Steven Spielberg Presents "Taken" (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Add me to the list of fans. Sci-fi coulf have stretched this out to a full season, but I'm glad they went the mini-series route. Much more unified and coherent than a series could ever be. And after watching the most recent couple of episodes, I'm convinced that Dakota Fanning is perhaps the most talented child actress working today. A really impressive and subtle performance so far.

As an aside... humanity's really lucky the master being the aliens created is such a good-hearted, kind girl. Imagine if the master being has been a little bully? Just imagine the havok the would have resulted... Perhaps the alien survivor screened the woman(can't remember her name this lnog into the game... Tom Clark's mom)'s personality before he mated with her?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, I'm not sure how much "personality" Allie could have inherited from her great-grandmother (aside - Taken sure does pack the generations in tight, doesn't it? Abductees and hybrids tend to breed and die young, apparently). Heck, for all I know, they're disappointed - they might have wanted the Clarks and Kriegs to breed more aggressively.

 

[Roberto Carlo]

Quote:

I suspect that the kindness and good-heartedness is the point. I mean, Bohem hasn't been exactly shy about making Allie into a Christ-figure: an, if not virginal then certainly unusual, conception; the three dolphins bowing in homage to her, her power to heal, her power to transcend death, her willingness to sacrifice herself for others, etc.

 

[Nate Anderson]

Another great episode. This one had a couple turns I didn't expect...probably one of my favorites.
Gotta love the subtle allusions to Close Encounters though...anybody else catch them?

 

[Eric Wood]

I am so tired This series is fantastic, and I am losing sleep. I believe the whole cast is great.

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

We've been glued to the TV for the last two weeks watching this series. The whole family plus my sister-in-law love it. I thought for sure my wife and her sister wouldn't get into it, but boy was I wrong. They are addicted.
for a great mega-series!

 

[Andres Munoz]

Great mini-series. I have not missed one minute of it!

Tonight is the final episode right? Can't wait to see how they conclude the series. I thought they were going to go with an "Independence Day" type of ending. But it doesn't seem that way.

 

[matt bee]

Does anybody know if they will be reshowing these in the future? I missed recording a bunch of episodes and I want to start watching it from the beginning. I'm just wondering if they will have a marathon like they did last weekend. (I wish I had known about it, I would have recorded them all then!)

 

[BrettB]

Matt, get your PVR or VHS tapes ready;

Sat. 8am CST - "Inside Taken" Doc.
Sat. 10am CST - Episodes 1 thru 5
Sun. 10am CST - Episodes 6 thru 10

Got this from spielbergfilms.com

 

[matt bee]

Sweet, thanks!

The PVR is locked and loaded!

 

[Frank Anderson]

Well I finally caught up watching all the episodes (just finished "John") and read this thread. I am amazed that people are not watching this excellent mini-series because of the Farscape thing. I love Farscape but I also like other shows. Oh well. I certainly can't wait for the DVDs. I have to go find out the names of all the episodes. It doesn't look like any new episodes are coming for a while.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Well, damned if I'm not ready for a Part 11. What a horribly cruel way to end it for us. It reminds me of the end of Empire Strikes Back, with them all staring out into space waiting for the future to happen. Too bad we don't have a Return of the Jedi to look forward to.
Exellent, top notch series. Can't wait for the DVD release from Dreamworks next year.
I'm not a tearjerker kind of guy but damned, if that didn't claw at your insides...

 

[Ken Custodio]

Well I just watched the entire miniseries of Taken, and all I can say is....I want my two weeks back! I kept watching the miniseries thinking, it'll pick up and be more interesting, but I was wrong. And the ending was kind of a let down. A couple of episodes were fairly good but overall I was disappointed.

 

[Nate Anderson]

Well, damned if I'm not ready for a Part 11. What a horribly cruel way to end it for us. It reminds me of the end of Empire Strikes Back, with them all staring out into space waiting for the future to happen. Too bad we don't have a Return of the Jedi to look forward to.

