Story:
Showcasing how immigrants, expats, and other foreigners abroad deal with cultural differences with laughter, optimism, and collaboration between “aliens” and “locals”. The characters would be actual aliens, not humans, to allow for more sensitivity around racial and national matters. The ideas for episodes would come directly from audience.
The alien on the picture was inspired by Sting’s song “Englishman in New York”. This character can be used for a pilot episode. See the Pilot Episode Scenario below.
Mior – The Legal Alien – Animated Character by Valerie Kolomiets
Inspiration:
There are a lot of immigrants in the USA and other parts of the world. They are dreamers, doers, and pioneers who immerse into a foreign country to live, study, travel, create, inspire and be inspired. The “cultural shock” is inevitable. Cultural differences, a language barrier, new customs, old stereotypes… It all clashes sometimes into bittersweet stories – that can be resolved with optimism and laugh! Inspired by my own life (I moved to the USA from Eastern Europe by myself), and amazing stories of those around me.
Audience:
These series would be for older children – I think the age of 10+, as well as for parents, teens, adults. The series would teach the audience about tolerance, celebrate cultural diversity, and promote the idea of how important it is to care about each other and show understanding, kindness, and compassion. Because we are not “aliens” to each other, after all.
Development:
I envision the series to have a different cast of characters for every episode, so each episode is almost an independent short – similar to Black Mirror. The audience would participate in contribution to story ideas, which would keep them highly engaged with the series. I envision creating contests, and then identifying patterns of stories that could speak directly to the experience of many people, or finding a completely unique and inspiring story and building an episode around it.
I have an idea for the first two episodes, based on my own experience and observations. The pilot could be this:
Legal Aliens – a Pilot Episode: “Random Check”
Mior the alien is in a cosmoport of a foreign planet (implication – a green-card or a visa holder flies in or out of the USA). He is called for a “random check” – an additional security protocol. Mior flashes back to all the previous trips (we show 3-4 security checkpoints in the past in different locations) where he also was selected for a “random” check, every time. Mior begins to suspect that those checks may not be that “random” after all, and starts being afraid that he is on some sort of an “intergalactic blacklist”.
When a formidable customs officer asks Mior to follow him for additional questioning, Mior’s fear grows even bigger. He is now afraid of not being able to get in or out of this planet. The officer notices that Mior is concerned, and asks what is going on. Mior explains his situation with being selected for “random” checks all the time. The officer, to Mior’s surprise, shows great compassion and promises to help and get to the bottom of it. They go to a customs office, where the officer finds out that there was an error in a database: Mior was double-recorded under two different statuses, and customs always had to stop him and check if Mior was not an identity thief. However, no one before told Mior about this mistake, and no one fixed it.The officer helps Mior to fix the error, and now the mystery of “random checks” is resolved, and Mior can travel more confidently, without feeling like he is being treated like a “state enemy”.
