entitled 'The Meaning of
Roswell: When All the World Was Young'

By Paul F. McDonald
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 07:46 am ET
15 November 2000
The SPACE.com Guide to Roswell

Roswell - 'Wipeout!'

Roswell Gets Full Second Season

Roswell Bridges the Galaxies Between Us

The WB network

Author's Note: best read while listening to Dido's "Here With Me"

One of the reasons that the WB's science fiction/teen drama hybrid Roswell works so well is because the show's producers aren't afraid of extremes. This is fortunate, because the series deals with aliens and adolescence, two highly volatile subjects that don't lend themselves to understatement.

Secrecy and Identity

Fox Mulder or James Dean?

On an Al Roker special on Live Court TV, most teens agreed that telling parents and teachers their problems only "made them worse."

As with most teen shows, hearts are broken and angst about fitting in dominates. Yet Roswell produces teens who have also recently discovered their destiny is to free their home planet from enslavement, and that they themselves are currently being hunted by malicious alien beings who hide in plain sight. Suddenly gym class doesn't look so bad.

With the second season, creators Jason Katims and Jonathon Frakes have decided to minimize the more run-of-the-mill adolescent crisis in favor of a more extravagant superpower-oriented SF storyline.

Still, even as the ongoing mythology becomes more and more elaborate, the timeless themes of adolescence are still there. Perhaps the life of a teenager is so cosmic -- or at least that's how it feels at the time -- that it was inevitable that someone set it against a literally galactic backdrop.