History Series / Taken

* LieToTheBeholder: The aliens have the ability to read a person's mind and create images from their thoughts, memories and imagination:
** In "Beyond the Sky", John obtains the human image that he projects from an illustration accompanying the ''Thrilling Space Stories'' short story "The Star Tracker" that Sally had been reading immediately before she found him in her shed.
** Also in "Beyond the Sky", the scientists studying the bodies found at the Roswell crashsite determine that they are capable of perfect mimicry on a cellular level as their cells display whatever properties the scientists think that they might have at any given moment.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Over the course of the series, a total of 25 actors playing 24 characters are listed in the opening credits. Creator/AntonYelchin and Chad Donella are credited for playing the child and adult versions of Jacob Clarke. Creator/DakotaFanning (Allie) is the only one credited for every episode. There are also numerous recurring and one-off characters who play significant roles.
* ManOnFire: In "High Hopes", Bob's Used Cars explodes when [[MindVirus everyone present goes insane]] when the implant is removed from [[spoiler: Russell's brain]]. Dr. Kreutz emerges from the building on fire from head to toe and burns to death in front of Owen's eyes within seconds.

** In the final episode "Taken", [[spoiler: Dr. Wakeman tries to phone Tom in order to warn him that Mary is aware that he, Charlie, Lisa and Allie are hiding in Sally's old house in Lubbock, Texas. However, he is shot and killed by Mary before he has the chance to do so. However, Wakeman's attempt to help his erstwhile adversaries is motivated not by a realization that what he was doing was wrong but by a desire to allow the aliens' plan to reach fruition without interference.]]

** In the final episode "Taken", [[Dr. Wakeman tries to phone Tom in order to warn him that Mary is aware that he, Charlie, Lisa and Allie are hiding in Sally's old house in Lubbock, Texas. However, he is shot and killed by Mary before he has the chance to do so. However, Wakeman's attempt to help his erstwhile adversaries is motivated not by a realization that what he was doing was wrong but by a desire to allow the aliens' plan to reach fruition without interference.]]

* HateVirus: In the final episode "Taken", Allie tells John that she was sorely tempted to use her powers to make Clauson and the other men who threatened them at the gas station (as seen at the end of the previous episode "John") fight each other.

* ConscienceMakesYouGoBack: In "John", the hunting guide Dewey Clayton abandons Charlie and Lisa as they are preparing to enter the abandoned farm in Benson County, North Dakota where Allie is being held by the Army. After Allie helps her parents to escape, Dewey returns to provide his assistance and is very apologetic about running out on them earlier.

* ChangedMyMindKid: In "John", the hunting guide Dewey Clayton abandons Charlie and Lisa as they are preparing to enter the abandoned farm in Benson County, North Dakota where Allie is being held by the Army. After Allie helps her parents to escape, Dewey returns to provide his assistance and is very apologetic about running out on them earlier.

** Also in the final episode "Taken", Charlie, Lisa, Allie, Tom and John hide out from the government in Sally's old house in Lubbock, Texas. In "Beyond the Sky", Sally found John in her shed and began a relationship with him. Sally's pregnancy with Jacob marked the beginning of the aliens' SuperBreeding program, of which Allie is the end result. Tom was the only human character to be present on both occasions.

** In "High Hopes", Owen takes up smoking to relieve tension at the request of his doctor in October 1962.

* EvolutionaryLevels: [[spoiler: The alien John reveals that Allie is the next step in the evolution of life itself]]

* TheGreys: The aliens are classic greys who possess large heads, oval-shaped black eyes, spindly bodies and three fingers and a thumb on each hand.

** In the final episode "Taken", [[Dr. Wakeman tries to phone Tom in order to warn him that Mary is aware that he, Charlie, Lisa and Allie are hiding in Sally's old house in Lubbock, Texas. However, he is shot and killed by Mary before he has the chance to do so. However, Wakeman's attempt to help his erstwhile adversaries is motivated not by a realization that what he was doing was wrong but by a desire to allow the aliens' plan to reach frutition without interference.]]

