Taken (Again)

I just finished watching the 2002 television mini-series, Taken, a multiple-generational saga of three American families swept up in the alien abduction phenomena that began in the 1940s and continued to present day (2002). The 10-part, 14.5+ hour miniseries aired on the SciFi Channel (now called the SyFy Channel).

This was the third time I’ve watched Taken, thoroughly enjoying it once again. The center of the story is a 9-year-old girl, Allie Keys, played by the very young (at the time) Dakota Fanning. Although she doesn’t appear until the sixth episode, her narration serves to tie the events together. She does a marvelous acting job, by the way.

Allie is part alien, the result of a union between her great-grandmother and a survivor of a UFO crash that prompted all the talk about UFOs, government conspiracies, Groom Lake, Area 51, etc., etc., etc. Allie’s mother is Lisa Clarke, daughter of Jacob Clarke, the progeny of the alien and Sally Clarke. Her father is Charlie Keys, the son of Jesse Keys, who along with his father had been abducted several times.

Members of a third family – the Crawfords – spent much of their time trying to discover just what the intentions of the aliens are. Owen Crawford, the family patriarch, had tried to make sense out of an artifact he found at a crash site, using whatever means, nefarious or otherwise, to find out what was going on. His son, Eric, and granddaughter, Mary, carried on his work.

There’s more … a lot more, but if you’re interested, what you really should do is buy or rent the series on DVD. I promise you won’t be disappointed. You’ll be intrigued, saddened, educated, elated … and I guarantee your heart will be touched more than once in the course of the series.

In a way, Taken is almost Biblical. Comparisons can be made between Allie and Jesus, with correlations drawn with Lisa and Charles (Joseph and Mary), the abducted (Apostles), the Army officers (occupying Romans). Lisa and Charles flee persecution, taking Allie with them, and arriving in Lubbock, Texas (Bethlehem). It’s all so very deep and intriguing.

I wish Stephen Spielberg would produce a sequel, for as Lisa tells Charlie at the end, Allie's coming back someday.

"My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day and the stars at night. Especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called "What's beyond the sky?" We would imagine darkness or a blinding light or something else that we didn't know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There is nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we play all our games beneath it." – Allison "Allie" Clarke