“Newcomers” are just regular folks, although there are villains in their midst, too. But the average alien Joes and Jills have jobs, houses, children, and try to live peacefully among their human counterparts. They also have extensive religious rituals and traditions that are depicted throughout the series.
Like Enemy Mine and the Green Stone of Healing(R) series, Alien Nation directly states that non-human beings can teach the human variety a thing or two about life and spirituality. The Newcomer police officer is paired with a human detective who is initially very unhappy about the arrangement. But the former earns the latter’s respect and affection through his courage, smarts, initiative, and loyalty. The Newcomer demonstrates that these enduring and spiritual character qualities are not the sole province of human beings. Again, the human being is better off for having come to know the alien.
On planet earth, closed off and isolated by the only too human fear that spirituality is just a mirage, many find the former a far more alien concept than the supposition of non-human intelligent beings. Yet all of us, although we may not use spiritual terms to describe our longings, hunger for a sense of community and belonging, a sense of self and of our unique place in this vast universe.
In other words, we long to live our spirituality and its implied relationship with God, however we conceive God to be and by whatever name we call the divine. Yet we struggle with our greatest human fear: that having lost our creator’s “full friendship,” in the words of the Vatican astronomer, we will never be sufficient or worthy enough to reclaim that ultimate spiritual relationship.