A 'Roswell' Christmas:
Quality Time With Aliens

ROSWELL. Tonight at 9, WB.

TV has inundated us with dozens of new holiday-themed episodes of their continuing series this month — but, to date, only a very few good ones, including last week's episodes of "Boston Public" and "Ally McBeal" on Fox.

Tonight at 9, another well-made Christmas episode is delivered in time for the holidays, and this particular gift arrives courtesy of a fairly unexpected donor: the WB sci-fi series "Roswell."

Now in its second season, "Roswell" has spent the past few months biting off one ambitious concept after another, including one episode intentionally echoing the classic 1968 sci-fi series "The Prisoner." And, most recently, there was a two-parter in which the show's protagonists, a trio of alien teens living and hiding in Roswell, N.M., discover they have sinister, punk-attired doppelgangers.

Like "The X-Files," another sci-fi show that began to solidify and explore its internal mythology, "Roswell" has come a long way in a short time.