Man, Michael Avon Oeming’s come a long, long way from the days when he was toiling away at the American Judge Dredd series at DC, hasn’t he? I remember meeting him at a Philadelphia comic con that had been all but snowed out, with hardly anyone showing up. He was a nice dude, and talked with me and my buddies for a helluva long time without once trying to slip away. Good times, good times. And now, he’s one of the biggest names in the industry, a respected creator, and Fox is developing one of his mini series into a television show. Nice.

While producers are trying to keep a lid on some key details, basic premise of “Them” involves a sleeper cell of extraterrestrial terrorists who take the shape of humans. Their mission is compromised when they start experiencing human emotions, which act like a drug on the aliens.

“On a surface level, it’s a really cool science fiction thriller,” Mostow told Daily Variety. “But underneath, it’s a very provocative show that’s really going to explore what it means to be human, to be a person.”

Indeed, Eick said, much as “Battlestar” is a “metaphor for Iraq, foreign policy and how we view our enemy, ‘Them’ is about the war on terror, writ large.

“The scariest thing about terror cells is how decentralized they are — so their moves are almost impossible to anticipate.”

While the producers are calling the aliens “terrorists,” McNamara said that’s just a shorthand.

“They don’t blow things up. There’s nothing overtly nefarious about them,” he said.

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