junk-monkey
During a weapons test, a power outage allows two aliens to escape from a secret installation. One is giant, the other seemingly a half human, half alien child. They are chased by bad guys in a helicopter. One of the bad guys dies during the chase and the 'child' is found at the scene. The case is given to our heroes, odd couple detectives Sikes and Francisco. As they investigate they uncover a government conspiracy which protected a group of aliens who had been conducting experiments on their own kind.The two who escaped at the start of the show turn out to have been the result one of the secret experiments and are, despite their apparent physical differences, symbiotic identical twins.There are threats, coincidences, kidnappings, stupidly easily obtained pieces of information dropped into the plot to keep it going, people outrunning huge explosions, grouchy senior officers, nasty 'Fed' agents, and all the other usual clichéd trapping of a TV cop movie. (Basically it's the 'CIA / FBI white-washing Nazi scientists' pasts to make use of their talents' story grafted onto an alien environment.) Parallel story lines have one of the detectives learning how to do sex with his alien girlfriend without ending up neutered, and the other detective having troubles with his 'teenage' son. It's Cagney & Lacey with aliens. This is one of several TV movies spun off the short lived (it lasted one season) 1989 TV show 'Alien Nation' which, in turn, was spun off from the 1988 movie of the same name.The little back story that is needed by newcomers to the series is handily explained to us by a clunkingly clumsy voice over and quick montage in the first five minutes.Not badly done but not very good.
dromasca
I am a science fiction fan, but I did not like the two 'Alien Nation' series episodes that I have seen recently. Not too many years after they have been made, they already look tired and dusty. There is very little character development, and effects are cheap and routine. It's a pity, because the idea is good and other series (I remember "V") have done much better of it. 4/10 on my personal scale. I will avoid seeing other episodes, and I recommend other viewers to do the same.
