When "Alien Nation" - a show that was canceled before its time - returned with a made-for-TV movie last season, your local television editor applauded.
Not only did fans of the show finally get a resolution to the cliffhanger that had been left hanging since 1991, but that movie was quite entertaining in its own right.So it was with dismay that I viewed the latest "Alien Nation" movie, "Body and Soul," which airs tonight at 7 p.m. on Fox (Ch. 13). There's way too much "Body" in this movie, and far too little "Soul."
At the risk of sounding like a prude, this is not something I would allow my children to watch under any circumstances.
For the uninitiated, "Alien Nation" revolves around a race of aliens - slaves, actually - whose ship was forced to land on Earth some years earlier. The main characters are a pair of police detectives - alien "Newcomer" George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint) and human Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham).
Sikes has been on the verge of a relationship with his Newcomer girlfriend, Cathy Frankel (Terri Treas) for quite some time. In tonight's movie, they attempt to consummate that relationship.
What viewers are subjected to in the opening scenes is a vulgar scene that finds Sikes straddling Cathy as they talk quite explicitly about the sexual act. This is, of course, shortly after 7 p.m. local time.
Fox has never worried much about the sexual content of its programming, but the fourth network has gone a bit too far this time.
The rest of the movie is liberally sprinkled with crude sexual jokes, references to masturbation and homosexuality, and extended bits on the class that mixed-species couples must attend in order to learn how to have sex with one another without the human partner suffering serious injury.
Not to mention a steamy scene or two.
All of which overshadows - and even negates - the rest of the plot of the movie. That involves a secret plot involving the CIA and evil alien Overlords who escaped prosecution.
The references to the relationships between humans and Newcomers is not entirely gratuitous. As has so often happened in "Alien Nation," it's a very thinly veiled comment on race relations in the real world.
But it's handled with so much bad taste that the message they're trying to send is lost.
We've come to expect better from "Alien Nation." Which makes "Body and Soul" doubly disappointing.
OPRAH STICKS AROUND: Well, Oprah Winfrey has ended the (alleged) suspense and announced that she will stick with her daytime talk show another couple of years.
That's good news for the stations that carry her show, including KTVX-Ch. 4 locally. And the fact is that Oprah has toned down her act in recent years - hers is the least exploitative of the genre these days.
Of course, scaling back on the sleaze has hurt her some in the ratings - a message that her competitors have picked up on.