** In both "High Hopes" and "Charlie and Lisa", Jacob collapses while playing baseball due to his PsychicPowers having a deletrious effect on his health. [[spoiler: In the latter episode, it marks the beginning of the end for him.]]
* MeaningfulName: The Keys family hold the key to the creation of a hybrid who is strong enough to use their abilities without suffering deletrious effects.

* SuperBreedingProgram: In the final episode "Taken", John explains the purpose of the aliens' experiment in crossbreeding over the course of three generations to Charlie, Lisa and Allie. [[spoiler: When Sally took him into her house and tended to him in "Beyond the Sky", his long dormant emotions were brought to the surface by this simple act of kindness. The aliens sought to combine their more highly evolved consciousness with the strength and power that humans draw from their emotions. Allie was the end result of their experiment, which John describes as an unqualified success. He tells Lisa that it is Allie's destiny to join the aliens and help them to come to terms with their letant emotions.]]

* TheWorldIsNotReady: What happens with Allie in the end.

* DeadlyEuphemism: In "Beyond the Sky", Owen is brought to the crashed alien ship in Pine Lodge near Roswell by two young boys and their father who discovered it while out hiking. After performing a quick reconaissance of the ship, Owen exits and gives the three of them a threatening look. He later tells his superior officer Colonel Thomas Campbell how he learned of the crash and that he took care of it. The clear implication is that he killed the boys and their father but this is never confirmed.

* BizarreAlienPsychology: In the final episode "Taken", John confirms what Mary and Dr. Wakeman had suspected about the aliens for some time: that they have no emotions and no concept of morality due to the manner in which they had evolved over the course of millions of yaers.

* AliensAreBastards: A belief held almost unanimously by the military and especially the Keys family. When John ([[spoiler: an alien]]) gets badly injured protecting Allie, he is met with no sympathy by even his own granddaughter, who proceeds to CallingTheOldManOut.

* BookEnds: The first episode "Beyond the Sky" begins and ends with the same narration. It is heard again at the end of the final episode "Taken":

* EndingTropes
** [[spoiler: BittersweetEnding]]

* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: Dr. Wakeman, Ray]]

* IJustWantToBeNormal: Allie.

* ItsAllMyFault: [[spoiler: John]]

** Also in "Beyond the Sky", Sally gives John one of the star shaped earrings left to her by her grandmother. She keeps the other one, wearing it as a pendant. In "Jacob and Jesse", Sally passes it on to Jacob as he leaves Lubbock to attend the Greenspan School after [[FakingTheDead she, Tom and Becky fake his death]]. In "Charlie and Lisa", Jacob gives the pendant to Lisa [[spoiler: shortly before his death]]. When John returns to Earth in "John", he shows the earring that Sally gave him in 1947 to Lisa as proof that he is her grandfather.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: When [[spoiler: Mary]] receives a [[spoiler: posthumous video mail from Chet, she]] has a breakdown.

* PetTheDog: While he isn't evil so much as an industrial-grade TinMan, Jacob's gesture for his dying mother is very heartwarming.

* StayWithTheAliens: Allie.

** In "Beyond the Sky", Sally reads the ''Thrilling Space Stories'' short story "The Star Tracker" by Les Bohem. The series was created and written in its entirety by Leslie Bohem. Similarly in "Jacob and Jesse", the children's book that Jesse's mother Kate reads to him, ''The Adventures of Artemis P. Fosnick'', is written by Hilda Bohem, who is named after Bohem's mother.

