Character page for Alien Nation series. CAUTION: Late arrival spoilers ahead! All spoilers are unmarked.
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Main Characters
Matthew Sikes
Left to right: James Caan and Gary Graham
Played By: James Caan (1988 movie), Gary Graham (TV Show & TV Movies)
- Adaptation Name Change: It's a very minor one, but in the 1988 movie, Matt's last name is Sykes, with a Y. In the TV show, it is Sikes, with an I.
- Cowboy Cop: Both versions of Matt liked to play fast and loose with the rules. TV!Matt even went so far as to forge his Captain's signature here and there to further things along with his cases. Repeatedly.
- Embarrassing Last Name: Sure, Sikes is a fine name for a Human, but for a Newcomer it sounds a lot like "ss'ai k'ss," two words in their language which mean "excrement" and "cranium."George: (to clarify) "Shithead."
- Everyone Has Standards: Matt is as disgusted with the Overseers as George. When one of them smugly insults George he almost immediately pays them back with a mean sucker punch.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Funnily enough, whenever he and George pull this routine Matt is the good cop.
- Hand Cannon: 1988!Matt, after emptying his gun into a Newcomer that just wouldn't die, decided to upgrade his weapon to a 454 Casull, which at the time was the most powerful handgun in the world. In the TV show, however, this hand cannon is nowhere to be seen.
- Interspecies Romance: With Cathy, to the point where everyone could see it.
- Noble Bigot:
- Both versions of Matt weren't too fond of Newcomers (and both for the same reason: his partner was killed by Newcomers), and was pretty free with calling them Slags. However, Matt eventually got over his racism and even called people out on theirs.
- More awesomely, while he was still pretty racist against Newcomers at this point, that didn't stop him from calling out a group of protesters stopping Emily from attending school. He even basically compared them to the likes of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
- Undying Loyalty: To George and his family.
George Francisco
Left to right: Mandy Patinkin and Eric Pierpoint
Played By: Mandy Patinkin (1988 movie), Eric Pierpoint (TV Show & TV Movies)
- Beware the Nice Ones: George is easily the nicest and friendliest character in the franchise, but god help you if you manage to anger him in any way.
- The Big Guy: He is not significantly larger than Matt. In fact they are roughly about the same size, but George is unquestioningly the stronger of the two.
- Blunt Metaphors Trauma: A Running Gag of the show and the movies is him regularly messing up simple figures of speech.
- Conflicting Loyalties: There are times, most apparent in the 1988 movie, when George has to choose between his devotion to the law and his loyalty to his people.
- Funny Foreigner: As an alien, George is foreign in the most extreme sense, but this trope is actually downplayed. He is quite a serious man, aside from his tendency to completely butcher figures of speech.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Funnily enough, whenever he and Matt pull this routine George is the bad cop. Suppose it helps that nobody wants to mess with an enraged Newcomer.
- Malaproper: The main reason why George is classed as a Funny Foreigner
- Meaningful Rename: His 'Earth' name was originally Sam Francisco, but Matt, seeing how much of a stupid pun that was, even by Newcomer standards, decided to call him George instead.
- Minority Police Officer: The first Tenctonese member of the LAPD to be made a detective.
- Shipper on Deck: For Matt and Cathy.
- Token Minority: Although he earned his rank through his own merits, the only reason George was a detective in the first place was because of affirmative action.
- Undying Loyalty: It shows how much of this George inspires when half the precinct protect rally to protect him and his family when they're threatened. This happens more than once, too.
- Unfortunate Names: His original 'Earth' name was Samuel Francisco. Suffice to say that even as Newcomer names went Matt thought that was a really stupid one.Matt: Sam Francisco? Sam Francisco?
Other Characters
Susan Francisco
Michele Scarabelli as Susan
Played By: Kendall Conrad (1988 movie, as 'Mrs. Francisco'), Michele Scarabelli (TV Show & TV Movies)
- Action Girl: Though she doesn't really do anything of particular note, action-wise, it is revealed in The Udara Legacy that Susan was once a member of the Udara terrorist group.
- Happily Married: To George.
