Capt. Russell Keys is in the midst of a dogfight over Germany during World War II when his plane becomes enveloped in a mysterious blue light, saving him and his crew of nine men from certain death. However, none of them have any real memory of what truly happened or how they survived. After the war, Russell tries to return to normal, only to be troubled by bizarre nightmares and headaches. He learns that every other crewmember on his mission has died mysteriously, and feels compelled to begin his own quest for answers. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous Capt. Owen Crawford uses anybody and any thing to be put in control of the crash alien ship. A mysterious stranger named John comes into the Clarke family life and leaves, just as Capt. Crawford suspects him from being escaped alien.moreless
In the midst of an air battle during World War II over the skies of Germany, B-17 pilot Captain Russell Keys and his entire crew see some blue lights in the sky and are saved from death. Russell loses all memory of the incident and goes on with his life, retiring a highly-decorated war hero, settling down with his childhood sweetheart Kate and having a son, Jesse. Eventually, Russell is having dreams about being tortured by German doctors and, desperate for answers, tracks down the sole surviving member of his bomber crew (all the others having died under mysterious circumstances), Lieutenant Lou Johnson. Johnson, in his final moments, makes him realize the "German doctors" experimenting on them and subsequently killed by the resisting Russell were aliens using their abilities to disguise themselves. Not wanting to bring the aliens down upon his family, he abandons them and flees for his life. Meanwhile, in Roswell, New Mexico, Captain Owen Crawford discovers a crashed saucer, which is soon retrieved and becomes the initial subject of a new "Project", intent on discovering the alien visitors' purpose on Earth. After Owen is frozen out of the investigation, he is given a mysterious alien artifact, seduces and marries his superior's daughter Anne, and uses both to blackmail the Project's leader (Anne's father), Colonel Thomas Campbell. He gets a promotion to Major and becomes leader of the Project. Owen also attempts to locate the fifth member (and only survivor) of the spaceship crew. This alien, in human disguise and calling himself "John", enjoys a relationship with the lonely Sally Clarke, who sheltered him (despite learning of his true nature later on) and ended up pregnant by him.moreless
The premiere was quite a good episode. The Clarkes, The Crawfords and the Keys are all introduced in this episode.
The main character is definitely Owen Crawford. You see how he doesnt anything he can so that he can get to the alien project. He kills his fiancee, marries his superior daughter to black mail him.
Another important character is John. John came with the main aim of getting Sally Clarke pregnant and he succeeds. We also see Russel Keys gets abducted by Aliens, and has nightmares about such. All his colleagues die and only he remains alive. By the end of the episode Jesse Keys is a baby boy, whilst Jacob Clarke is conceived.moreless
Allie narrations: They say some men carry their war with them for the rest of their lives, and some men put it behind them like an old pair of shoes. And then, I guess, there are others who go on fighting, even if they have no idea who their fight is with or why it's so important not to give up.
Not the fastest moving episode, but still very enjoyable. The alien abduction sequences are brutal and violent, juxtaposed against the calm gentle everyday life of the other characters. Joel Gretsch gives a good performance, and Dakota Fanning does a wicked job of the narration.moreless
As another pilot episode, this one is not much revealing or fun but this episode is a good way to start the aliens miniseries. I really enjoyed watching it because it set all the enviroment and the storyline that takes five generations.
Is not my favorite episode but I still enjoy watching how the miniseries started.
This episode inroduces us to three very different familes starting at the end of WWII. Throughout this first episode we discover who they are and what they do. We then see the Roswell crash and a piece of metal is found which I'm thinking becomes a pivitol item throughout the series and somehow will tie the members of these three families together. This first episode also shows the formation of Area 51 (if such a place truely exsists :-) ) In general this was a great piece of television that grabbed my imagination and held onto it until the very end. As cheesy as this sounds, I was taken by this episode.moreless
Not only can the aliens change their shape to anything they want. They also possess an amazing ability to pick up the language in an instant.
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Joel Gretsch (Owen Crawford) and Michael Moriarty (Colonel Thomas Campbell) would later appear in The 4400 episode "Pilot (The Return)" together. They played Tom Baldwin and Orson Bailey respectively.
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Tom Clarke (Kevin G. Schmidt) and John (Eric Close) are the only characters to appear in both this installment and the last, "Taken".
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Allie: (narrating) Everyone knows not to stare into the sun. It's something your mother tells you when you're a kid. "Don't look at the sun or you'll go blind." But sometimes you want to understand something so badly that you'll risk going blind for just a glimpse of what it all might be about.
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Allie: (narrating) Most people change kind of slowly. They're who they are, and then after a while, they're someone else. But some people know the exact moment where their lives changed. They saw the person they were going to marry or the look in their baby's eyes the first time he smiled. For some people, it's not the good things in life that made them change. It's something they've gone through that makes everything they look at from that moment on seem very different from how it had always been.
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(to soldiers)Owen: What won the war...was secrets. Knowing theirs and keeping ours. Gentlemen, meet the Enola Gay. When the Enola Gay dropped her payload on Hiroshima, only 107 men in the entire country knew what that specific payload was. The B-29 had been redesigned to carry its load, and a new crew, selected to carry an atomic bomb, was onboard. They were carrying out a mission so secret that even they didn't know what it was. The secret was kept until the ultimate moment. As a result, the war was won. As members of the Intelligence Corps, it will be your job to keep secrets. Here at the 509th Bomb Group, that responsibility is made all the more awesome by the fact that we are the only base authorized to store atomic weapons. At any given moment, your ability to keep your mouth shut and, if necessary, to lie through your teeth may very well determine the course of history.
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Lt. Lou Johnson: Aw, well, hell, Captain, that's a damn shame, cause you were an A-1, Audie Murphy hero.
Audie Leon Murphy was an American soldier in World War II, who later became an actor, appearing in 44 American films. In 27 months of combat action in World War II, Murphy became one of the most decorated United States combat soldiers of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional U.S. medals, five from France, and one from Belgium.
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