Taken

Infobox Television Film
name = Taken


format = Drama, Science fiction
camera =
picture_format =
audio_format =
runtime = 877 minutes
creator = Leslie Bohem
developer =
executive_producer =
starring = Dakota Fanning
Elle Fanning
Desmond Harrington
Joel Gretsch
Terry Chen
Matt Frewer
Adam Kaufman
James McDaniel
Heather Donahue
Emily Bergl
Gabrielle Rose
Eric Close
Michael Moriarty
Julie Benz
Jason Gray-Stanford
Andy Powers
narrated =
opentheme =
endtheme =
country = USA
language = English
network = Sci-Fi Channel
first_aired = December 2, 2002
last_aired = December 13, 2002
num_episodes = 10
list_episodes =
website = http://www.scifi.com/taken
imdb_id = 0289830
tv_com_id = 8212
amg_id = 278437
bgcolour = #99CCFF|

"Taken", also known as "Steven Spielberg Presents Taken" is a science fiction miniseries which first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2002 and won an Emmy award for Outstanding Miniseries. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, it was written by Leslie Bohem, and directed by Breck Eisner, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, John Fawcett, Tobe Hooper, Jeremy Paul Kagan, Michael Katleman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bryan Spicer, Jeff Woolnough and Thomas J. Wright. The executive producers were Leslie Bohem and Steven Spielberg.

Actors appearing in the program include Julie Benz, Emily Bergl, Terry Chen, Steve Burton, Eric Close, Heather Donahue, Dakota Fanning (who narrates, as well as starring as Allie Keys), Matt Frewer, Joel Gretsch, Ryan Hurst, Adam Kaufman, Ryan Merriman, Michael Moriarty and Anton Yelchin.

Characters

ynopsis

"Taken" is a story spanning five decades and four generations, centering on three families: the Keys, the Crawfords, and the Clarkes. World War II veteran Russell Keys is plagued by nightmares of his abduction by extraterrestrials during the war; the Roswell incident transforms Owen Crawford from ambitious Air Force captain to amoral shadow government conspirator; the unhappily-married Sally Clarke is impregnated by an alien visitor. As the decades go by, the heirs of each are affected by the machinations of the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys, the final product of the aliens' experimentation and the key to their future.

The Artifact

The "Artifact" is a mysterious device connected to the aliens. The Artifact was initially on one of the alien ships flying over Earth in 1947, but for unknown reasons, the ship crashed, and most of its crew died. The Artifact itself was thrown clear of the ship and left half-buried in the ground. It was found and retrieved by Sue, a local woman who was the estranged girlfriend of ambitious Air Force Captain Owen Crawford.Sue, seeing the small scrap of metal had alien writing on it and hoping it would rekindle her relationship with Owen, takes it to him. Owen, who is being phased out of the investigation into the crashed alien spaceship (which itself was retrieved), brutally murders Sue and takes the Artifact. Owen then shows the Artifact to his superior, Colonel Thomas Campbell, and blackmails him into promoting to Major and making him head of the Roswell UFO Investigation Project.

Over the next 60 years, the Artifact remains in the possession of the Crawford family, the guide of each member's efforts to understand the aliens' mission on Earth.

The Artifact's true nature isn't revealed until 2001, when the head of the Project, Mary Crawford, discovers new writing is still being formed on the Artifact's surface. This reveals to the government that the Artifact is the recording device of the aliens' great genetic experiment: to create a hybrid being possessing the aliens' powers and more-evolved consciousness, and humankind's emotional core, which will lead them to the next step in their evolution. It has been continuously recording the events of the aliens' experiments over the decades since its arrival on Earth.

When the hybrid Allie Keys departs with the aliens, the Artifact is teleported away with them.

Implants

As part of their experiment, the aliens abducted thousands of innocent humans (exactly 46,367), mostly at night or while they were in the air, in order to find humans compatible with their DNA and suitable breeding pairs, to begin the process of creating the ultimate hybrid of human and alien. The implants also served as tracking devices, to allow the aliens to abduct their human test subjects wherever they may be. The implant was placed in an area of the brain that made it impossible to remove without killing or inflicting critical brain damage on the person (at least by the standards of human science). The implants also had a hand in manipulation of a human's memories following their abductions.

The implants remained undiscovered until 1962, when Russell Keys' head was x-rayed to determine the cause of his seizures. The doctors treating him initially believed it was a tumor, but his son Jesse, suspecting it might be related to the aliens, demanded he have the same x-ray, and a similar implant was discovered.

Hoping to find a way to neutralize the implants and be finally free of the aliens' interference, Russell and Jesse arranged a meeting with Colonel Owen Crawford, knowing he was head of the UFO investigation project. Russell, in private, offered up his implant, despite knowing it would most likely lead to his death. Owen accepted, and Russell was escorted to a secret surgery facility. Upon his arrival, Russell realized Owen, who was desperate for physical evidence of the aliens' manipulation of humankind, had betrayed him, but he was overpowered by the guards and sedated. The project's doctor successfully removed the implant from Russell's brain. Seconds later, it was revealed that the implant exerts some form of negative psychic effect on human minds. The scientists and guards were driven insane, with one guard firing his machine gun at nearby oxygen tanks, causing the entire trailer to explode, killing Russell, Kreutz, and all within.

Learning from their mistakes, the UFO Project took precautions while retrieving and analyzing more implants from other test subjects or from their corpses. Eventually, a sophisticated tracking system was created by Doctor Chet Wakeman, which was used to great effect in tracking down abductees.

The aliens also kept using the implants as part of the experiment, ultimately using them to bring the Clarke and Keys families together, in the form of Allie Keys.

When it was confirmed by the aliens that Allie possessed, and could handle, their abilities, they realized their experiment was "an unqualified success" and began preparations for retrieving her, commanding all the other implants in other humans to deactivate and leave the abducted humans' bodies through nosebleeds, as they no longer had any use for them.

Episodes

References

External links

*imdb title|0289830
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/taken/ Official website] hosted by the BBC
* [http://www.cbc.ca/taken/ Official website] hosted by CBC
* [http://www.scifi.com/taken/index_main.html Official website] hosted by the SciFi Channel