Taken Season 1 Episode 1

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.

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.

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.

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.

A hugely-hyped, 20-hour miniseries, that's like an entire regular TV season, so in my view, this first episode is equal to another TV show's pilot.





What does a pilot need to do? Establish the characters, the universe, the plot. None of which, I'm afraid, "Beyond the Sky" handles very well. Many of the characters remain formulaic, as does he plot, which serves up another Roswell alien theory, but sans the mystery that characterized similar formats like The X Files. However, the scenes featuring the crashed spacecraft and the military's attempts to deal with an emerging crisis are effective, much more so than the seemingly endless parade of character exposition scenes during which, essentially, nothing happens.





You're a new TV series? You want to get my attention? You want me to stick around till the end? Then give me something to pay attention to. "Beyond the Sky" is like a date that delays making out until you lose interest. Well, everybody deserves a second chance, so I'll hope the second date with "Taken" features more action that this bloated, empty prologue.





Because it does look pretty...