Taken (2002 TV series) (2024)

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Taken is a Science Fiction miniseries made in 2002. It's about three families, beginning with Russel Keyes, an Air Force pilot who is abducted by aliens in the middle of a battle; Owen Crawford, an Air Force captain who is the first from the military to see the crashed alien spaceship; and Sally Clarke, a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage who meets a strange man in her shed. Three generations of conflict unfolds from these events, and we, along with the characters, slowly learn the motives behind the abductions that have been going on for almost a century.

Despite the overuse of cliches, it's actually pretty good. It focuses just as much on the characters as on the plot, as we watch them grow from children to adults.

Tropes used in Taken include:

• Alien Invasion: Owen fears this is the alien's ultimate plan.
• Aliens Made Them Do It: The penultimate goal of the aliens. Not played for humour OR sexiness.
• Anyone Can Die: And not just of old age. In fact, death by old age is pretty rare.
• Ascended Extra: Characters go from kids with little-to-no personality to protagonists.
• Bad Bad Acting: Child Charlie's little play.
• Black Eyes Take Warning: When half-aliens or aliens disguised as humans use their powers, their eyes go black.
• Body Motifs: Hands and handprints tend to come up a lot.
• Character Development: A major focus of the series.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Owen takes up smoking at the request of his doctor.
• Description Cut: Ally remarks that some people get mean when they get scared. We then cut to Eric Crawford.
• Driving Question: What do the aliens want?
• Dysfunction Junction: Alcholism, Oedipus Complexes, multiple cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, drug abuse, outright sociopathy... Yeah, people in this show are pretty crazy.
• Eagle Land: Jacob's teacher in 1962 is a type 2 version that thinks he's a type 1.
• Ending Tropes
  • Bittersweet Ending
• Even Evil Has Standards: You know you're messed up when your heroin dealer tells you you need to get clean.
• Face Full of Alien Wingwong: Sally Clarke.
• Faking the Dead: Jacob.
• Fauxlosophic Narration
• For Science!: Dr Wakeman kills a random soldier just to show off what the alien implants do.
• Freudian Excuse: Everywhere.
• Game of Nerds: The quiet, bookish Jacob plays baseball. He says that he enjoys it because he can never make assumptions (which is probably important to a psychic). His daughter assumed it was because it's impossibly hard, and had a lot of useless statistics he could memorise.
• Generational Saga
• Generation Xerox: No matter how much he denies any similarities to his father, Eric Crawford's life is very much like Owen's.
  • It's actually a plot point regarding the Keys family. The reason the aliens are so interested in them is because all of them are fighting the abductions.
• The Greys
• Groin Attack: How Mary gets to General Beers.
• Government Conspiracy
• Half-Human Hybrid: Though, unlike most examples, it took a lot of beta testing. Lots and lots of horrible beta testing.
• Heel Face Turn: Dr Wakeman, Ray
• You Did What You Had To Do: Chet tells Mary Crawford this to comfort her after Eric dies.
• Intrepid Reporter: Sam Crawford.
• Invisible President
• It's All My Fault: John
• I Will Wait for You: Sally for John. She never sees him again.
• Jerkass: Ray.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot
• Jittercam: Subtley, and rarely.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Of a sort. People who walk into the alien ship see people and places from their mind. Owen Crawford claims to be a manifestation of Mary's view of him. It turns out Ally was psychically manipulating everyone.
• Karmic Death: Owen Crawford.
• Lady Drunk: Ann Crawford
• Leitmotif: A whimsical little tune plays just before an encounter with the aliens. The title theme plays during a moment of love.
• Les Yay: Lisa and Nina.
• Loads and Loads of Characters
• Meaningful Echo: Sally tells Jacob this phrase every now and again. Jacob repeats it, first to his mother when she sends him away, and again to his daughter just before he dies. She repeats it to Ally just before Ally goes with the aliens.

• • When Jacob is about to Mind Rape somebody, he says "Look at me". When Ally is about to save her dad, she says "Look at me".
• Mind Rape: Alien technology has a bad habit of inducing this.

• Naked First Impression: Charlie and Lisa first meet when the aliens coerce them into having sex with each other. Much, much less funny and erotic than it sounds.
• Nobody Poops: Averted. At one point Owen holds a discussion with Those Two Guys while taking a piss.
• Not So Stoic: Jacob, when he has to leave his mother.
• Perma-Stubble: Charlie grows some.
• Pet the Dog: While he isn't evil so much as an industrial-grade Tin Man, Jacob's gesture for his dying mother is very heartwarming.
• Power Incontinence: The aliens need to practice their natural psychic abilities, otherwise they kill humans. Half-humans need to be even more careful - they could accidentally kill themselves.
• Power Nullifier: A minor example. The military develop a helmet that can stop the aliens tracking Ally.
• Psychic Powers: Aliens and half-humans get them.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Loads and loads and loads.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Actually carried out on the entire first team assigned to the crashed spacecraft (though to Iceland), then used as a threat for the rest of Owen's career.
• Redemption Equals Death: Eric Crawford, Dr Wakeman
• Retraux: Subtly used. The direction of each episode tried to mimic the direction of movies from the time period. For example, the first two episodes used older tungsten lights, while the later episodes used more modern lighting systems.
• The Reveal: Turns out aliens had long since supressed their emotions, which made them Above Good and Evil. They came to Earth to study humans, and accidentally crashed. Because of Sally, John's emotions become... unsupressed, and the aliens decided to attempt to breed emotion back into themselves - hence, Ally.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: A revolver sniper rifle shows up in episode 7.
• Roswell That Ends Well: Played with. What the farmer found really was a weather balloon, but it crashed because of aliens.
• Science Marches On: In-story example. As time passes, doctor's reactions to the devices in the Keys brains change.
• Skepticism Failure: Tom realises that aliens are real after finding out his half-brother is half-alien.
• The Spock: Jacob
• Spot the Imposter
• The Stoner: Jesse becomes this after Vietnam, as well as befriending one.
• Those Two Guys: Bowen and Erickson, Owen Crawford's two closest lackeys.
• Timeshifted Actor
• Title Drop: The word 'taken' is used in place of 'abducted'.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Dr. Kreutz is an ex-Nazi scientist. As a physicist he is more von Braun than Mengle, but he certainly doesn't have much problem with grusome medical procedures.
• The Unfavorite: Eric, to Owen. Interestingly, Sam, the favoured son, hates his father. It turns out the reason that Owen ignores Eric is because when Owen got Mind Raped by Jacob, he saw how he died, with Eric standing over him.
• The Unfettered: Owen Crawford really wants to find out what's up with the aliens.
• Unperson: Owen did this to his minions to force them into working for him.
• Villain Protagonist: The Crawford family.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy / The Unfavourite: Eric Crawford. Owen barely acknowledges his existence.
• Wife Husbandry: The relationship between Wakeman and Mary Crawford: she and her "Uncle Chet" had wanted to sleep together since she was thirteen.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Ally.
• World War II: Where it all starts. Russel gets abducted in the middle of an air battle.
• Zero-G Spot: The mating of the two Half Human Hybrids who produced Allie.