With this July entry into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame (which usually showcases detectives), we’re honoring the memory of Gary Graham, who passed away over a year ago.
January 22, 2024
Gary Graham, who starred as the human detective who partners with an extraterrestrial newcomer to solve crimes on the Fox sci-fi television franchise ‘Alien Nation’, has died. He was 73.
Graham died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Spokane, Washington, his wife of nearly 25 years, Becky Graham, told The Hollywood Reporter.
In the ‘Star Trek’ universe, Graham played the Ocampan community leader Tanis on ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ in 1995; recurred as Ambassador Soval, a Vulcan ambassador to Earth, on ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’, from 2001-05; and portrayed the first officer Ragnar in ‘Star Trek: Of Gods and Men’ (2007) and ‘Star Trek: Renegades’ from 2015-17.
Graham starred as the L.A. detective Matthew Sikes alongside Eric Pierpoint as George Francisco, an “immigrant” and newcomer from another planet, on ‘Alien Nation’, which aired for a season (1989-90) on Fox.
The pair then returned for the telefilms “Alien Nation: Dark Horizon” (1994), “Alien Nation: Body and Soul” (1995), “Alien Nation: Millennium” (1996), “Alien Nation: The Enemy Within” (1996) and “Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy” (1997).
The series was an offshoot of a 1988 “Alien Nation” movie that starred James Caan as Matthew and Mandy Patinkin as the newcomer.
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
MATT SYKES
From Wikipedia:
Detective Matthew Sikes is a Los Angeles police officer reluctantly working with "Newcomer" alien Sam "George" Francisco. Sikes also has an on again-off again flirtation with a female Newcomer, Cathy Frankel.
[O’Bservation – Using his full name was not a concern when dealing with George and other Tenctonese. But when his given name of “Matthew” was shortened to “Matt”, it proved to be a source of amusement to the Tenctonese. In their language, “Sykes’ translated to “cranium”, while “Matt” meant “fecal matter”.]
From the ‘Alien Nation’ wiki:
Matthew Sikes is a human police officer and partner of George Francisco. He is divorced and has a daughter.
Both he and George are close friends, even if he sometimes acts quite bemused about Tenctonese customs.
When Matthew and George met for the first time, he refused to be the Partner of a "Slag", since his former partner, Sgt. William Tuggles, was killed during a gunfight with a Tenctonese criminal. Later however, after he worked a while with George, he came to the conclusion that he was wrong about his prejudice towards Tenctonese and the two became very close friends.
He has an on-off relationship with Dr. Cathy Frankel, a newcomer bio-chemist which remains sketchy during the TV series. During the TV movies, their relationship blossoms and ends up with them taking 'sex' classes.
ALIEN NATION
TV Movie
A bigoted human policeman in the L.A. of the future and his alien partner learn to live with each other's differences while attempting to solve a drug conspiracy hidden in the subculture of Los Angeles' newest immigrant population: extraterrestrials.
Five years after their spaceship crashed on Earth, the Tenctonese "Newcomers" deal with prejudice and discrimination as they try to adjust to life in Los Angeles. Detective Matt Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, investigate a series of odd occurrences, including the death of Sikes's former partner. Meanwhile, the Francisco family tries to deal with being the first Tenctonese in a formerly all-human neighborhood.
O’Bservation:
The “Future” is now in the Past in the Toobworld timeline.
ALIEN NATION
22 episodes
In the near future, a human cop and his alien partner fight crime and discrimination in Los Angeles.
A flying saucer crashed in the Mojave Desert and its inhabitants turned out to be alien slaves, bred to be super intelligent and strong, and controllable by their Overseers. These Tenctonese, or "Newcomers", have been assimilated (sort of) into the population of Los Angeles. One of them, George Francisco, is a police detective with a human partner, Matthew Sikes. George and Matt fight crime together, while learning to respect the other's culture, and question his own. They also fight prejudice, as personified by the Purists, and fear, in the form of the unseen Overseers, who seek to regain control over their slaves.
ALIEN NATION: DARK HORIZON
TV Movie
An Overseer named Ahpossno comes to Earth to take the slaves, and all humans, back to the mothership.
Follow-up movie to the TV series about 250,000 aliens, or "Newcomers" as they are known, who have settled alongside the humans in California. Most of the Newcomers were slaves, and the Overseers are now looking for them. They send Ahpossno to earth to locate the slaves to take them back to the ship.
Picking up where the "season finale" left off, Emily and Susan are on life support after being contaminated with a virus, which is found to be from a Purist group. The Purists have created a mass of it to spray over LA to kill all Newcomers. At the same time, an elite Overseer arrives to organize the return of the Tenctonese to slavery, and decides to take the human population as well.
