Ronald D. Moore Talks (Co-executive producer) discusses changes for ROSWELL's third season on new network UPN
Dateline: Tuesday, October 9, 2001
As ROSWELL enters its third season, in some ways the show will be re-inventing itself. ROSWELL has a new home, moving from the WB Network to UPN. Both BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ROSWELL are making this move. It gives the show’s writers reason to believe that ROSWELL may have a longer television life than they once expected. Co-executive producer Ronald D. Moore says that executive producer Jason Katims never gives up hope.
"Last season, it looked like the writing was on the wall," he recalls. "UPN was just sort of an idea that was getting floated out there, because BUFFY was talking to them. We were moving out of our offices. It looked like it was all over. Jason Katims said, ‘You know what? They just can’t kill this show. They’ve tried and they’ve tried and it just keeps surviving. Let’s plan next season.’ He was right, so I just have to believe it too."
So they started to talk about a third season, which they will have, on UPN, airing after BUFFY.
"The operative word for this season on ROSWELL is change," explains Moore. "Because of the way the second season ended, a lot of the storyline and thread we had been following came to an end."
ROSWELL tells the story of a group of aliens who arrived on the ship that crashed in the desert in 1947. They stumbled out of their "pods" looking like human children, and were adopted by people who didn’t know of their ancestry.
In ROSWELL’s first season, teenage alien Max Evans (Jason Behr) used his powers to save the life of a human named Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby). Once she and her friends, including Maria (Majandra Delfino) got involved with Max, his sister Isabel (Katherine Heigl), and the third alien Michael (Brendan Fehr), they were all in peril. During that first season, Liz and Max fell in love as adventures befell the group. By the end of the first year, they had made an ally out of Sheriff Valenti (William Sadler) and found the fourth member of their group, Tess (Emilie de Ravin). She was aided by a shape-shifting protector who soon died, leaving them to cope without help.
In the second season of ROSWELL more complications ensued, as the group battled rival aliens, tried to maintain their secrecy, and figured out where they came from and how to get home. Tess seduced Max, and she became pregnant with a child who would die if not brought back to their home world in a device designed for one trip. At the last moment, the others realized Tess was a murderous traitor trying to sell them to the other side. As season two ended, Tess was launched back to the home planet, leaving everyone else stranded on Earth.
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