much was actually tomato juice. The actors originally tried to tough it out with Tabasco but soon could no longer handle keeping up with the addiction and tomato juice was switched in.

[edit] Pop culture influences

Besides the Roswell High books, Roswell has frequently been compared to various pop culture influences,[citation needed] including:

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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