* WiseBeyondTheirYears: As demonstrated by her narration of the first six episodes before her formal introduction, Allie is an extraordinarily wise, intelligent and insightful nine-year-old due to her part alien heritage and the accompanying PsychicPowers. Her grandfather Jacob also exhibited these characteristics to a lesser extent. Allie has a far better understanding of life and human nature than people several times her age. For instance, in "God's Equation", her mother Lisa's bandmate Denny tells her that when he wakes up every morning, all that he can see is the end of the day. As a result, he doesn't see the point of even getting up in the morning. Allie then asks him if he thinks about the end of a song when he is performing. He says that he has to focus all of his attention of the part of the song that he is playing or he would never get through it. Without Allie saying anything, Denny then realizes that she is telling him to adopt the same attitude to life. Later in the episode, Allie is able to defuse the HostageSituation by helping Ray Morrison to realize that he is so angry at the world because he was [[DomesticAbuse sexually molested]] when he was eight and it was easier to blame aliens for everything bad that had happened to him than to face his problems. She then allows the UFO project to take her into custody in order to protect Charlie and Lisa and prevent a bloodbath, even though she was more than powerful enough to escape.

* PermaStubble: Charlie grows some.

* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: Of a sort. People who walk into the [[spoiler:alien ship]] see people and places from their mind. [[spoiler: Owen Crawford]] claims to be a manifestation of [[spoiler: Mary's]] view of him. [[spoiler: It turns out Allie was psychically manipulating everyone]].

** Also in "High Hopes", Anne hopes that being Owen's favorite doesn't ruin her son Sam's life. [[spoiler: In "Acid Tests", Owen tells Sam the truth about the UFO project and being {{MindRape}}d by Jacob. This leads Sam to travel to Hyder, UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}} to investigate the writing found on the burial chamber as it matched that on the artifact. He is killed in a fire two days later along with the HalfHumanHybrid Lester.]]

** When Jacob {{Mind Rape}}s Travis and later Owen in "Jacob and Jesse", he says, "Look at me." [[spoiler: In "God's Equation", when Allie is about to save her father Charlie, she says "Look at me." In "John", when Mary sees a manifestation of Owen on the ship that Allie creates and asks what he saw when Jacob showed him all of his memories and all of his fears, he says, "Then look at me, Mary" and induces it into her]].

* MementoMacGuffin: In "Beyond the Sky", Sue discovers the artifact at the Roswell crashsite, which she gives to Owen [[spoiler: at the cost of her life]]. In "High Hopes", Owen tells his son Sam that it is part of his inheritance. However, in "Acid Tests", it falls into the possession of Owen's elder son Eric [[spoiler: after Sam is killed in a fire in UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}} and Owen dies of a stroke]]. In "Dropping the Dishes", it is revealed that the artifact is both a transmitter that allows the aliens to track everyone who has an implant in their frontal lobe (which was heavily implied in "Charlie and Lisa") and an information gathering device which has been continually recording the progress of the aliens' crossbreeding experiment since its inception.

* RealityWarper: Though less powerful than most examples of this trope, Allie is the most powerful character in the series. Possessing the aliens' powers and a body that can handle the backlash, Allie has demonstrated powers beyond even the aliens' capabilities as while they can only manifest thoughts and memories that are limited to one or small groups of people within a small space or in their ship, [[spoiler: She can manifest an alien ship that can be touched, seen and entered and inside shows the occupants their memories and fears with one soldier entering being swarmed by insects, one who was nice to Allie being reunited with his deceased mother, the entire squad seeing various aliens that they open fire on and Mary encountering her grandfather Owen who Mind Rapes her into seeing what he saw with Jacob. She then makes the ship appear as if it has abducted her but in actual fact shapeshifts into Col. Greer and oversees her parents being taken out of camp. Her powers also go beyond psychic prowess and mind tricks to control over space-time as when she is chased by Mary and Wakeman, Allie slows down time to cross the road without being hit by cars.]]

** In "Acid Tests", when Dr. Powell mentions WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck as an example of TheTrickster archetype, Daryl says that Daffy once painted a white stripe on his back to disguise himself as a skunk. Powell points out that it was [[WesternAnimation/SylvesterTheCatAndTweetyBird Sylvester]] who had the paint on his back and it was an accident. This is a reference to the 1954 cartoon ''Dog Pounded''.

