Wizards vs. Aliens

- Season 1

(2012)

Sixteen year old Tom Clarke is a wizard - like his late mother and his grandma Ursula but not his father Michael who disapproves of his son using magic to help his school football team. On a field trip to standing stones Tom and his friend Ben find a magic ring,dropped by father and son wizards abducted by the Nekross,aliens who have come to Earth to extract magic from its practitioners. One of the Nekross,Varg,arrives on Earth and captures Tom and Ursula,imprisoning them on their space craft.

Tom manages to teleport himself back to Earth and,accompanied by Benny,enters Ursula's secret magic chamber,where they meet Randal Moon,a hobgoblin attendant on Ursula. Randal casts a spell which takes the boys and Michael to the standing stones where the space ship landed and transports them to the Nekross craft. Although wizards can only cast three successful spells in one day the ship has orbited the Earth and arrived at a new dawn,allowing the group,along with the captive wizards,to magic themselves back to Earth.

Ursula and Randal cast a shrouding spell to shield earthly magic from outer space but the Nekross send a ferocious cat-like creature - the Grazlax - to hunt down Tom when he is at Benny's house. They lock it in the shed whilst Tom casts a spell to divert Benny's parents but when it escapes they force it to retreat,using a hair dryer which kills it.. Unfortunately three more Grazlax babies are released.

The boys are besieged by the new crop of Grazlaa who multiply with heat and seem likely to reproduce into millions. Whilst Tom gets rid of school-mate Katie,who has come to the door as a charity collector,Benny works out that the creatures are allergic to high pitched noises and destroys them with his violin playing - spattering the house with their insides. They bring Ursula in to effect a magical clean-up,which also turns the reproduction ornaments into valuable originals.

Desperate to learn more exciting magic and feeling nagged by his father Tom is happy to befriend the older Jackson Hawke,who uses magic to strip a gang of youths out to mug Tom and who has successfully eluded the Nekross. He is a very powerful young wizard but he uses his magic to play cruel practical jokes,which alarms Benny. Then Benny himself is caught by the Nekross Varg.

Jackson persuades Tom to unleash his hidden depths of magic which blows Varg away. However Benny reports what has happened to Ursula,who tells him that Jackson uses 'grim' or dangerous,provocative magic and is anxious to find the other boys. Jackson lures the Nekross into abducting him and Tom onto their ship to destroy them but Benny is taken too and Tom is perturbed that Jackson is so keen on obtaining victory that he has no regard for Benny's life. It then transpires that Jackson used his powers to make his parents vanish when they annoyed him and Tom prevails upon...

Lexi,the Nekross king's daughter,puts on a necklace which transforms her into a human woman and,calling herself Lucy, travels to Earth and befriends Tom. A cautious Benny,however,is suspicious and realises who she really is. Stephanie Gaunt,a fabulously wealthy woman,has been observing Tom and kidnaps him for his powers,along with Lexi,whom she eventually unmasks as an alien. Benny persuades Ursula to form an alliance with the Nekross to free the pair but Varg and his father plan to renege on the deal as soon as the rescue is effected.

Gaunt tells Tom and Lexi that she wants them to combine their powers to steal her the Crown Jewels. Blocking her security system, Lexi tells Tom of her plan for them to escape and they even establish a rapport, getting to understand each other. Ursula contacts Varg and, along with Benny and Michael, transport themselves to where the prisoners are being held, though they are also captured. By getting Varg to take on Stephanie Gaunt's appearance, her henchmen are sent away and she herself held captive in the room where she kept Lexi and Tom. The alliance was over when ...

Ursula casts a spell to send the Nekross into deep space but only succeeds in making them travel a very short distance but Benny comes up with a detailed plan - which blows up all the school computers - to gather all the exobytes in the universe to defeat the aliens and sends it to them via an email. However when they switch it on it immobilises all the ship's life support systems,dooming them to die within the hour. As the wizards and their friends are celebrating Benny's victory the Nekross appear on his computer and Lexi appeals to Tom to save them.

Whilst Ursula and Michael rightly think the Nekross should be allowed to die Benny inexplicably feels compassion and he and Tom head for the stone circle where Tom uses very strong magic to teleport his friend onto the Nekross ship. This knocks him unconscious but Ursula casts a spell to revive him. Benny saves the Nekross who inevitably show their gratitude by trying to kill him but he transports himself back to Earth and joins the others at the stone circle.

Tom is having nightmares of the night,ten years earlier,when,on Halloween,his mother Helen died after protecting him from an alien force. Soon afterwards he starts to see her and Randal explains that she is a 'pale shadow',come to warn him of danger. Eventually he meets her but she has no memory of who she or Tom are. She directs him to a warehouse,which was her most recent memory but the warehouse is occupied by Nekross,who are making clones of Helen to obtain her magic.

The Nekross explain that when Helen died fighting their probe ray they extracted part of her DNA in order to synthesize clones and recreate her magic. However Helen casts a spell allowing her and the boys to escape home. Randal gives her an amulet which restores her memory but she and Ursula know this cannot last and,after the family has returned to the factory and used magic to destroy the Nekross cloning factories around the world, sending the aliens back to their planet, Helen disappears again,happy in the knowledge that her son will be a powerful wizard.