OtherWorlds
by Kate O'Hare

TEENAGE ALIENATION ... Believe it or not, almost everyone - and this includes
buff football heroes and beautiful cheerleaders - feels alienated at some point
in their adolescence. But for the teens of the WB's ``Roswell,'' the main
difference is that they feel alienated because they are, well, aliens, or at
least human teens in love with aliens.

The one-hour series, which has been airing on Wednesday nights at 9 p.m.
(Eastern), is based on ``Roswell High,'' the first novel in a series of young-
adult books by Melinda Metz. The story centers on three teens with a deep, dark
secret - they look human but are really aliens, survivors of the fabled 1947
spaceship crash near Roswell, N.M. But when one of the teens, Max, falls for a
classmate named Liz and saves her life, the secret is out ... at least to Liz.

Jason Behr plays Max; Katherine Heigl plays Max's sister, Isabel; and Brendan
Fehr plays the third alien teen, Michael. Shiri Appleby plays Liz; Majandra
Delfino and Colin Hanks are Liz's pals, Maria and Alex; Nick Weschler plays
Liz's ex-boyfriend, Kyle; and William Sadler plays Kyle's father, a suspicious
local sheriff.

One of the show's executive producers (along with ``Star Trek: The Next
Generation'' star Jonathan Frakes, David Nutter, Kevin Kelly Brown and Lisa J.
Olin) is Jason Katims, a writer/producer whose credits include ``Relativity''
and the acclaimed teen drama ``My So-Called Life.''

``Roswell'' has been struggling in the ratings up against NBC's surging new
drama ``The West Wing'' and UPN's science-fiction staple ``Star Trek: Voyager.''
On April 10, ``Roswell'' hops to Monday nights at 9 p.m. (Eastern), airing after
``7th Heaven.''

``It gives us an opportunity to get the `Voyager' audience,'' says Katims,
``which is good. As we've been moving further along into the season, the
science-fiction elements of the show have become more prominent and more
important. So we feel that there's a real potential audience there, and we might
not be getting all of it because of `Voyager,' so that's one reason why I'm
excited about it.

``The other thing is, we're going behind `7th Heaven,' and it's the most-
watched show on the WB right now. I'm very hopeful about it.''

Katims knows about working on a show with critical support but low numbers,
having lived through the ``My So-Called Life'' experience. While that series
made a big star out of Claire Danes, playing a sensitive high-schooler, and ran
almost ad infinitum in reruns on MTV, it languished during its brief ABC run in
1994-'95. What lessons has Katims brought from that show to ``Roswell''?

``My experience there is something that I always bring to whatever I'm
working on,'' he says. ``To me, it was a lot about trying to find the truth of
how people are when they interact with each other. In this thing, what's similar
to `My So-Called Life' is it's about outsiders who are teenagers, trying to find
a place in the world.

``What's different is, this is a show that has metaphor at the center of it.
It's about, as teens, how we're all aliens. It's about that alienation. Because
it's based on a metaphor, like in `Buffy,' you get to play much bigger stories
and bigger storylines, more life-and-death stories, more fanciful storylines.''

One of the seductive aspects of working in science fiction, fantasy and
horror is that the issues are larger, often literally life, death and the future
of humanity. For a writer used to dealing with the smaller dramas of real life,
this can be liberating.

``Not only can you do that,'' says Katims, ``but a show like `Roswell'
demands that you do shows with enormous storylines, stories about finding other
aliens, stories about their lives being in danger, and stories about falling in
love with a different species.''

Is Katims, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native, drawing on his own high-school memories?

``My high-school experience? Yeah, there were a lot of aliens there, and I think
I was one of them.

``Everybody's an outsider on the show, and that, to me, is unfortunately my
experience of high school, feeling different and isolated, trying to find those
moments of connection.''

Connection is also what Max, Isabel and Michael are seeking, as they have
spent much of the first season trying to find the fourth alien who apparently
survived the 1947 Roswell crash, a deadly shape-shifter with an unknown agenda.
When the show moves to Monday nights on April 10, that signals the beginning,
says Katims, of a six-episode arc that closes out season one.

``What we're going to do is lead to a climax at the end of the first season
that shows us that the world out there is much larger and more dangerous than
they thought it was. That's what they discover at the end of the season. There
are still questions and things you want to know, but there will also be a lot of
answers.

``The second season will be about them dealing with the fact that there's
more out there than any of them thought.''

At press time, the WB had not net announced whether ``Roswell'' would be
renewed for fall.