ALIEN NATION: BODY AND SOUL
TV Movie
Sikes and Francisco are called in to a case when a mysterious young girl, who looks part Newcomer, part human, appears. Her huge, brutish counterpart tries to free her from the precinct, and their bizarre relationship turns out to be the result of a slaveship medical experiment. Meanwhile, Cathy and Matt are going to sex school, in preparation of becoming intimate, while Buck distresses his parents by his anti-human opinions.
ALIEN NATION: MILLENNIUM
TV Movie
It's December 1999 and as the end of the millennium approaches, people are attempting to find spiritual enlightenment. However, a few people want to skip all the work that entails. A holy Tenctonese relic in the hands of a heretic is giving them a shortcut but it's not quite as easily controlled as she says.
ALIEN NATION: THE ENEMY WITHIN
TV Movie
When Detectives Sikes and Francisco are presented with the mysterious death of an Eeno, Matt is stupefied to discover that George had rudely snubbed the case. He, like most Newcomers, reviles the outcast Eenos. As the case unfolds, George has to reassess his prejudices, and George's family help save the city from an alien threat originating in an Eeno waste disposal facility.
ALIEN NATION: THE UDARA LEGACY
TV Movie
Matt and George investigate a series of strange occurrences involving Newcomers, who are found to be programmed to carry out someone's dirty work. The method by which they are brainwashed dates back to the slave ship's resistance movement, the Udara, of which Susan was a part. Susan and George's lives are further disrupted when Buck enrolls in the police academy.
Eventually, George Francisco and his family will be inducted into the Hall as well. And good news for Matt Sykes – Dr. Cathy Frankel will be joining as well.
It has always been Toobworld Central policy that TV movies are independent of TV series, even if they serve as the pilot or as reunion shows. This makes it easier for a character to be inducted. (This wasn’t made up for Graham’s benefit. It was used for Lt. Columbo as well.)
SPLAININ TO DO:
It’s now been a quarter century since the Tenctonese have been seen in Toobworld. A few of them might still remain here, but as for the others?
I believe they have left Earth. I think the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as “The Doctor” took them to another planet, an uninhabited world which they could make their own. (With the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, I would think the Old Girl could easily have taken them all in one trip.
Remembering Gary Graham as we welcome Detective Matt Sykes into the Hall.
"Good night and may God bless."
Gary Graham, who starred as the human detective who partners with an extraterrestrial newcomer to solve crimes on the Fox sci-fi television franchise ‘Alien Nation’, has died. He was 73.
Graham died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Spokane, Washington, his wife of nearly 25 years, Becky Graham, told The Hollywood Reporter.
In the ‘Star Trek’ universe, Graham played the Ocampan community leader Tanis on ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ in 1995; recurred as Ambassador Soval, a Vulcan ambassador to Earth, on ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’, from 2001-05; and portrayed the first officer Ragnar in ‘Star Trek: Of Gods and Men’ (2007) and ‘Star Trek: Renegades’ from 2015-17.
Graham starred as the L.A. detective Matthew Sikes alongside Eric Pierpoint as George Francisco, an “immigrant” and newcomer from another planet, on ‘Alien Nation’, which aired for a season (1989-90) on Fox.
The pair then returned for the telefilms “Alien Nation: Dark Horizon” (1994), “Alien Nation: Body and Soul” (1995), “Alien Nation: Millennium” (1996), “Alien Nation: The Enemy Within” (1996) and “Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy” (1997).
The series was an offshoot of a 1988 “Alien Nation” movie that starred James Caan as Matthew and Mandy Patinkin as the newcomer.
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
From Wikipedia:
Detective Matthew Sikes is a Los Angeles police officer reluctantly working with "Newcomer" alien Sam "George" Francisco. Sikes also has an on again-off again flirtation with a female Newcomer, Cathy Frankel.
[O’Bservation – Using his full name was not a concern when dealing with George and other Tenctonese. But when his given name of “Matthew” was shortened to “Matt”, it proved to be a source of amusement to the Tenctonese. In their language, “Sykes’ translated to “cranium”, while “Matt” meant “fecal matter”.]
From the ‘Alien Nation’ wiki:
Matthew Sikes is a human police officer and partner of George Francisco. He is divorced and has a daughter.
Both he and George are close friends, even if he sometimes acts quite bemused about Tenctonese customs.
