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SCREENCAPS FOR THE EPISODE WERE TAKEN FROM THE NOW DEFUNCT ROSWELL SCREEN CAP LIBRARY

PLOT

September 23rd. Journal entry one. I'm Liz Parker and five days ago I died. After that things got really weird...

The Crashdown Cafe, Roswell, New Mexico. Maria DeLuca tells her friend and fellow waitress Liz Parker that Max Evans is watching her. Liz denies it but, even though she's already dating Kyle Valenti, she seems pleased.

An argument between two customers gets out of hand and a shot is fired. Liz goes down. Max rushes forward, but is restrained by his friend Michael Guerin. However, Max is too concerned and ignores Michael's attempts to stop him.

Telling Maria to phone 911, Max kneels besides Liz, tells her to look and him and presses his hand against her stomach, with not only heals the wound but allows him to see a series of Liz’s childhood memories. Once Liz has been healed, he throws his car keys to Michael and then breaks a ketchup bottle, pours its contents over Liz and tells her to not to say that she broke it. He then runs out of the café, leaving a stunned Liz.

Liz tells her father that she only broke the ketchup bottle and that she’s okay, but Jennifer and Larry, a pair of tourists in town for the Crash Festival, point out to Sheriff Valenti that there should be a bullet somewhere if Liz didn’t get hit. Valenti also notices a pair of empty Tabasco sauce bottles at the table where Max and Michael were sitting. Jennifer and Larry claim that Liz knew the guys sitting there, but she denies it.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Liz puts her finger through the bullet hole in her uniform. Undressing, she notices that there is a silver handprint on her stomach where Max pressed his hand on the wound.

Biology class, the next day. Max is Liz’s lab partner, and he’s supposed to scrape cells from inside his mouth to check under the microscope, but he makes an excuse and exits. Liz checks her own cells and then scrapes the pencil that Max was sucking earlier and checks this under the microscope, but the cells on the slide aren’t normal. After class she seeks out Max and throws her boyfriend Kyle out of the music room. She shows Max the handprint on her stomach, tells him that the cells weren’t normal and suggest she takes them again. He tells her that the cells aren’t wrong and admits that he’s "not from around here", before pointing upwards. When Liz asks if he’s an alien, he tells her that he "prefers the term not of this Earth." She makes an excuses and tries to leave, but Max tells her that she can’t saying anything - his life is in her hands now.

Max has lunch with his sister Isabel and Michael. Isabel can’t believe that Max has broken the pact they made never to tell anyone, and especially that he’s admitted the truth to Liz. Michael wants to leave town immediately but Isabel is reluctant to leave her family, and Max agrees that they should wait. Michael is less concerned about remaining in Roswell because his foster father only keeps him around for the monthly cheque.

Maria tells her and Liz’s friend Alex Whitman, that Maria has been avoiding her. When she runs into Liz, she produces Liz’s order book from the Crashdown and says that it’s got blood on it, but Liz fobs her off.

Max, Michael and Isabel get pulled over by Valenti. According to Max he always pulls kids over, but Isabel still looks edgy. Valenti notices an empty bottle of Tabasco sauce beneath Max’s seat, tying him into the Crashdown on the day of the shooting.

Kyle walks Liz home after their date, and sees the silver handprint on her stomach but she ignores him. Later, Max visits and tells her that he needs to talk. Inside the café, he tells her that he’s thought about telling her a thousand times and after mentioning an embarrassing dress Liz wore in kindergarten, he admits that he made some sort of connection with her and offers to attempt it again.

Liz sees a succession of images, including a boy and a girl by the roadside, a young Max at school and how he really sees her.

I could feel everything he was feeling. I could feel his loneliness. For the first time I was really seeing Max Evans. I saw me as he saw me and the amazing thing was, in my eyes I was beautiful.

Max Evans has put a force on me. It's like my whole life changed in an instant. It's just so ironic that when something like this finally happened to me it was with an alien.

