The complete DVD set of the 1989 TV Series “Alien Nation” is now available.
The series came as a result of the box office success of the movie of the same name which starred James Caan as bigoted Detective Matthew Sykes and Manny Patinkin as his alien partner Detective George Francisco.
In the television off-shoot Gary Graham took over Caan’s duties, while the Francisco role went to Eric Pierpoint. Both TV stars had excellent on-camera chemistry which accounted for the show’s popularity.
Graham and Pierpoint would later go on to appear on STAR TREK: Enterprise in recurring roles. Although they never had scenes together in STAR TREK it was ironic that their characters were reversed with Graham starring as a Vulcan Ambassador and Pierpoint a Human intelligence officer.
The Alien Nation characters were created by Farscape’s Rockne O’ Bannon and brought to the small screen by Kenneth Johnson. Johnson provides the commentary on the newly released DVD collection.
Alien Nation co-starred Michelle Scarabelli, Terri Treas, Sean Six and Lauren Woodland.
The story about alien slaves who crash land in the United States and become fully incorporated as a part of American society was so well received as a TV series that once its series run was over it spawned five highly watched TV Movies allowing Graham and Pierpoint to revise their famous detective roles.
The Alien Nation Complete Series DVD Set can be ordered from our site by clicking on the Amazon.com affiliate link.
Alien Nation was (yet another) completely underrated gem canceled by Fox. (Even its title was a pun on Marxist political theory.) It displayed some pretty good concepts and writing during its run in the late 1980s.
It’s also Exhibit #1 for my thesis that most of the best Science Fiction television shows are genre-bending in one fashon or another. (Compare with Firefly and Invasion, exclude Battlestar Galactica!)