Top 10 TV Shows About Aliens

Top 10 TV Shows About Aliens

I love aliens because I look like one.

Aliens is also one of the all time favorite theme of many movies and TV shows. Perhaps, it is because we will always wonder whether or not we really are alone in the universe. It does seems hard to believe that in the vastness of the universe, we are the only ones alive.

So while we still wait for some conclusive finding on whether or not there are aliens, let us be satisfied with the entertainment industry’s interpretation of aliens.

10. Babylon


Created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on the Babylon 5 space station: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262. With its prominent use of planned story arcs, the series was often described as a “novel for television”.

Babylon 5 had a defined beginning, middle, and end; in essence, each episode would be a single “chapter” of this “novel”.



9. Torchwood


It follows the exploits of a small team of alien-hunters, who make up the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, which deals mainly with incidents involving extraterrestrials. Its central character is Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), an immortal and ex-conman from the distant future who has lived on Earth since the 19th century. Captain Jack first appeared in ‘The Empty Child’, the 9th episode of the 2005 series of Doctor Who. Under Jack’s leadership, the formerly morally ambivalent organisation operates under a much more humanist ethos. Other than Barrowman, the series’ initial main cast consisted of Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd. Their characters are each specialists for the Torchwood team, often tracking down aliens and defending the planet from alien and nefarious human threats. In its first two series, the show uses a time rift in Cardiff as its primary plot generator, accounting for an unusually recurrent alien presence in Cardiff. Gorman and Mori left the programme after the second series, with Kai Owen promoted from a recurring role to the main cast in series three. After David-Lloyd’s departure in series three, the fourth series will feature two new main cast members.



8. V


Giant spaceships appear over 29 major cities throughout the world, and Anna (Morena Baccarin), the beautiful and charismatic leader of the extraterrestrial “Visitors”, declares that they come in peace. The Visitors claim to only need a small amount of Earth’s resources, in exchange for which they will share their advanced technological and medical knowledge. As a small number of humans begin to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly benevolent Visitors, FBI counter-terrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that the aliens have spent decades infiltrating human governments, businesses, and religious institutions and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the Earth. Erica joins the resistance movement, which includes Ryan (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor sleeper agent who over time developed human emotions and now wants to save humanity. Their rebellion is further challenged as the Visitors have won favor among the people of Earth by curing a variety of diseases, and have recruited Earth’s youth — including Erica’s son Tyler (Logan Huffman) — to serve them unknowingly as spies.




7. Stargate SG


The story of Stargate SG-1 begins two years after the events of the feature film. A network of ancient alien devices called Stargates connects a vast multitude of planets within our Milky Way galaxy for interstellar travel. Later episodes reveal that this network is capable of spanning not just planets within the Milky Way, but with sufficient power, can provide intergalactic travel as well. Stargate SG-1 chronicles the adventures of SG-1, the flagship team of over two dozen teams from Earth who explore the galaxy and defend Earth against alien threats such as the Goa’uld, Replicators and later the Ori. The composition of the SG-1 team is stable in the show’s first five seasons but changes several times in the remaining seasons. The series expands upon many Ancient Earth mythologies such as Egyptian mythology, Norse mythology, and Arthurian legend. The 2008 direct-to-DVD films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum continue the adventures of SG-1; the third direct-to-DVD film, titled Stargate: Revolution, was confirmed in April 2009, but has been put on hold.



6. Roswell


Though the television series was based on the Roswell High young adult novel series written by Melinda Metz and Laura J. Burns, there are several major and minor differences between the books and TV show.
Some of the minor differences between the two have to do with character names, descriptions and ages. For example, Shiri Appleby’s Liz Parker and Colin Hanks’ Alex Whitman from the television series are originally the characters Liz Ortecho and Alex Manes in the books. Alex is also described in the book series as having red hair, but is clearly portrayed by darker haired Hanks on screen. Katherine Heigl’s Isabel Evans is a year younger than her brother, Jason Behr’s Max Evans, in the books, while they are portrayed as roughly the same age in the television series, with Isabel graduating from high school earlier than her brother and the rest of their classmates. This was perhaps done as Heigl looked slightly older than the rest of the cast by the time the show reached its final season, meant as the character’s senior year.

Some other major differences between characters have also greatly influenced the plotlines between the two series as well. In the books, Emilie de Ravin’s character of Tess Harding and Jim Ortlieb’s Nasedo do not exist at all, while they took on roles of great importance during the last half of the show’s first season and onward. In the books, however, there are a greater number of major alien characters from Antar present that never make true appearances on screen. For example, the character of Nikolas Branson is the fourth pod alien in the book series instead of Tess. This character does not get portrayed in the TV series at all, though another sinister alien character named Nicholas Crawford, played by Miko Hughes, is introduced to the show in its second season and could possibly have been meant as a replacement by the show’s writers. Other alien characters from the books not seen on screen at all include Adam, a fifth pod alien; Trevor, Michael’s brother; Elsevan, an evil alien character; and Ray Iburg, the manager of the UFO Museum who is also secretly an alien (this character also could have at least been partially replaced by Desmond Askew’s character of Brody Davis on the show).



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