Alien Nation: The Public Enemy

The story takes place on the slave ship and introduces the resistance group. The story says the ship was six miles across. One of the things I have always wondered about, though, is why have slaves at all? The warfaring race that overran the Tenctonese must have been far advanced to have defeated them so easily. If they were so far advanced, then, why would they need slaves at all? Any civilization that advanced would have developed machinery, perhaps even androids to do the work a slave would do. The devices would be cheaper, in the long run, to use than slaves and would cause less trouble than slaves.

This also means a reader would need to be familiar at least somewhat with the series, otherwise they won't get the full value from the story. There are 250,000 slaves on the ship and the gas keeps almost all of them docile. The Kleezantsun (I've seen an alternate spelling for this) are taking Newcomers and are using them them for their death games.

The ship is entering an unknown area (our solar system) and a Newcomer claims he has a bomb that can disrupt the gas flow. The bomb has to be set off manually, though, so it's a suicide mission and the Newcomer carrying it out has good reasons. The bomb goes off and it does more than they expected, the ship going out of control and heading for a crash landing on Earth.

Which brings up another matter, and this relates to both this comic and the television about a slave ship passing through our solar system, supposedly without realizing Earth was inhabited. Any spaceship that advanced is going to have loads of external sensors that will be gathering more information than anything on any Star Trek-type ship. There is no way that such a ship, using such sensors in our solar system, would fail to detect signs of life on Earth.

Anyhow, the ship lands and the Newcomers start coming out. The military has surrounded them (think The Day the Earth Stood Still.)

The issue starts out with a television report on what had happened to some of the Newcomers after the crash, and it shows some of them ended up with majorly successful careers. One of them is murdered soon after. Another Newcomer is slain, and it seems a Newcomer is in charge of the person who is doing the killings. Those targeted for killings are all the ones on the news show about Newcomers who have become successful. There is also some kind of Newcomer extremist group called The Leopards.

The murderer kills another of the Newcomers and then attacks human police when they get there. Then we see somewhere else where the killer (who is undergoing some kind of initiation) talks to a female Newcomer who is vicious and who is in charge. Ruth, from an earlier series, is also in this series. Then yet another Newcomer is killed despite having protection right by him.

At a television studio the murderer attempts to kill more Newcomers, but this time he stops when he finds out one of them is pregnant. He is wounded but escapes through an air vent. One of the Newcomers follows him and finds out it's someone he knew from the ship. Justice finally is served, but the woman and her followers who were testing the killer still live.

---

My Index Page

Alien Nation main index page