My Favourite Martian Blog Hop – Isabel Evans

Hey, everybody! I’m glad I found out about the My Favourite Martian Blog Hop in time to join. The rules say that you don’t have to limit yourself to martians, just your favorite alien from books, movies, television or other stories.

I was tempted to just name all the teenage aliens from the show ‘Roswell’, like Trisha did, but the rules said to pick one alien, so I thought about that a little. Considered picking Tess Harding, played by Emilie de Ravin, but I’m still so upset about her last few episodes on the show that I couldn’t agree with Kyle, who did call her his ‘Favorite Martian’ once.

Isabel’s plot arcs on the show weren’t always perfect either, but in general she was a good character who brought some awesome moments to the series. She was a determined young woman, and her bossiness showed in snippets of the ‘ordinary life’ that she clung to like charity drives and perfect Christmas plans for her family, as well as the secret debates with her brother and friends about what was the right thing to do about the next alien menace coming into their lives.

In some ways I think Isabel might have been the most openly vulnerable of the alien foursome on that show. She loved Max and Michael more than anything, like they were both brothers to her, even if she was only adopted with Max. It’d be hard to say whether Isabel or Liz were hit harder when they realized that Max had been taken prisoner by the FBI alien hunters. In the episode ‘Independence Day’, when Michael drunk foster father started getting abusive, Isabel tries to bring him into her own family, inviting him for dinner and family game night. She never mentions it out loud, but I thought Isabel hoped that Michael might get adopted by her parents too. That doesn’t happen, but it’s Isabel who comes up with the idea of getting Michael emancipated, and she was probably the one to talk her lawyer father into helping, though we don’t see that conversation.

Isabel’s also vulnerable through her love for her parents, who she has to keep so many secrets from for years. In the episode ‘Toy house’, their mother starts to suspect Max’s abilities when he saves her from an oil fire in the kitchen, and Isabel quarrels with Max, wanting to tell her everything, and she’s a little heart-broken even after Max finds a way to ‘fix’ the situation and put Mom’s doubts to rest. More than anything, she wanted to find a way to be honest with her mother, to actually show that side of herself. It isn’t until the last few episodes that Mom and Dad Evans find out about Isabel’s abilities, (by putting a spycam in her bedroom,) and though that starts another huge blow-out argument, in the end Isabel is relieved that the truth was finally told.

Moving on a little bit, one of the coolest things about Isabel was her unique power – the dream walk. In the original ‘Roswell High’ paperbacks the alien’s powers weren’t so distinctive, so they could all heal as well as Max does and all enter other people’s dreams, but the writers for the show introduced the notion that some of the alien abilities are more like natural talents. Isabel usually curls up in bed, touches a photo of the person she wants to orient on, and sort of slips into a trance or a sleep state of her own. She can see what that person is dreaming about, and either spy without generally being noticed, or interact with the dreamer.

Later on, she gets talked into pushing these powers to the limits. She enters Max’s mind while he’s awake, but being drugged and interrogated by the FBI alien hunters, and manages to see something from his recent memories that gives her a clue as to where he’s being held prisoner. Later, she pushes into the mind of the lead alien hunter, while the others are interrogating him to find out what happened to Nasedo, the slightly homicidal alien protector, and is able to catch a picture of the memory. Finally, she tries to use her powers to warn Max that the aliens he went to New York with couldn’t be trusted, but as he was wide awake she couldn’t get Max to pay any attention to what she was trying to tell him. So instead she connects Liz Parker to Max’s mind. Max enters a sort of trance and sees Liz there in New York, visibly shouting but Max can’t hear anything. So he walks closer to her – and out of the way of a construction platform that would otherwise have fallen on top of him.

When talking about why I love Isabel as a character, I have to mention her romance with Alex Whitman, even though it doesn’t have a happy ending. At first Alex is just sort of awkward and dumbstruck by Isabel’s beauty, but when Alex learns that the FBI was investigating Max, Isabel dreamwalks Alex to learn what was on his mind, and sees a sweet fantasy date where Alex dances with a dream version of herself with Save Ferris playing their music live, and tells her that he knows she wears a mask, but can trust him to see the real girl underneath without hurting her.

Isabel invited Alex to a rave and tries to charm him into keeping quiet about his suspicions, but Alex sees through her manipulation and storms off. Later that year, when Alex knows the secret, and Isabel learns that she really can trust Alex, opening up with him about little things, like her knowledge of astronomy, that she never shares with anyone else through the show. And she alternates between leaning on Alex more and more when the alien unknowns in her life start scaring her – and avoiding him or pushing him away because she’s scared of how much she’s starting to rely on him.

Okay, I think I’ve rambled on enough for now. Thanks for visiting me and reading through my entry for this bloghop, and I’ll leave you with one last reason Isabel is my favorite alien…

She’s kinda pretty, ain’t she? 😉