Valenti hauls Liz in for questioning, shows her photos of a dead body with a silver handprint on it that date from 1959 and tells that Kyle same a similar mark on her. She denies it, but he insists she shows him her stomach. The mark has gone, but Valenti tells her that the mark disappeared on the body as well. He then returns her backpack to her, into which she had hidden her uniform with the bullet hole and blood on it.

Valenti discusses his evidence with Agent Stevens, who takes the uniform but is dismissive of Valenti’s claims, reminding him that his father’s discovery of the corpse and resulting obsession made him a laughing stock; the FBI will take it from here.

She confronts Max about the possibility that the aliens are killers. If he doesn’t answer her questions she’ll tell Valenti. He tells her that Isabel and Michael are also aliens and that they were in incubation pods following the 1947 crash. They can make connections with people and are able to manipulate molecular structure, which is how he healed her. No-one else knows that they are aliens, not even Max and Isabel’s parents, and Liz realised that he risked it all by saving her and asks why. "It was you," he tells her.

She tells him about the photo Valenti showed her, that Kyle saw the handprint on her stomach and that Valenti suspects him. He takes off, rushes home and tells Isabel to forget preparing for the Crash Festival, they have to leave.

Max tells Michael and Isabel about photograph. Michael is excited about the possibility of there being a fourth alien, but Isabel tells him to calm down - the alien could be a killer.

Maria confronts Liz and threatens to tell Valenti unless she tells her what’s going on. Maria flips out and Liz goes after her. They spot the three aliens heading the opposite direction in Max’s jeep and Liz forces Maria to turn her car round.

They corner the jeep in an alley. Michael warns them off but Liz tells them that if they leave town it will only make Valenti suspicious about the three of them, but she has a plan. Max offers to turn himself into Valenti to save Isabel and Michael, but they won’t let him. Isabel asks Liz what her idea is.

Liz tells Kyle to meet her in front of the podium at the Crash Festival in half an hour and phones Max once he’s agreed. At the festival, Deputy Blackwood is keeping an eye on Max until Valenti shows up and asks him if he was at the Crashdown during the shooting. Max says he was and Valenti cuffs him.

Isabel pretends to hit Maria with her mom’s car and then a costumed alien - in reality Michael - pretends to heal her, leaving a silver handprint before running off. Valenti takes after the suspects, loses him in the crowd and then sights him again, grabbing him - it’s Kyle. Valenti discovers that the handprint on Maria’s chest is actually silver paint and tells Max that he knows he did something to Liz, but Max claims he just ran off when the gun was fired. He lets Max go, but warns him that he’s going to find out what the truth is, "you can count on it."

Max, Michael and Isabel watch the alien bodies burning after the Festival’s re-enactment of the 1947 crash. Max sees Liz watching and goes over to her. He tells her that he wants to be more than friends, but that it’s not safe for them. She tells him that she doesn’t care and that she never got to thank him for saving her life. He thanks her.

It’s September 24th. I’m Liz Parker and five days ago I died but then this totally amazing thing happened - I came to life.

CAST

Shiri Appleby was Tara in the XENA episodes FORGIVEN and A TALE OF TWO MUSES. Jason Behr was Billy Fordham in BUFFY: LIE TO ME.

Katherine Heigl was in MY FATHER THE HERO ("There are still men who come up to me today and say, 'You were really hot in that film!' I was 14, for God's sake!"). Along with Eliza Dushku she's in the 1992 film THAT NIGHT and stars alongside David Boreanaz in the upcoming VALENTINE.

Brendan Fehr guest starred in the MILLENNIUM episodes THE PEST HOUSE and COLLATERAL DAMAGE. Amongst William Sadler's best known roles are Heywood in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and the Grim Reaper in BILL AND TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY.

Michael Horse played Deputy Hill in TWIN PEAKS. Kevin Weisman, who plays the anorak tourist Larry, stars with Sarah Michelle Gellar in BEVERLY HILLS FAMILY ROBINSON.

