Something Is Out There
An alien insectoid prisoner escapes, and a police officer teams with a medical officer.
Something Is Out There began as a 1988 NBC miniseries about a police officer and an alien woman hunting an insectoid shape-shifter, then became a weekly series that fall. The show shifted focus to the duo's relationship and supernatural elements, but failed to retain its audience and was cancelled.
Quick Facts
- Creator
- Frank Lupo
- Director
- Richard A. Colla
- Starring
- Joseph Cortese
- Maryam d'Abo
- Gregory Sierra
- George Dzundza
- Kim Delaney
- John Putch
- Robert Webber
- Composer
- Sylvester Levay
- Country
- United States; Australia
- Language
- English
- Episodes
- 9
- Executive producers
- Frank Lupo; John Ashley
Facts from the source article.
Plot summary
Police officer Jack Breslin investigates murders where victims' organs are removed with impossible speed. He discovers the culprit is a shape-shifting alien insectoid prisoner called a xenomorph, escaped from a passing prison starship. Breslin teams with Ta'Ra, a medical officer from that ship who possesses telepathy and superhuman agility, to stop the creature.
Development
Frank Lupo originally conceived the program in 1987 under the title Invader. NBC ordered a four-hour miniseries with a $7.5 million budget, shot over 41 days in Los Angeles and Australia. For the weekly series, producers John Ashley and Lupo altered the concept to fit a reduced budget of about $1 million per episode, losing the talents of Rick Baker and John Dykstra. They chose to focus on the relationship between Jack and Ta'Ra, her special abilities, and rejected a monster-of-the-week approach. Ta'Ra was later revealed to be from a planet called Zeton and stays on Earth posing as Jack's cousin. The series strayed from science fiction into supernatural stories involving telekinesis and telepathy. Ashley noted in an interview with Starlog during filming of the eighth episode that early episodes pulled back too far, disappointing viewers expecting an alien each week. The team then brought back the creature from the miniseries for a two-part episode, gave Ta'Ra additional powers, and made the show more science fictional. These changes did not draw back audiences, and the series was cancelled.
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