Let me state it up front: I do NOT believe in extraterrestrial aliens. Oh, I enjoy 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars,' but that's pure fantasy. When it comes to reports of UFOs and alien abductions, I'm an incurable skeptic. So when the SciFi channel announced it was going to air an original 20 hour fictional miniseries based in part on those reports, I couldn't imagine it would be something I'd find interesting.

Purely by accident, however, I stumbled onto episode seven one night, and decided to watch for a few minutes. Before I knew it, I myself had been 'taken' - not by aliens, but by the phenomenal performance of Dakota Fanning as Allie, a nine-year-old human-alien hybrid who looks like a little girl but has superhuman abilities. It was a difficult-to-believe-in character in a difficult-to-believe story. Because of Dakota, however, I was compelled to believe in both.

The first six episodes of 'Taken' (which I saw the following weekend) all turn out to be leading toward the birth of Allie. They tell the story, covering over half a century, of three different families involved in different ways with an alien race that visits earth and begins repeatedly abducting some of its people. These episodes were generally well done, but everything depended on Allie being worth all the buildup. Had the portrayal of that character fallen short, the whole of the story would have come off as silly and cartoonish. When Dakota Fanning was handed the ball early in episode seven, however, she pulled everything together, and sent the story accelerating powerfully ahead. The emotional momentum fueled by her performance built steadily all the way through the remaining episodes. By the time the spectacular and deeply moving ending arrived, my heart and soul were so tied up in Allie that I cried like a baby not once but twice in the last fifteen minutes, harder than I've ever cried over a fictional story before. Dakota took what would otherwise have been only a fairly good mini-series, and made it excellent. IMHO, her performance was the greatest ever by someone so young playing a lead role.

Even if you're as skeptical as I am about alien abductions, 'Taken' is well worth 20 hours of your time. Open your heart and mind just a little as you watch, and Dakota Fanning will take you on an amazing roller coaster ride of emotions. For a few hours, at least, you will believe in aliens.