When Matthew and George met for the first time, he refused to be the Partner of a "Slag", since his former partner, Sgt. William Tuggles, was killed during a gunfight with a Tenctonese criminal. Later however, after he worked a while with George, he came to the conclusion that he was wrong about his prejudice towards Tenctonese and the two became very close friends.
He has an on-off relationship with Dr. Cathy Frankel, a newcomer bio-chemist which remains sketchy during the TV series. During the TV movies, their relationship blossoms and ends up with them taking 'sex' classes.
ALIEN NATION
TV Movie
A bigoted human policeman in the L.A. of the future and his alien partner learn to live with each other's differences while attempting to solve a drug conspiracy hidden in the subculture of Los Angeles' newest immigrant population: extraterrestrials.
Five years after their spaceship crashed on Earth, the Tenctonese "Newcomers" deal with prejudice and discrimination as they try to adjust to life in Los Angeles. Detective Matt Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, investigate a series of odd occurrences, including the death of Sikes's former partner. Meanwhile, the Francisco family tries to deal with being the first Tenctonese in a formerly all-human neighborhood.
O’Bservation:
The “Future” is now in the Past in the Toobworld timeline.
22 episodes
In the near future, a human cop and his alien partner fight crime and discrimination in Los Angeles.
A flying saucer crashed in the Mojave Desert and its inhabitants turned out to be alien slaves, bred to be super intelligent and strong, and controllable by their Overseers. These Tenctonese, or "Newcomers", have been assimilated (sort of) into the population of Los Angeles. One of them, George Francisco, is a police detective with a human partner, Matthew Sikes. George and Matt fight crime together, while learning to respect the other's culture, and question his own. They also fight prejudice, as personified by the Purists, and fear, in the form of the unseen Overseers, who seek to regain control over their slaves.
TV Movie
An Overseer named Ahpossno comes to Earth to take the slaves, and all humans, back to the mothership.
Follow-up movie to the TV series about 250,000 aliens, or "Newcomers" as they are known, who have settled alongside the humans in California. Most of the Newcomers were slaves, and the Overseers are now looking for them. They send Ahpossno to earth to locate the slaves to take them back to the ship.
Picking up where the "season finale" left off, Emily and Susan are on life support after being contaminated with a virus, which is found to be from a Purist group. The Purists have created a mass of it to spray over LA to kill all Newcomers. At the same time, an elite Overseer arrives to organize the return of the Tenctonese to slavery, and decides to take the human population as well.
ALIEN NATION: BODY AND SOUL
TV Movie
Sikes and Francisco are called in to a case when a mysterious young girl, who looks part Newcomer, part human, appears. Her huge, brutish counterpart tries to free her from the precinct, and their bizarre relationship turns out to be the result of a slaveship medical experiment. Meanwhile, Cathy and Matt are going to sex school, in preparation of becoming intimate, while Buck distresses his parents by his anti-human opinions.
ALIEN NATION: MILLENNIUM
TV Movie
It's December 1999 and as the end of the millennium approaches, people are attempting to find spiritual enlightenment. However, a few people want to skip all the work that entails. A holy Tenctonese relic in the hands of a heretic is giving them a shortcut but it's not quite as easily controlled as she says.
ALIEN NATION: THE ENEMY WITHIN
TV Movie
When Detectives Sikes and Francisco are presented with the mysterious death of an Eeno, Matt is stupefied to discover that George had rudely snubbed the case. He, like most Newcomers, reviles the outcast Eenos. As the case unfolds, George has to reassess his prejudices, and George's family help save the city from an alien threat originating in an Eeno waste disposal facility.
ALIEN NATION: THE UDARA LEGACY
TV Movie
Matt and George investigate a series of strange occurrences involving Newcomers, who are found to be programmed to carry out someone's dirty work. The method by which they are brainwashed dates back to the slave ship's resistance movement, the Udara, of which Susan was a part. Susan and George's lives are further disrupted when Buck enrolls in the police academy.
Eventually, George Francisco and his family will be inducted into the Hall as well. And good news for Matt Sykes – Dr. Cathy Frankel will be joining as well.
It has always been Toobworld Central policy that TV movies are independent of TV series, even if they serve as the pilot or as reunion shows. This makes it easier for a character to be inducted. (This wasn’t made up for Graham’s benefit. It was used for Lt. Columbo as well.)
SPLAININ TO DO:
It’s now been a quarter century since the Tenctonese have been seen in Toobworld. A few of them might still remain here, but as for the others?
I believe they have left Earth. I think the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as “The Doctor” took them to another planet, an uninhabited world which they could make their own. (With the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, I would think the Old Girl could easily have taken them all in one trip.
"Good night and may God bless."
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