Taken (spoilers)

In 2002, Steven Spielberg produced a miniseries for Sci-Fi called Taken. I was so excited, I couldn't wait to see it. And do you know what happened? I missed every episode. I was pissed. I really wanted to see it. I mean, who could do aliens better?

Last week, I found the DVDs at my local Blockbuster. Someone had taken the 2nd disk with 4 hours worth of show on it, but I wanted to watch it anyway. I'm smart, I can figure things out. And I was excited.

I have to say that, although I watched ever DVD I had and cried at the end, it was the most disappointing show I'd ever watched. I probably would not have watch more than the first two shows. It started in the 1940s when a pilot was taken by aliens when his company of planes "crashed". When they were awakened, they were discovered by their allies and taken to safety. The pilot was the only one to survive. he was a fighter. We follow the tales of aliens abducting all the men in his line and each man fights. Also, it is in the 40s that the alien ship crashes into Roswell. So, and alien survives, pretends to be human, makes love to this woman an begats a baby. The guy in the military (he's a bad man) covers it all up, kills to get and keep all the information and marries his wife to force his boss (his wife's father) to give him the alien project. In a nutshell the three families. So, we see the military family be ruthless over the course of the 10 hours, the pilot's family of men fight every alien abduction, and the alien's family just be a bunch of weirdos. I sat through hour after hour of whining, crazy looking carnies, bright lights taking people away and decades passing and then we get to present day.

It is when Dakota Fanning is thrown into the mix that things start to get interesting. The one thing I liked about the writing is that we don't know what the aliens are up to. So when we realize Dakota Fanning (masquerading as Allie) is the end results, we are instantly drawn in to the story because we all want to know one thing: what can she do? Then they try to bore us again, but the one sustaining force is: what can she do? We see her bend time, we see her read minds, we see her project images, thoughts, we see her heal a bullet wound, we see her make everyone lose time as if they were taken. She willing goes to be researched so that she can do something to make them convinced that she was taken by the aliens and they will leave her alone. But the military figures out she pulled the wool over their eyes when she escapes pretending to be the general (or, at least that's the highest title I know, but it may not be his). So they keep tracking her down and there is kind of a man hunt (all of this is surrounded by boring-ness, by the way) by the citizens of the U.S.ofA. and we see that first alien that survived again. His earth name is John and he explains, over the next three hours (after being shot and being old as hold) that he is an alien scientist and he was just doing experiments. You know, pick up the humans, tag them, see how they live in the wild. We see that every day on Animal Planet. And I think, so that's it? You studied humanity in the wild over the course of years, put this little girl together just to study her? That's all I get for 10 hours of my life? I mean, it could have at least been that the earth would implode unless we always had a bispecies entity on the planet, or if they had not bred her through alien abductions, her parents would have never stayed together, sort of an alien eharmony. "We put marriages together based on the implants we painfully put in your head, tracking your every move over decades until we finally find the right one for you." Even though the ending was sad (Dakota Fanning was great) and emotional, it stil wasn't worth the price of admission. The writing bogged me down. Did it win an Emmy for best miniseries because there were no other shows, or because noone had writing as good at Ms. Fanning's acting. Either way, I wish for at least 9 of those hours back including the hours I didn't watch because it was taken.