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The airwaves and cable wires already pulse with a dozen TV series on the otherworldly, from the light-headed NBC hit 3rd Rock from the Sun to the time-travel capering of Sliders on Fox, from Showtime's The Outer Limits and Poltergeist: The Legacy to the fact-based (or factoidal) Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings. Two of the series, The Sentinel on UPN and Fox's new Millennium, from The X-Files creator Chris Carter, are psychic cop shows. The media sky is darker with eerie phenomena than a UFOlogist's nightscape. As a serial killer whispers in the first episode of Millennium (the creepiest TV premiere since Twin Peaks), "You can't stop it!"
In some of these shows, such as the proliferating Star Trek spin-offs, the aliens are benign, intellectually curious--like American mid-century liberals, only with pointy ears or exposed frontal lobes. The Zeitgeistiest programs, however, tap into a pop persecution mania. Consider this: the U.S. stands unchallenged as a world power, is not at war, enjoys a high standard of living and has relatively stable rates of interest and unemployment; yet polls continue to show a profound malaise. People feel crushed by government, abused by corporate employers, baffled by computers. "Technology is moving fast-forward," says Carter, "and we rarely get a chance to understand the implications. Most of us can't program our VCR. We have the tools of science in our hands, and we're afraid of them."
Today, the American theology of the '50s--the middle class's belief in the government's bland benevolence--is a dying creed. Rising expectations have given way to escalating suspicions about those in power. It isn't only the Montana Freemen who believe that we have met the enemy and he is U.S. "We know we've been lied to," says Bryce Zabel, Dark Skies' co-creator, "about Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-contra." Moreover, as ID4's Emmerich notes, "every generation creates its own mythology. Now the mythology centers on the government's hiding the dead alien bodies it discovered at Roswell."
Ah, Roswell. This New Mexico town is the Lourdes of psy-fi, just as Area 51, the supersecret facility in Nevada, is its Vatican. The story goes like this: in July 1947, flying saucers crashed near Roswell, and dead creatures and their spacecraft were taken into government custody; for a half-century, alien remains have been studied in Area 51. Officially, the place barely exists, but it and Roswell have entered the pop lexicon. Area 51 appeared in the second episode of The X-Files; it is the setting for much of Independence Day. In the hit movie The Rock, the FBI director says that Sean Connery knows about "the alien landing at Roswell." Dark Skies posits that the government suppressed news of the Roswell aliens and that the space demons have taken over America by implanting infant aliens in people's brains--a scenario for people who think Oliver Stone's conspiracy theories are way too timid.