* VillainProtagonist: Three generations of the Crawford family, Owen, Eric and Mary, commit terrible crimes as part of their crusade to discover what the aliens are planning. Owen is a complete sociopath while Mary is highly erratic and unstable. Eric is not on quite the same level as his father and daughter. In "God's Equation", he has reached the stage where he does not want any more deaths on his conscience.
* WellDoneSonGuy: In "Acid Tests", Eric, well aware that he is TheUnfavorite, desperately tries to impress his father Owen in the hope of getting a pat on the back. His efforts fail at every turn and typically only serve to irritate Owen. In "Charlie and Lisa", 22 years after Owen's death, Eric's increasingly unhappy wife Julie notes that it is amazing that not getting something as simple as a pat on the back could have such a negative effect on him and, by extension, her.

* PlatonicLifePartners: In "Charlie and Lisa", Lisa meets Nina Toth on her first day at Morrison Junior High School and the two girls form a lifelong friendship. After Allie is born, Nina becomes her godmother.

** In "Acid Tests", when Dr. Powell, Daryl mentions that WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck once painted a white stripe on his back to diguise himself as a skunk. Powell points out that it was [[WesternAnimation/SylvesterTheCatAndTweetyBird Sylvester]] who had the paint on his back and it was an accident. This is a reference to the 1954 cartoon ''Dog Pounded''.

* AnyoneCanDie: Given that the series spans 58 years, the high mortality rate among the main characters is understandable but it is especially notable considering that most of them die relatively young. [[spoiler: In "Maintenance", Sally Clarke, one of the longest lived characters, is only in her late 60s when she dies of cancer in 1980. In "Charlie and Lisa", her son Jacob dies at 32 in 1981 and Jesse dies at 46 in 1992.]]

** Sam is played by Trevor Pawson as a seven-year-old in "Jacob and Jesse", Branden Nadon as a 12-year-old in "High Hopes" and Ryan Merriman as a 19-year-old in "Acid Tests". He is the only character to be played by a different actor in each appearance.

** Mary is played by an uncredited infant in "Acid Tests", Anysha Berthot as a child in "Maintenance" and by Heather Donahue as an adult from "Charlie and Lisa" onwards.

* DescriptionCut: In "God's Equation", Allie remarks that some people get mean when they get scared. We then cut to Eric Crawford. This description basically sums up the entire Crawford family.

* DontGoIntoTheWoods: In "Acid Tests", Louise Rankin frequently tells her daughter Wendy not to go into the woods because of the HalfHumanHybrid Lester. [[spoiler: Ironically, when Wendy does wander into the woods in search of her dog Champ, Lester tends to her when she falls out of a tree and breaks her leg.]]

** In "Beyond the Sky", Owen says to his lover Sue, "You're the sun and the moon to me. The sun and the moon." [[spoiler: Later that night, Owen beats Sue to death in order to keep the artifact that she found at the Roswell crashsite a secret.]] At his wedding to Anne Campbell two months later on September 13, 1947, he tells her father Colonel Thomas Campbell that he would never do anything to hurt her as she is the sun and the moon to him. In "High Hopes", [[spoiler: Owen murders Anne on October 28, 1962 as he is concerned that her alcoholism and resulting erratic behavior will lead her to reveal what she knows about the artifact and to anyone who will listen.]]

* GroinAttack: How Mary gets to General Beers.

''Taken'' is a ScienceFiction miniseries made in 2002. It's about three families, beginning with Russell Keys (an Army Air Force pilot who is abducted by aliens in the middle of a battle), Owen Crawford (an Army Air Force captain who is the first from the military to see the crashed alien spaceship), and Sally Clarke (a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage who meets a strange man in her shed). Three generations of conflict unfolds from these events, and we, along with the characters, slowly learn the motives behind the abductions that have been going on for almost a century.

* AlienAutopsy: In "Beyond the Sky", scientists at the Wright Air Field conducted autopsies on the three aliens who were killed in the Roswell crash and on a fourth who died later.

* AnyoneCanDie: And not just of old age. In fact, death by old age is pretty rare.

