Topic: Steven Spielberg's "Taken" Miniseries
Hi all,
Not too long ago I mentioned that I had been watching the series "Taken" on DVD and wanted to do a write up on it. Has anybody here seen this series? We FINALLY finished watching the last episode last night, so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts / observations on this series, and see what everybody else has to say.
The reason I wanted to watch this series and do a write up in the first place is that it concerns me that we have a movement in this society to promote the idea of aliens as positive harbringers of humanity's future, "the next step in the evolutionary ladder." Peruse the aisles of any New Age section at any bookstore. How many books do we see that reflect that attitude? Too many. It's such a load of nonsense. There's nothing positive about abductions. And the truth is, in the United States, many MANY abductions are actually done by the Military, who uses alien "screen memories" to mask the true culrprits behind the encounters. Look closer at the many supposed victims of "alien" abductions. See if they in fact actually have a military connection happening in their family. Look at the many supposed "UFO" sightings that people report. Betcha anything there's a military base within 50 miles of the sighting. Does this mean that I believe that aliens don't exist? Nope. But I do believe that we're NOT getting the full story, that's for sure. They're sorta kinda leaving out half the story.
Technical Aspect -
As far as actual plot execution, dialogue, and the technicalities of filming and editing are concerned....I have to give the series as a whole bad marks. When you read the reviews on IMDB.com, you'll see person after person saying that this series just draaaaaaaaags by the end. They're right. The last 4 episodes, which equates to 6 hours of movie, could seriously have been condensed into half of that. It's hours longer than it needed to be. Many scenes are full of empty filler and pointless dialogue, with absolutely nothing of importance going on. Entire scenes could have been chopped out, because they added nothing to the overall story. It was like they were commissioned to do a mini-series, but didn't have enough material to fill it up. Also, the "made for t.v." music that plays throughout every single scene gives the series an element of corny cheesiness. Did a lot of embarrassed cringing while watching it, like, "AHH! That's so cheesy..." The dialogue was a little unrealistic too in many scenes. Could have been the actors, could have been the script, it's hard to tell. The end result is that the product doesn't match up to what you think you're going to get by judging the DVD covers and reading the DVD description.
So, techinical aspects aside, here's the nitty gritty. I'm not going to describe the plot of every episode because I don't have time for that. I'm going to do just focus on the disinformation spin or overall "questionable" aspects going on, and point out what stuff may actually be right, and stuff that was very interesting and cool. For those that are interested to read up on the actual plots, I'm including a link which summmarizes each episode:
http://www.cbc.ca/taken/episode_guide.html
Disinformation and Cool Stuff:
- Aliens can make themselves look like anything they want to, using the victim's memories to take on the form of someone meaningful from the victim's past.
Interesting. Hadn't heard this one before, although it does sound very 4th density-ish.
- An alien from the Roswell crash escapes, hides out in a barn in Texas, takes on the form of a human male, and winds up hooking up with the human woman who finds him hiding in the barn, resulting in an alien hybrid half breed child.
Uhh....okay. Interesting way of trying to portray the alien breeding program. Would have been far less corny to just have the woman get abducted and implanted and put back in her home, the way it supposedly really happens. But again, they needed plot filler, and this fills up waaaaay more plot and tugs on the ol' heartstrings more than the more straight forward accurate version would have done.
- We get to see technology behind the scenes at Groom Lake military base in Nevada in the 1950's, and it's decades ahead of what the public was seeing, thanks to the reverse engineering efforts on the crashed Roswell wreckage. Also a scene showing recovered alien bodies stored in fluid at military base, being viewed by a partially obscured JFK.
Thought this was pretty cool. Liked the scene which showed the Stealth bomber coming in for a landing in the desert and you see all the military guys with their '50's haircuts and 50's automobiles. Cool contrast. Very Nexus-Magazine. This seems very realistic.
- Pretty much all of the abductees can somehow remember their abductions without the aid of hypnosis.
Considering that most of the population needs hypnosis to remember anything about their abductions, I found this pretty questionable. There is only one instance of hypnosis being used in the entire series to dredge up memories, and it happens around episode 6. Everyone else though just somehow remembers their abductions.
- Abductees have implants up in their nasal cavities. Their purpose is to be tracked by the aliens for future abductions. The Government later on in the series also gains access to tracking these abductees and locating any abductee in seconds with just a few quick hits on a computer keyboard.
Addresses the implant issue. It's a major aspect of the series. In the series, the implants look like these small round metal ball things, and appear on X-rays up in the nasal cavity / brain area. Many implants in reality are supposedly silicon-based, DON'T show up on X-rays, and look like long slivers when extracted. (Whitley Streiber, despite being a disinformation agent, does have an interesting book on the subject of removed implants.) The thing I mostly had a problem with was that throughout the series, different abductees' implants would spontaneously fall out in a nosebleed when the aliens were done with them and no longer had a use for them. I don't believe this happens in real life. But I could be wrong!
