Watching Taken the Miniseries (part 6)

We’ve now made it halfway through the series and have moved on to Charlie and Lisa. We start right where the last episode left off, with the aliens taking back their property from the humans and disappearing into the night sky like the badasses that they are. Aliens don’t take crap from no one.

With the bodies and the UFO gone, Eric Crawford is out of a job until aliens pop back up on the government’s radar 12 years later. As the top secret Star Wars project was being put into position the aliens intercept the astronauts and take their payload. The government finds themselves at a loss and bring Eric back into play since he is the expert on these things. Eric’s buddy Chet Wakeman has been busy making the alien implants work for them. Lots has changed since Eric lost his job and he has a lot of catching up to do.

We also get to see Mary Crawford, Eric’s daughter, all grown up. She’s played by none other than Heather Donahue, who is best known for her role in The Blair Witch Project. Yep, the girl who makes the extremely close up confession with the camera practically going up her nose. This is her! Strange, right? Mary and Eric don’t have the best relationship in the world, but he desperately wants to keep the project in the family.

This episode is mostly about Lisa, though. We start their story when Jacob passes the star necklace down on to her shortly before he dies. Lisa grows into a punk rock teenager who lives with her mother and stepdad in a trailer park and though her life isn’t traditional, she’s generally a happy kid who is well loved and cared for. When she hits puberty the aliens come for her and she begins to come to the realization that she’s not exactly normal. As a child she could read people like her father did, but now she’s having close encounters of her own and it’s becoming real.

Six years later Lisa has grown accustomed to her unusual feelings that she inherited from her father and has begun to trust them. When Eric Crawford comes investigating her she flees and meets up with her uncle, Tom, to escape Crawford’s grasp. Tom settles her down in her own apartment to hide her. Though she wants answers from her uncle, deep down inside she already knows everything she needs to know.

She tries to live her own life, but eventually everything catches up with her. When Crawford eventually tracks her down, the aliens protect her. They basically walk her home in a giant beam of protective light. Honestly this is one of my favorite scenes in the whole show. The aliens walk her home. How cool is that? So even though Crawford now knows exactly where Lisa is hiding, once again the aliens aren’t taking any crap from anybody and are fiercely protecting those that are important to them. No matter what happens, Lisa is safe.

Meanwhile Charlie is being taken just as his father and his father before him so he decides to pay his father a visit in the mental hospital that he’s lived in for most of Charlie’s life. Jesse and Charlie’s reunion does not go as they’d hoped as Jesse has become severely mentally ill in the years since his last encounter. When Jesse dies, the legacy rests on Charlie’s shoulder. The military medals, the photos, and the alien encounters are all his legacy to bare.

When the aliens take both Charlie and Lisa at the same time they are united in a really bizarre, but extremely important scene. And that’s just my polite way of saying the aliens made them do it. She gets pregnant with a child that the aliens that had been genetically planning for generations. When the she goes into labor, UFO sightings spike across the globe. When she gives birth it all comes together in the skies above Seattle. Allie has been born. The child that the aliens have been essentially genetically engineering with the Clarke’s and Key’s for four generations has finally made it into the world.

The episode ends with another one of my favorite scenes. If you haven’t realized it by now, the narrator is Allie and this is the first time we see her recounting her own memories in the narrative. She’s three years old when she first comes to the realization that she’s a bit different.  She has a really strange, but oddly sweet encounter with dolphins at the local aquarium that is all sorts of awesome and adorable at the same time.

Fun fact: Allie is played by Dakota Fanning and 3 year old Allie is played by Dakota’s younger sister Elle.  And you know Dakota Fanning.  She was the girl that was in practically every movie from 2000-2010.  She’s like child actress extraordinaire.

TAKEN REVIEWS

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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