Buck Francisco
Played By: Brian Lando (1988 movie, as 'George Jr.'), Sean Six (TV Show & TV Movies)
- Adaptational Name Change: Buck is credited as 'George Jr.' and George himself named him Richard (after Richard Nixon), but in the TV series he is renamed Buck Francisco.
- Age Lift: He was four years old in the 1988 movie, but he was a young man in his late teens in the TV series. One of the TV movies even mentioned that Buck was twenty.
- Mistaken for Gay: And by his own parents, no less.George: (to his wife, who is worried that Buck wasn't dating and that all his friends were male) "There's nothing wrong with dating males. You're not falling into that human hydrophobia, are you?"
Emily Francisco
Played By: Lauren Woodland
- Age Lift: She was just a little girl in the TV series, but when Dark Horizon came around it was stated that Emily had 'just turned thirteen', despite there being no significant time skip between Dark Horizon and the final episode of the show.Note This was likely due to the fact that the actress was a teenager by the time they started filming the TV movies, several years after the show had been cancelled.
- Canon Foreigner: Emily (and Vessna, her younger sister) are the only members of the Francisco family who did not make an appearance in the 1988 movie.
- Child Soldiers: She was brainwashed into becoming one of these by the Udara while she was still on the slave ship, and as such had a trigger programmed into her that turned her into an assassin. This becomes a major plot point in The Udara Legacy when Emily is triggered into trying to assassinate a senator.
Cathy Frankel
Played By: Terri Treas
- Canon Foreigner: She did not appear in the 1988 movie.
- Interspecies Romance: She has one with Matt.
Albert Einstein
Played By: Jeff Marcus
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: He is a binnaum, which is a sort of 'third gender' among Newcomers. Binnaums are necessary for Newcomers to reproduce, as their...ahem, actually catalyses the male's...ahem, and allows the female to be impregnated. Albert is basically a part of the Francisco family, as he helped conceive Emily and Vessna.
- Ironic Name: His 'Earth' name is Albert Einstein, but he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or even the whole kitchen.
- Really Gets Around: Implied. Since Newcomers have a Bizarre Alien Reproduction, binnaums like Albert are necessary for them to reproduce. Binnaums are also a really rare gender among their species,Note and since there are a lot of people that want to be parents...
Antagonists
Ahpossno
Played By: Scott Patterson
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Ahpossno, dude. Did it not occur to you that George might have had something up his sleeve when he challenged you to a fight for his soul?
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Upon landing on Earth, he tries to kill the first human he encounters by striking his ribs repeatedly. This might have worked had his victim been a NewcomerNote , so he had to break the man's neck when it didn't.
- Heel–Face Turn: With his dying breath, he tells his superior that all the slaves were dead because Earth had a disease that was lethal to them, and warns the Overseers to stay away. That he died from said disease, and brought with him the thing that infected him with it onto the mothership, may have made his superiors believe him.
- Kick the Dog: He wants to enslave all the Humans after the Overseers come to Earth to reclaim their property, despite being too weak compared to Newcomers for anything other than domestic work.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When he realizes that the former Newcomer slaves have treated him with nothing but kindness and he repaid that kindness by telling the Overseers they were still alive on Earth.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He is a skilled warrior (George compared him to a Samurai), and knowledgeable enough about Newcomer medicine to pass himself off as a doctor who worked in the slave ship's infirmary. And he's a snazzy decorator too, it seems.Matt: Doctor, ninja, and interior decorator!
- Villainous Crush: It becomes pretty clear that over the course of Dark Horizon that Ahpossno is in love with Cathy. He even wants to keep her free after the Overseers re-enslave the Newcomers.
- Warrior Monk: He claims to be one of these (and this might have been true) to George, and he is soon compared to a Samurai. He even teaches Buck a few things about being a warrior. When Buck asks him if he has killed anyone, he responds that he has killed, but never 'so nobly'.
- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: A villainous example, for Ahpossno is in possession of gadgets that none of the other Newcomers had seen before. He hand waves it all as his stealing it from the Overseers.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: He says this almost verbatim after George challenges him to a fight for his soul (actually some kind of ornament that symbolizes his soul). George loses the fight, but he lost on purpose, as the ornament was infected with the Newcomer-killing virus.