- The "key" members of the series, the Keyes, are able to fight back during their abductions, which sets them apart from everybody else that gets abducted. Three generations of Keyes men get violent and start throwing punches or grabbing guns and shooting everything up whenever they're taken. This makes them of interest to the aliens who want to know why they can do this when everybody else can't.
In real life I really don't think this would happen. "Aliens" and the military have everybody on lock down during an abduction. You can't move, you can't do anything. You're screwed. On a side note, the character of Jessie Keyes is followed and harrassed by the aliens who want to understand his genetic reason for being able to fight back, and use him as the focus of a breeding experiment due to this. Jessie = Jesus / Jesus genetics, Keyes = Keys. Keys to the special Jesus genetics / bloodlines. Just a thought.
- Scene showing grosteque, disfigured hybrid misfit twin talking about how he and his twin saw "hieroglyphics" in their minds as children, and equated it with Egypt.
Linking Egypt to Aliens. The usual Alternative Egyptology spin. (read "The Stargate Conspiracy.") There's been a HUGE movement over the past 30 years to link up Egypt, Mars and Aliens. Some of this is said to be perpetuated by the gov't. But why?
- One of the characters, Tom Parker, is initially skeptical about aliens, an active alien debunker who theorizes that alien abductions are really in fact being done by the U.S. military and that the whole "alien" thing is just a cover, a fabrication to hide what the military is doing. He's later debunked, of course, and that puts an end to THAT "crazy" idea of his. Silly man!
Self explanatory. I don't even need to point out that this was the series' way of trying to debunk the idea of MILABS, which is in fact very real. More real than alien abductions. In "Taken", there is no room for MILABS abductions. It's all alien abductions, all the time.
- Quick reference to the "Majestic 12" at the very beginning of Episode 5.
M12 may or may not be true. According to William Cooper, of "Behold a Pale Horse,", M12 is disinformation. Who knows.
- Aliens are shown "protecting" two of their abductees who are targets for their breeding program, Jessie Keyes, and years later, Lisa Clarke. Jessie Keyes is repeatedly plucked from death situations -- most notably, Vietnam. Lisa Clarke is saved from gov't. agents who are coming after her one night on a deserted city street, and also later rescued from dying during childbirth.
Portrays the aliens in a nice, cozy light, acting as if they can have concern for us (when it suits their agenda, anyway.) This is the beginning of "mixed signals" in the series concerning whether the aliens are good or bad. However.......This struck a chord with me. The fact that Jessie Keyes basically can not be killed, even during Vietnam, hit a little too close to home for me. My dad. a lifelong abductee who once gave a report in highschool at age 16 concerning the secret underground bases in the Adirondack Mountains, couldn't be killed in Vietnam either, or ANY situation for that matter. He also had an up close and personal experience with a "UFO" on a military base in Vietnam. A "UFO" appeared over the base one night, off the radar, and guess who happened to be standing underneath it, of all people on the entire military base? My dad, and one of his buddies. When they scrambled jets to go after it, pfffoooot... it was gone. I myself have followed in his footsteps in regards to the "invincibility factor". So hasn't my brother. So THIS aspect of the series almost made my hair stand on end.
- Charlie Keyes and Lisa Clarke are abducted and mated together to produce more alien hybrid offspring. They're complete strangers to each other, and later meet up and figure out that he's the father of her daughter.
This was interesting ......reminded me of the "Alien Love Bite" scenario as written about by author / radio speaker Eve Lorgen, where people are abducted by aliens, mated together, then put back in the real world, where they then later meet up by 'chance."
- Blonde haired, blue eyed super "Indigo" hybrid child, Allie Clark-Keyes, is produced by mating of Lisa Clarke and 3rd generation abductee Charlie Keyes.
Allie = alien, Keyes = bloodline keys. Allie is the personification of the "Indigo" child, the old soul in a kid's body, wise beyond her years, talented, intelligent, mature, sweet, full of morals, bursting with latent super psychic abiltiies, and perfect in every way. She's presented in the series as a hope for humanity, and even referred to as "the next step up in human evolution." There's one scene showing her at age 3 at an aquarium, and all the dolphins gather to the edge of the tank to see her, hovering in formation. She's mystical and has powers, and even the dolphins can sense it! They could not have BEEN more flagrant in their pro-alien agenda and portraying the hybrids as a super positive, amazing good thing.
Those are the highlights. Hope it's not too long. Then again, it's a long series, and there's a lot of material to sift through! I tried to keep it short, considering that the series was 15 hours long. Any and all feedback is welcome!
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"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
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