Steven Spielberg’s TAKEN is the Forgotten Awesome UFO Sci-Fi Miniseries a Whole Generation Missed

I recently rewatched Taken, the incredible sci-fi mini-series executive produced by Steven Spielberg, and this is one of those shows that almost no one talks about it anymore.

This is a show I loved the first time I watched it, one that stuck with me. But it slipped through the cracks of pop culture memory. A whole generation of sci-fi fans has either never seen it or never even heard of it. So, when I found the entire series on YouTube, I had to jump back in an revisit it.

With Spielberg returning to science fiction in a big way with his upcoming film, Disclosure Day, it feels like the perfect moment to dust this series off and give it the attention it deserves. This is actually a much better story than the one Disclosure Day delivers.

Taken isn’t just another alien abduction story. It’s a sweeping, emotional, and human saga that spans decades, generations, and perspectives. Honestly, it’s one of the more ambitious TV shows Spielberg has ever put his name on.

At its core, Taken tells a multi-generational story about alien contact and abduction in America, beginning during World War II and stretching all the way into the early 2000s.

The series follows three primary family bloodlines whose lives are forever altered by extraterrestrial encounters. These stories eventually collide, revealing a much larger and more unsettling picture of what’s really been happening behind-the-scenes for decades.

One of the things that makes Taken so interesting is the way it treats the subject matter. This isn’t a show obsessed with spectacle. It’s focused on people. Farmers, soldiers, kids, parents, and government agents all trying to make sense of experiences they can barely comprehend.

The alien presence is constant, but it’s often distant, unsettling, and unknowable. When the show does lean into sci-fi imagery, it feels a little dated now, but it works!

The series unfolds slowly letting the weight of these experiences settle in. Abductions aren’t played as cool set pieces. They’re traumatic, confusing, and life-altering. The emotional consequences ripple through generations, shaping identities and relationships.

One of the reasons Taken works as well as it does is because it feels like classic Spielberg. You can feel his fingerprints all over it. The awe, the fear, the curiosity, and the childlike wonder colliding with adult dread. This series sits comfortably alongside Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. in terms of thematic DNA, but it’s far more somber and grounded.

The structure is also wildly ambitious. Each episode jumps forward in time, sometimes by years, sometimes by decades. Characters age, die, and pass their trauma on to their children. You watch patterns repeat themselves, not because the show is lazy, but because it’s saying something about cycles, control, and how little power ordinary people have when forces far beyond them are pulling the strings.

The show features performances from actors who would go on to big careers, including Dakota Fanning, Joel Gretsch, Adam Baldwin, and Julie Benz. Fanning, in particular, is incredible. Even at such a young age, she brings a haunting intensity to her role. She was such a talented young actress!

What I appreciate most about Taken is that it doesn’t talk down to the audience. It doesn’t over-explain everything, and it doesn’t rush to provide clean answers. Some mysteries remain unsettlingly unresolved, which makes the experience feel more authentic. Real life rarely wraps itself up neatly, and neither does this show.

There’s also a strong sense of paranoia baked into the narrative. Government involvement, secrecy, and cover-ups play a huge role, but they’re treated as extensions of human fear rather than cartoon villainy.

Everyone believes they’re doing the right thing, even when they clearly aren’t. That moral gray area gives the series a weight that a lot of modern sci-fi still struggles to capture.

If you’re a fan of thoughtful, character-driven science fiction, Taken deserves to be at the top of your watch list. It’s patient, unsettling, emotional, and surprisingly intimate for a story about aliens influencing humanity over decades. It’s a pretty awesome TV event that I’m happy exsists.

Revisiting it now, especially with Spielberg stepping back into sci-fi territory, completely makes scene. Taken represents a version of the genre that isn’t chasing trends or trying to outdo itself every episode. It’s confident in its storytelling and trusts that the audience will stick with it.

This series shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s one of those rare sci-fi projects that aims high and actually pulls it off. If you’ve never seen it, now’s the time to fix that. And if you’ve seen it before, I promise it hits even harder on a rewatch.