NBC Files Its X on Saturday

That yucky creatures from another planet were to blame for bad things befalling earthlings was the one theory not offered by O.J. Simpson’s criminal defense attorneys.

It is by Bryce Zabel and Brent V. Friedman. They created “Dark Skies,” the NBC series whose two-hour (but feels-like-three) premiere tonight rests on the belief that what you see is often something else and that, as Zabel says, “Our future’s happening in our past.”

That thesis also applies to prime time, for “Dark Skies” is actually a 1996 version of “The Invaders,” an ABC series of nearly 30 years ago that found nasty aliens capable of assuming human form trying each week to stop Roy Thinnes from exposing them.

And “The Invaders” (which was reprised in a 1995 TV movie) itself imitated “The Fugitive.” As does “Dark Skies,” whose heroic young lovers, John Loengard (Eric Close) and Kim Sayers (Megan Ward), are on the lam from rogue government thugs hoping to stop them from informing the world about an invasion of aliens using humans as host life forms.

Aliens, shmaliens. Of greater worry to NBC is how life forms respond to its entirely new Saturday night of grim dramas, whose drift toward weird noir appears to be a stab at enticing the growing crowd attracted to “The X-Files” on Fox.

Joining “Dark Skies” in this lineup is “The Pretender,” which has already premiered, and “Profiler,” whose arrival tonight introduces a female forensic psychologist whose amazing powers quicken the pulse of a serial killer who (and this is only conjecture) may be Hannibal Lecter’s close relative.

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The good news about “Dark Skies” is that its theme (interpreting history through the prism of an assumed alien presence) is interesting and gives you something to think about. The bad news is that much of what you’re thinking is, “Boy, is this long.”

It’s the early 1960s, and John and Kim, in their mid-20s, set up housekeeping in Washington, where he is to work for a Fresno congressman and she for First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

But these dream-couple lives in progress go awry when John, on assignment for his boss, stumbles onto evidence of an alien invasion not headlined in the tabloids. He is subsequently harassed by some unsavory types headed by Navy Capt. Frank Bach (J.T. Walsh), chief of a mysterious operation known as Majestic-12.

The “Dark Skies” subtext, a theory also endorsed by some D.C. watchers, is that within the U.S. government is an unsupervised secret government that advances its own agenda while operating independently of Congress and even the White House.

While intriguing, the scenario’s execution here in an atmosphere of alien stealth is belabored, convoluted and trite. The familiarity includes those icky ganglions--squirmy masses of nerve cells that burst from the mouths of humans they occupy and squiggle away, as identical creatures have in so many other sci-fi stories. A ganglions purging scene is a hoot.

“Dark Skies” initially intersects with such events as the Francis Gary Powers spy plane incident and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas. Just a guess, but could there be some connection with the aliens? Meanwhile, John and Kim hit the road while looking back over their shoulders, possessing “the thing that [their pursuers] fear most--the truth.”

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No UFO is the premiere of “Profiler,” which closely resembles “Millennium,” a new series coming to Fox in October. Moreover, it resorts to TV’s 1,000th female-in-jeopardy theme to introduce the brilliant Samantha Waters (Ally Walker), whose ability to visualize crimes through the eyes of both the victim and the perpetrator naturally makes her a hot ticket with her former mentor, Bailey Malone (Robert Davi), head of an Atlanta FBI unit that investigates high-profile homicides.

Sam, as she’s called, has been living in self-imposed rural isolation with her young daughter and a friend since her traumatic brush three years ago with a genius serial slayer she investigated, known only as “Jack,” who became attracted to her mind. When Bailey coaxes her back to work on a new serial murder case, her methods are challenged by lead detective John Grant (Julian McMahon).

The characters here are intelligent, the transferring of Sam’s mental images to the screen adroitly done, and Waters has some nice moments, especially when expressing angst over chasing “sick, twisted people.” Yet in too many ways, this is routine TV, with Sam herself inevitably joining this conveyor belt of endangered females (Enough, already!), but ultimately being victimized only by the script’s stock windup and predictability.

* “Dark Skies” premieres at 8 tonight, followed by “Profiler” at 10 on NBC (Channel 4).