By Michael Poirier
Contributing Writer, We Love Soaps Insider
Few moments in soap history were as bizarre—or as unforgettable—as the night Fallon Carrington was abducted by a UFO.
It happened in the final moments of The Colbys, the primetime spinoff of Dynasty. Fallon’s car stalls on a deserted road. Strange lights fill the sky. Drawn toward them, she steps out of her Mercedes and comes face to face with an otherworldly spacecraft. An alien figure appears, beckons her aboard—and just like that, she’s gone, whisked away into the night.
It was the kind of twist that left viewers stunned—and talking. The moment even made national headlines. Unfortunately, the shock value wasn’t enough to save the series. Despite a loyal audience, The Colbys never recovered in the ratings and was canceled soon after. Looking back, one can’t help but wonder if a return to its original timeslot following Dynasty might have given it a fighting chance at a third season.
Still, that infamous cliffhanger has never been forgotten. Decades later, it continues to pop up in conversations about the wildest moments in television history—and it remains a defining part of Emma Samms’ legacy, thanks to her role as Fallon.
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| Emma Samms |
I recently had the opportunity to ask Samms about that unforgettable storyline—and her reaction at the time was just as memorable as the scene itself.
“You have the script of the spaceship episode of The Colbys? My goodness, I don’t think I’ve got mine,” she laughed.
Like everyone else involved, Samms knew the season finale would feature a major cliffhanger. But when she finally read the script, she was taken aback.
“My first thought was, ‘This is completely mad!’ It felt like we were jumping the shark,” she said. “I actually assumed it was a fake script, something they’d given us so the real story wouldn’t leak to the press.”
It wasn’t.
“I made a few quiet inquiries, and they told me, ‘No, this is it. We wanted to do something really different.’ And I thought, ‘Well… it’s certainly that.’”
Despite her initial skepticism, Samms approached the material seriously—because that’s what actors do.
“I did some research into people who claimed they’d been abducted,” she explained. “There were some very serious accounts out there, and I tried to make it as believable as I could from my end.”
Of course, filming the scene was another story entirely.
“There was no spaceship,” she said. “It was basically a truck, and the effects were added later. So no, it didn’t feel very plausible at the time.”
When The Colbys ended shortly afterward, the moment took on a different tone.
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