Alienated teens

They come from other planets, other dimensions, and other technologies. They even come from the small town nearby. Alien and alienated teens have invaded the television landscape, with a heavy concentration on the smaller networks, such as Fox, UPN, and WB ("Smallville," "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," "Roswell," "Dark Angel," and "Charmed").

The channels and show settings differ. But on programs such as The WB's latest hit, "Smallville," which investigates the high school years of Superman, these teens have a number of common problems: a brooding sense of not fitting in, anxiety about their origins, and superhuman powers. Last, but certainly not least from the TV executive's point of view, they have an out-of-this-world caliber of sheer good looks.

"You can look at a show like 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' and see the demons are a metaphor for all the issues of growing up," says Gary Newman, president of 20th Century Fox Television. "But it also resonates to a whole older demographic," who, he says, can recall that period in their lives.

From a dramatic standpoint, teens and otherworldly powers are a perfect match.

"What a teen goes through in adolescence is really coming to grips with his own superpowers that he doesn't understand - his sexuality, his powers of self invention, and higher consciousness," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse (N.Y.) University. "These things really are superpowers that you were deprived of previously. Placing the superhero myth at that age is most appropriate."

Help with being a high schooler is precisely what these shows can offer to their audiences, teens say. "They're not realistic," says 15-year-old Kara Robards of Encino, Calif., who watches half-a-dozen of the shows, "but they show you how to deal with the harder things in a sensible way and how to keep your cool."

While the industry's ever-increasing emphasis on attracting younger viewers certainly eases the introduction of these shows, Mr. Thompson says the success of this genre has at least as much to do with its ability both to encapsulate and to transcend the adolescent experience.

It is an arena, he says, that is ripe for exploration. "I'm amazed that the popular arts have taken so long to discover this kind of story," the media guru says. He points out that regulatory restraints may have been partly responsible for a reluctance to explore the serious issues of adolescence, particularly sexuality. But from a dramatic standpoint, the terrain is rich.

"You have attractive people in the prime of their physical human existence, going through extraordinary dramas that everyone can identify with," says Thompson, whose classes of 200 college students consist mostly of this age group. TV audiences, he says, are full of people who are either going through that time of life themselves or who remember it.

Some of today's most successful storytellers have been drawn to this dramatic domain. "Titanic" director James Cameron developed Fox's modest hit, "Dark Angel," now in its second season. In the show, Max, a genetically engineered teenage girl, is searching for her creator and for her true identity.

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