CONTINUITY

The Roswell crash happened in 1947 but Max, Isabel and Michael were in incubation pods until emerging as six year olds in 1989.

In 1959, Valenti's father discovered a corpse with a silver handprint on it. His obsession with it earned him the nickname 'Sergeant Martian'.

Liz first met Max in third gate. Before this, she wore a cupcake dress to kindergarten - it is the single supreme embarrassment of her life but she wore it for her mom's sake.

W. Roswell High School's motto is "Pathway to excellence and integrity" and it has a sports team called the Comets.

NOTES

The BBC2 and Sky One transmissions differ at the start. Sky showed the usual opening credits and then went into the programme itself while the BBC opened with a 'ROSWELL HIGH' slide caption before we saw Liz on the roof of the Crashdown. The credits appear on-screen, starting with the scene where Liz's dad enters the Crashdown.

The terrible BBC trailer ("Teenage Alien Lifeforms, all over your TV") for this episode was backed by Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time. For some reason best known to themselves, the BBC cropped it for 16:9 on digital and after the initial transmission showed the trailer for THE MORNING AFTER in 4:3 in a 16:9 frame. Since the following programme was BUFFY the entire break should have been shown full frame.

Executive Producer Jonathan Frakes has an uncredited role as the countdown guy at the Festival.

COMMENTS

Of the opening ANGEL, BUFFY, CHARMED and ROSWELL episodes, this is comfortably the best one and does an excellent job of introducing us to the series' regular characters and basic premise.

Most of the action centres around Liz, with her journal entry topping and tailing the episode. Shiri Appleby is excellent throughout, from Liz's early scenes in the Crashdown, her initial confronting of Max after Biology class and later with her prepared list of questions.

Quite what she sees in Kyle Valenti is a bit of a mystery at this stage and he seems rather unaffected by her outfit for the Crash Festival when she turns up on his doorstep. Perhaps he really is the "poodle" that Maria believes Liz is describing. It has to be said that her shock at the way Max sees her ("the amazing thing was, in his eyes, I was beautiful") is a bit unbelievable due to the casting of the obviously plain looking Shiri Appleby.

The plot is based on the first book in the ROSWELL HIGH series but the method of throwing Valenti's suspicion away from Max relies on Michael's faked healing of Maria while dressed up as Kyle instead of the aliens' powers as in THE OUTSIDER. A couple of the names have been changed as well - Liz is Parker not Ortecho and Alex is Whitman not Manes.

Max's healing of Liz aside we only get a glimpse of the aliens' power at this stage, with Isabel using hers for more recreational purposes. Max and Michael appear to have few friends apart from each other and Isabel, and with no family Michael is far more excited by the thought of the fourth alien, even having to be reminded by Isabel that he may well be a killer.

Maria and Alex provide a bit of comic relief without having to resort to banality. Maria has the same slightly wacky personality that she has in the books, although her tendency to inhale oils in less apparent here. Her flipping out when Liz tells her the aliens' secret is probably the only part of the entire episode that comes close to the BBC's silly "Teenage Alien Lifeforms" tagline, but her flaky description of the two customers is great (Deputy Blackwood - "I'm gonna need a better description than that. I'm assuming that they weren't actually cartoons.") Alex gets a few scenes as Liz and Maria's best friend, but it's slightly surprising that Isabel has even noticed him. She seems a bit too snobbish to be on what looks like friendly terms with him.

Without overdoing it, the episode also has some nice humorous moments, and they're not all confined to Alex and Maria - Liz winding up the two UFO tourists, Maria and Deputy Blackwood, Liz's prepared list of questions for Max and Alex's "nice cones" reply.

As an episode it's great, but it's also managed to set up a series of regular characters well and set the ball rolling for subsequent episodes. BACK TO THE TOP

EPISODE RATING: 10/10


NEXT EPISODE:
THE MORNING AFTER