Trivia

The pilot episode was the highest-testing episode "20th Century Fox" had ever done.

Fearing cancellation during the show's first season, fans of "Roswell" sent tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce (the choice condiment of the show's aliens) to the WB network as part of a campaign to save the show. Roswell was subsequently moved to a new night and time and renewed for a second season.

There is an hour of unaired footage from "The Departure" episode floating around the internet. The episode was originally two hours long, but at the last minute, the WB network would only give Roswell a regular hour-long slot, so they had to cut an hour of footage to make the episode fit into the time slot.

Katherine Heigl tested for all three female leads before landing the part of Isabel Evans. Before winning the role of Maria DeLuca, Majandra Delfino originally auditioned for the part of Liz, which eventually went to Shiri Appleby who, like Heigl, tested for all three female lead roles, winning the lead of Liz Parker after several callbacks.

Executive producer Jonathan Frakes appears on-screen near the end of the first episode. He is the man on stage that announces the crash of the U.F.O. He appears twice more as himself, once as a guest speaker in season one, episode thirteen, "The Convention," and another in season three, episode four, "Secrets and Lies", where he holds a casting audition for Max on the show "Star Trek: Enterprise (2001)."