Originally posted by Reschke
I missed it and I was wanting to watch it but had to take my son to the Christmas parade and had a blast with him.
Your son was the better entertainment value.
As far as I could tell, the plotline went something like this:
(I missed the beginning, so I'll have to pick it up from where I first started watching it.) An older man with two young boys is staring at the wreckage of a UFO. Suddenly, an Army officer emerges from the craft. John Madden is describing what the Jets need to do to stop the Raiders offensive package that features the venerable Jerry Rice and an always-dangerous Tim Brown who is just shy of making his 1,000 catch in his NFL career. A man is sleeping in his farm-house with his wife next to him and wakes up to nightmares of German officer and doctors coming to bring him back (to where?). He wakes up and his wife is comforting him, trying to find out what's troubling her husband. He doesn't want to talk about it because she wouldn't understand. He just has flashes of memories that are being suppressed by his sub-conscious, of him being strapped down onto a cot while doctors poke him with needles. Rich Gannon starts the Raiders drive at the Raider 27 with a hand-off to Charlie Garner on a draw play. Gannon's next plays are hand-offs to Garner and passes to Rice and Brown. They drive down into Jets' territory but the Jets defense rallies and Janikowski kicks a field goal.
A waitress at a local diner gets off work and goes home to feed her two kids. She's a single mom struggling to make ends meet in her rural household. One night she's smoking a cigarette in bed and hears a noise outside, so she lights a camping lantern and goes to investigate. Its windy outside and the door to the tool shed is banging in the wind. She goes over and hears something inside the shed. She goes in finds a man hiding in the shadows. "Help me", he says, so she takes him into the house and lets him sleep in her son's room and pooh-poohs her son's questions and objections about the man. Chad Morton takes the kick-off out to the Jets' 40-something yard line and Pennington shows some of his rookie-season magic, but the Jets can't score and are forced to punt. Meanwhile, the husband is boarding up the windows to his house so that "they can't get in." Of course, the wife doesn't understand what he's talking about and objects - "How are we going to get out?".
At a US Army base, a team of scientists are examining wreckage from a UFO crash site and have managed to recover alien bodies, including one that's still alive. Apparently, the alien cells have the ability to transform into anything the scientists can imagine, and the living specimen is able to become invisible and crawl upside down on walls. One of the scientists is inside the room, chanting in Hebrew, as if in some sort of trance. Gannon's Raiders get the ball back and march down the field but can't score. Meanwhile, the husband from the first storyline continues to have nightmares, wakes up one night, goes to his desk and pulls out a listing of his bomber crew and starts making phone calls. The Jets get the ball back but can't do anything with it and are forced to punt.
The waitress is talking to her new friend on the back porch of her rural house, getting all mishy-mashy. Back at the base, a local Army officer is starting to piece together the pieces of the puzzle and knows that the wreckage they recovered wasn't from Earth. He doesn't know about the aliens yet. Gannon completes passes downfield to Rice and Brown, supplemented by some strong rushing by Garner, and the Raiders are able to get the ball within field goal range. Janikowski bangs it through. The husband reveals that he's made calls to the families of his crew and has learned that all of them are dead except for him and his co-pilot, and his co-pilot is gravely ill in a hospital and not expected to recover. He packs his suitcase and makes plans to speak with the ailing co-pilot. The Jets are moving down the field and Chad Pennington completes a pass underneath that allows some no-name runningback to run 10 yards for the Jets' first touchdown.
One of the scientists at the US Army base thinks he's 14 again and is reliving his barmitzvah. He enters the room where the alien is being held and says "I'm here to see my father." Gannon takes the Raiders down the field, but they can't convert on third down and they're forced to punt. The Jets get the ball down the field inside Raiders territory and kick a field goal. At the half its 10-6 Jets.
A couple of scientists at the US Army base have found the dead body of the Jewish scientist, along with the dead body of the alien. How a pencil-necked scientist under the influence of an alien can have the strength to kill it isn't answered. Meanwhile, the husband is interviewing the co-pilot and the co-pilot tells him all about their stay in captivity, how they were held down on cots and used for medical experiments, and how the husband was "a real Audie Murphy" and managed to break loose and shoot the German doctors and guards with a machine gun that they had set near the head of a cot - "But we both know they weren't really Germans. Its as if they didn't even know what the machine gun was for." The husband flashes back and realizes that the doctors were actually aliens and that his crew was being subjected to experiments.
A scientist from the US Army base is pulled over by the sheriff on a remote road in the rain. The sheriff asks the scientist to step out of the vehicle, but doesn't say why the scientist is being pulled over, so you know something bad is about to happen. Just then, the US Army officer steps out of the gloom and apologizes for the unorthodox methods, but there's a security leak at the base and he's conducting an investigation and wants to ask the scientist some questions. The scientist tells him about the aliens' shape-shifting and mind control abilities. The Raiders get the ball but can't do anything and are forced to punt.
A woman pulls up to her mobil home and goes inside. Just as she turns on the light, a man goes "Boo!" and startles her. Its the US Army officer and she's his wife (or something like that). They exchange pleasantries and he turns away, then suddenly turns back and slugs her, then continues to pummel her as she's on the floor. The Jets get the ball on the kickoff but don't really get much of a return. They move the ball down the field but are forced to punt. The Raiders get the ball back and Tim Brown makes his 1,000th catch of his career. The game is stopped for 4 minutes while everybody celebrates. The US Army officer is meeting with the base commander and shows him a piece of the UFO that he's had examined. He knows that the debris isn't from Earth and he knows about the aliens that the scientists have been studying. He threatens to reveal what he knows unless the base cooperates with his investigation. As he turns to leave, he reveals that he would never harm his wife (or whatever she was) - "She is the Sun and the Moon to me."
Play has resumed and Gannon is marching the Raiders down the field, scoring on a short pass to Rice in the end zone. The waitress is at the diner, but is sitting in the bathroom with pregnancy-induced nausea, a bit of a scandal for an unwed mother in the '40s. The kindly short-order cook makes her comfortable and helps serve the dishes to the diner's patrons. Back at the base, the US Army officer launches an investigation to find an alien that's loose while the Jets try to move the ball down the field but are forced to punt. The Raiders get the ball back but they can't move so they punt too. Just as Chad Morton fields the punt deep in Jets territory, he's drilled by a Raider and fumbles the ball. Raiders get the ball and convert for a score.
The waitress returns to her house and tells the strange man she had found in her shed that a Army officer is in town looking for him. He explains that he must leave and she tells him to take her with him. Of course he can't, so she gives him a little piece of jewelry to remember him by. There's bright blinding flash of light and he's gone. Meanwhile, the Army officer and some cops are out on a nearby road when their car stalls and won't start. They look up and see 3 lights zip off into the sky. The Army officer drives on up to the lady's house and introduces himself. He says "He's already left, hasn't he?" and she nods. Pennington is guiding the Jets down the field in the 2-minute drill and get down to the 35, but on the last play he overthrows the Hail Mary pass and its picked off by the Raiders. Jets lose by 3 points.