Also, the ratings have been incredible for the Sci-Fi channel. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some sort of follow-up some time down the road.

 

[Roberto Carlo]

Too bad we don't have a Return of the Jedi to look forward to.

As I said in an earlier post, the writer wasn't shy about creating parallels between Allie and Christ and the parallels only increased after I wrote that. I'm not saying that "Taken" is some crude kind of allegory. I'm saying that it follows the outlines of many great myths and narratives.
What's more, given the great response that Scifi got, you don't think they want to offer these viewers more? Especially since the rest of the network's lineup looks so darned scintillating. Don't be surprised if, sometime in the next 6 months or so, you read about Dreamworks and Scifi agreeing to do the "rest of the story."
Now, I could be wrong, of course. ET and CE3K ended similarly and that was that. But Taken is different: it leaves a pretty big freakin' hole, one that ripped the heart out of the viewers, especially those of us with kids. If that's where Bohem wanted to leave it, he wouldn't have provided the parents and the viewers with a basis for hope.
So, I'm tentatively looking for "Returned" in December of 2004.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Night 10 spoilers ahoy! Turn back now if you have watched it yet...
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Roberto: Regarding the necklace, while I very much agree that may be setup for the sequel miniseries, there's an earlier voiceover by Allie that many means it's not... paraphrasing here:
"Hope is the biggest and best lie we have. We have to believe that everything has meaning, or else there'd be no reason to go on."

Maybe Allie left the necklace just to give her parents something to hope for.

All that said, I'm hoping that Spielberg recruits (or even independently of Spielberg) Bohem to write a sequel miniseries. I don't know if they could sustain another 20 hour one now that our cast of character is pretty much limited to the present day. But say a 10 hour one over one week or even a 6 hour one over three nights ala "Frank Herbert's Dune." That would also ease the production time... the original took 4 years to produce, while it would be interesting to make that time jump story-wise, I think people would have lost interest by that point. But a six-hour one could probably have a one or two year turn-around time and still maintain the quality.

Who knows, though, right?

 

[teapot2001]

I recorded the miniseries and would like to know if it's worth watching? Please PM me with your opinion or the consensus here, as I am avoiding any spoilers in this thread. Thanks.

~T

 

[Roberto Carlo]

I don't know if they could sustain another 20 hour one now that our cast of character is pretty much limited to the present day. But say a 10 hour one over one week or even a 6 hour one over three nights ala "Frank Herbert's Dune."

My thoughts exactly. You may very well be right about the necklace. I certainly thought that it's a token of a promise to return some day. I'm usually not this gung-ho for a sequel, except that I wouldn't consider this a sequel but a continuation of a story that was left very much unfinished. (Unlike something like MIB II or other sequels that simply make the same movie all over again to cash in.) I mean, you can argue that the unresolved nature of the last two hours is a reflection of how unsettled and resolved human life can be and I'd agree. But damned if I didn't come to care about all of the main characters including Mary Crawford.
This wouldn't be easy. For starters you may have special relativity to deal with. Allie could get off the ship having aged but a few years and mom and dad are dead or in a nursing home. Actually, as I type this i kind wonder if continuing the story is a good idea. Damn that Einstein!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Well, who's to say that their space ships operate based on our physics and sense of time and space? Sure, the alien didn't look aged, but who knows what an old alien looks like? Who knows how long their life spans are? Since the ships turn into beams of light (and then turn into nothing), the length of time could easily be made to be the same.

 

[Don_Houle]

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrhhhhhh!

I planned on finally finishing watching the whole Taken miniseries today and somehow I missed taping the final episode!

I've checked the SciFi.com website and they don't seem to have any plans of replaying the series!

I'm really distraught!

Does anyone have Episode 10 on VHS? Okay, if no one has it on tape, then please just let me know how it ends! I don't know if I can wait to watch it when they release the series on DVD!