Roswell celebrates its 25th anniversary: a look back at a series at the crossroads of genres
Between tortured teen drama and big SF saga, the cult series has often sought the right tone. The creator, Jason Katims, today tells the story of the journey of Liz, Max and the others, between 1999 and 2002.
Some notes from Dido. The song “Here With Me” starts and you see yourself in front of the Saturday Trilogy on M6… Roswell celebrates its 25th anniversary today. October 6, 1999, just after Buffythe American channel WB (ancestor of CW) launched its great SF romance, with Shiri ApplebyJason Behr, Brendan Fehr, Majandra Delfino, Colin Hanks and Katherine Hieglnot yet star of Grey’s Anatomy.
Jason Katimsthe creator, to whom we owe the enormous Friday Night Lights Or Parenthoodremembers in Variety. He recounts how he came up with the story of Liz Parker (Appleby), a high school student living in Roswell, New Mexico, a town made infamous by the supposed crash of a flying saucer in 1947. In the pilot’s opening moments , the young waitress at the Crashdown Cafe takes a stray bullet and bleeds out under the coffee machine. She is miraculously saved by a simple touch by her classmate, the calm and attractive Max Evans (Behr). She will discover that he is one of those aliens who crashed in 1947. They woke up years later and now live as super-powered teenagers in an ordinary world that is not theirs.
A story about Romeo and Juliet
“I really fell in love with the idea, with this story and these characters” ratale Katims, who thus adapted the novels Roswell High by Melinda Metz. “I had never written a sci-fi series before, and never since. But I was very attracted by the idea of using aliens and alienation as a metaphor for adolescence. It was also a love story with a huge obstacle. It’s every writer’s dream: to make their Romeo and Juliet. A story where the characters can’t really be together. A girl who falls in love with an alien. loved it and still think it’s a great concept.”
A concept that the producer almost sold at the time for the big national channel Fox. “It was really close… We really thought it was going to do it. But when they said they were going to play, someone slipped our show to the WB and a few hours later she ordered it. It all happened very quickly.”
A channel for young people, which had more meaning for Roswellsince WB is the channel which broadcast at the time Buffy the Vampire Slayer And Dawson. Even if Katmis has often slowed down to avoid producing pure teen drama. “I think we tried to be brave, ambitious in our stories. We tried a lot of different things. In a way, it was a kitsch series. These alien teenagers were drinking Tabasco sauce from the bottle! But there was also a lot of pain in the series. There were moments that I found deeply moving and poignant.
The forced extension of mythology
The essentials of Roswellin season 1, thus held in the revelations of Max, his feelings for Liz and the consequences of his secret for those close to him. Katims preferred this local, intimate, small-town approach, keeping the galactic implications of their alien origins at bay. But as the first season unfolded, a massive evolution seemed inevitable: “At one point, someone said to me: ‘The boss of the channel has a message for you.’ We don’t usually speak directly with the boss of the channel, so I was curious to know what he wanted. And his message said: “Aliens, Aliens, Aliens”. Clearly, the audiences of Roswell were not crazy and WB insisted that Katims direct the story directly towards pure SF, Aliens etc. to revive public interest.
“At first, I did it reluctantly, because I had my own idea of what the series was. Besides, in the first season, we are always wondering what this series will be in the future. We never really stop looking, especially when we’re doing a Dawson-style drama mixed with The X-Files. But we were told we had to accept the aliens, and that’s what we did. When we look at the series, in particular the posters from season 1 to season 3, we see an evolution: the series was less interested in this young human girl and her story, and more in what these three extraterrestrials were experiencing. on Earth.”
Roswell was then canceled in 2002, after three seasons and 61 episodes. But Warner Bros. Television resurrected the concept in 2018 as Roswell, New Mexico. A straight remake, with the same characters, but moving away from the high school setting. “I didn’t watch it.” Katmiss said. “It was strange how it all happened. There was a reboot that wasn’t from the same studio, and I and none of the people who made our show were part of it.”
