Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy [1997]

The last of the post-series run of TV movies, which feel more like attenuated sequels than reunions. The cast seem visibly older than the characters are written, which is weirdly even more notable for those under alien make-up – the Tenctonese women here all have speckled-egg domes and dumpy chins with strident glamour make-up.

The plot is a Manchurian Candidate riff as a hacker uses a list of names and command codes taken from the leader of the Udara, a resistance / terrorist group within the formerly-enslaved alien community, to activate ordinary aliens as hyper-motivated assassins. The alien cop hero [Eric Pierpoint] and his wife [Michele Scarabelli] have a couple of sit-com episode arguments, with her initial disapproval that their son [Sean Six] should enrol in the police academy because she already suffers enough worrying about a husband on the force trumped when it turns out she was once a member of the Udara and allowed her daughter [Lauren Woodland] to be brainwashed for suicide missions. Meanwhile, human hero Gary Graham – long since shifted from lead to sidekick – gets a thin B-story about his enthusiasm for buying a new car. The villain is Lane Smith, a corrupt senator trying to beat a Newcomer candidate by using the Udara codes to stage an assassination attempt which will discredit the aliens and boost his own popularity. At least there's no alien pregnancy nonsense this time round. The whole thing drifts Coneheadsward, whereas the original film and series suggested a more elaborately-imagined parallel world.

First published in this form here.

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