* TheMole: In "God's Equation", Dr. Harriet Penzler, own runs Lisa's AlienAbduction therapy group, is an agent of the UFO project. She keeps them updated on Lisa's activities and Allie's progress and informs them that Charlie has arrived on the scene.

* PowerNullifier: A minor example. The military develop a helmet that can stop the aliens tracking Allie.

** In "Charlie and Lisa", it is revealed that Jacob's daughter Lisa has only very limited psychic abilities. She gets a bad feeling about Eric as soon as she meets him and knows that it is connected to the alien abductions that her uncle Tom writes about without being told. In "God's Equation", it becomes apparent that Lisa and her own daughter Allie possess a strong PsychicLink which allows Lisa to know where Allie is and how she is feeling at any time.

* TimeStandsStill: In "God's Equation", Allie displays the ability to manipulate time. When Mary, Dr. Wakeman and two other agents of the UFO project attempt to capture her, she runs across a road and freezes the oncoming traffic so that she can get safely across.
* TitleDrop: Through the series, the word "taken" is consistently used in place of "abducted."

* VillainHasAPoint: Col. Greer believes the aliens should be considered as hostile, and lists the belligerent acts that no nation should get away with. The list includes unwanted abductions, human experimentation, violating airspace and stealing a highly classified energy reactor.

* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Allie.
* [[IDidWhatIHadToDo You Did What You Had To Do]]: Chet tells Mary Crawford this to comfort her after [[spoiler: Eric dies]].

* WhiteSheep: Sam Crawford is the only member of his family that isn't a murderous sociopath. He wants to reveal the alien cover up and risks his own life to defend Lester, a deformed and harmless HalfHumanHybrid. Whereas his brother Eric and niece Mary take after his father Owen, Sam takes after his mother Anne, a kind, gentle woman whose life was gradually destroyed by Owen's bullying and neglect.

* DysfunctionJunction: The characters possess a wide variety of flaws and suffer from numerous addictions and disorders: alcoholism (Anne Crawford, her father Colonel Thomas Campbell and Russell Keys), Oedipus complexes (Mary Crawford's relationship with her childhood HonoraryUncle Chet Wakeman), multiple cases of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder as a result of alien abductions (Russell, his son Jesse and grandson Charlie), drug abuse (Jesse again) and outright sociopathy (Owen and Mary Crawford). Notably, while the Clarke family experiences many hardships over the years, they manage to survive relatively unscathed compared to the Crawfords and the Keys.

** In spite of his attempts to become a better man, Eric Crawford is very much like his father Owen. They are both ambitious, ruthless and willing to step on anyone that gets in their way. In "God's Equation", he comes to feel guilty about all of the terrible things that he has done, something that Owen never does. The sociopathic Mary proves to be cut from the same cloth as her grandfather. Also in "God's Equation", Eric mentions that she possesses the same clarity of purpose as his father, which is probably related to their lack of morals.

* VillainProtagonist: Three generations of the Crawford family, Owen, Eric and Mary, commit terrible crimes as part of their crusade to discover what the aliens are planning. Both Owen and Mary are complete sociopaths. Eric is not on quite the same level as his father and daughter since he is at least capable of remorse. In "God's Equation", he has reached the stage where he does not want any more deaths on his conscience.

** When Jacob {{Mind Rape}}s Travis and later Owen in "Jacob and Jesse", he says, "Look at me." [[spoiler: In "God's Equation", when Allie is about to save her father Charlie, she says "Look at me." In "John", when Mary sees a manifestation of Owen on the ship that Allie creates and asks what he saw when Jacob showed him all of his memories and all of his fears, he says, "Then look at me, Mary" and induces it into her]].

* AxCrazy: Both Owen Crawford and his granddaughter Mary are shown to be quite murderous and unhinged at times. However whilw Owen is TheSociopath of the series and can control or hide these impulses, Mary however is far more erratic and mentally unstable, willing to murder civilians to get what she wants and even [[spoiler:kills Wakeman when he tries to warn the Keys, and breaks out hysterically afterwards. She does however regret her actions after seeing Wakeman's message.]]