Nickelodeon Adds an Appealing Alien

Tonight’s new Nickelodeon series, “The Journey of Allen Strange,” adds yet another fantasy figure to the ever-growing ranks of TV’s resident witches, angels and aliens.

In this appealing but uneven show, created by Tommy Lynch, the fantasy figure is a stranded kid alien--a typically big-eyed and luminescent UFO type--who transforms himself into a hoops-shooting, baggy pants-wearing, 14-year-old human boy named Allen (Arjay Smith).

His real identity is known only to the humans who befriend him: a 15-year-old girl named Robbie (Erin Dean) and her young brother, Josh (Shane Sweet), a sci-fi enthusiast.

Josh and especially Robbie have empathy for Allen’s loneliness, since they’re having trouble adjusting to their parents’ separation. (They live with their dad [Jack Tate]; Mom is absentee and given to disappointing her kids because of her job demands.)

In the opener, Allen finds refuge with the siblings and unleashes his incendiary powers in a close encounter with a UFO nut (Dee Bradley Baker), after a comic conversation with a cow.

In future episodes, Allen enrolls in school and has to come up with his own “dad” to allay authorities’ suspicions, must deal with school bullies and alien “space pests” and must find the right parts to build a “metabolic-atmosphere equalizing system” in order to get back to his home planet.

Robbie, meanwhile, continues to try to cope with her parents’ separation, grade problems and a part-time job.

The mix of out-of-this-world fantasy, comedy and teenage angst isn’t as assured in this show as it is in Lynch’s other Nick creation, the hit “The Secret World of Alex Mack,” about a girl who can turn herself into liquid, but Smith’s stranger in a strange land has a sweet charm, and Dean is a convincing, anchoring presence.

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* “The Journey of Allen Strange” premieres at 9:30 tonight on Nickelodeon. The network has rated it TV-Y (suitable for children of all ages).