List of ALF characters

A listing of the characters from the ALF television series that ran between 1986-1990.

Gordon Shumway (ALF)

Gordon Shumway
ALF character
Gordon "ALF" Shumway in the series ALF
First appearance	"ALF"
Last appearance	"Project ALF"
Portrayed by	Paul Fusco
Voiced by	Paul Fusco
Information
Nickname(s)	ALF
Aliases	ALF
Species	Melmacian
Gender	Male
Family	Bob Shumway (father) Flo Shumway (mother) Curtis Shumway (brother) Augie Shumway (sister)
Significant other(s)	Rhonda (girlfriend)
Nationality	Melmac

Gordon Shumway is an alien nicknamed ALF (for Alien Life Form) by Willie Tanner in the pilot episode. ALF was born on October 28, 1756, though he mentions that his birthday is in August in Episode 7 ("Help Me Rhonda") on the Lower East Side of the planet Melmac. Melmac was located six parsecs past the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster and had a green sky, pink grass and a purple sun. The commonly-used currency is Wernicks, and the substance we call lint is as precious on Melmac as gold is on Earth.

ALF's body is covered with rust-colored fur (he once described his color as burnt sienna). He has a rippled snout, facial moles, eight stomachs, his heart is apparently located in his head, and he likes to eat cats and had a best friend on his home planet named Malhar Naik. He attended high school for 122 years and was captain of a Bouillabaisseball team (which is played on ice using shellfish as a ball).

ALF is troublesome, sarcastic and cynical, and sometimes he puts himself at the risk of being discovered while doing some of his often unintentional pranks. However, if things have gone too far, he does as much as possible to make up for his mistakes, generally with good results. In one episode, he tried to help Brian to gain confidence during a school show, because he was too afraid to perform. In another occasion, he helped Dorothy to deal with her husband's death and move on, and accept another man's friendship. He also helped Raquel Ochmonek deal with a depression she suffered, after she became the laughing stock in a TV show.He has at least two cousins "Pretty Boy Shumway" and "Blinky", and has had liposuction. During a bout of amnesia, he believed he was an insurance salesman named Wayne Schlegel.

ALF in animation

Animated Gordon.

ALF: The Animated Series depicts Gordon's life on Melmac before it exploded. Each episode depicts Gordon and his family in some kind of wacky situation. His family members are Bob his father, his mother Flo, his younger brother Curtis, his little sister Augie, his dog, and his bird Harry; Gordon has two friends named Skip and Rick, and a girl he adores named Rhonda. At times, Gordon has to fight "Versus the evil Larson Petty" as he is an orbit guard, sworn to protect the planet from evil doers. During a battle between the orbit guards and Versus, ALF (named Gordon in the series as he gets the nickname ALF from the Tanners) is called to battle when nuclear missiles are used to try and quell the treat of Versus once and for all. Unknown to everyone that the missiles would not only destroy Versus, but the entire planet along with them, Melmac exploded, throwing few orbit guard ships into space. One ship of which was ALF's, who drifted through space for a year before picking up Willie Tanners radio transmission and crash landing on earth. Few other Melmacians were shown to have survived the Holocaust, Skip and Rhonda had escaped the explosion in an interstellar space craft. It is stated in the episode titled "Help me Rhonda" that Alf's other friend Rick got married to a melmacian named Stella, who opened a tanning parlor on Mercury. In the episode titled "Alone again, Naturally" ALF sees his cousin "Blinky" in a car on the highway, but Willy says that they haven't seen a car for hours and ALF was just daydreaming, so its really left up to the viewer if ALF saw Blinky or not, any other surviving Melmacians are unknown at this point although it is possible that more exist as many other orbit guard ships could have suffered the same fate as ALF's, stranded on other unknown planets.

In ALF Tales, he starts the episode featuring the story, and usually appears as the main character of the story.

His animated form also appears in the film Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue.

The Tanner family

Willie

William "Willie" Francis Tanner is the father figure, and a social worker by trade. Willie is a shortwave radio enthusiast, and it was a result of his shortwave radio signals that ALF followed them and crashed into his home. Willie also avidly collects scale model train sets. He attended Claremont High School, then later graduated from UCLA. When Willie uses his ham Radio to call somebody, he uses the callsign "K726XAA".

He was arrested by the Secret Service after ALF made telephone calls to the President in an attempt to convince the President to deactivate the nuclear weapons program and disassemble America's Nuclear Stockpile, which were misconstrued as the alien trying to threaten the president. Like his wife, he was a flower child during the 1960s.

Willie and Alf have a good, if often strained, relationship. They tend to bicker and snipe at one another, but each will also do their best to come to the others aid in times of strife, though Willie tends to be more strict than Alf would like. Next to Brian, Willie seems to have the strongest bond with Alf out of the cast and the two share as many scenes together, if not more, than do Alf and Brian, Willie's first son. Many of the arguments that the characters often engage in revolve around the cross cultural difference between Earth and Melmac, or sometimes simply come about because of some bizarre behavior Alf is engaging in.

Despite their strained relationship, Willie has referred to Alf as being "amazing" and often marvels at some of the things Alf has revealed about the universe beyond the Earth's solar system. Alf holds Willie in high regard for letting him stay with the Tanners and protecting him from the Alien Task Force and despite their arguments, Alf is usually the first to try to help Willie when things go wrong. He is played by Max Wright.

Kate

Katherine "Kate" Daphne Halligan Tanner is the mother figure. In addition to her mother who plays a role in the series, she has at least one sister. She majored in art history and sometimes works in real estate. Like her husband, she was a flower child during the 1960s. In the episode 'Jump' it was mentioned that she once had a poem published in a magazine which was her goal, this shows her interest in poetry. She gives birth to Eric William Tanner in the season three episode, "Having my Baby" (Anne Schedeen was really pregnant during the series so Eric might be Schedeen's child.) She is portrayed by Anne Schedeen.

Lynn

Lynn Tanner (Andrea Elson) is the eldest child of the Tanner family and their only daughter. She was a shy girl whom ALF attempted to make more extroverted. One of ALF's ways to get Lynn to raise her confidence was entering her in a beauty contest. Kate actually confided to Willie once that she was concerned her daughter was spending too much time with ALF, sardonically suggesting that if they weren't careful they might end up with half-alien grandchildren. She often defends ALF's behaviour to her parents.

Over the course of the series, she dates several men, including a boy nicknamed "Lizard", a performer named Robert and an athlete named Danny Duckworth.

Brian

Brian Tanner (Benji Gregory) is the elder son and middle child of the Tanner family. He seems to bond with ALF the most. It is fairly common to see the two paired in scenes together during the series, and Brian is often involved in some of Alf's pranks and schemes. Nicknamed 'B' by the rest of the cast, Brian formed a friendship with the Ochmonech's nephew Jake, who also discovered the existence of Alf, and the three characters were often seen together during the third season of the show. Brian usually acts as the straight man to Alf's jokes and gags out of the duo, but Brian has gotten in a few jokes at Alf's expense during the series as well. They often appear to have a relationship resembling that of siblings despite the gap in their relative ages and cultural differences (Brian was in elementary school during the series' run, while Alf was well over two hundred by the time he arrived on earth.). Brian is also the one who is quickest to worry for Alf's safety if it seems something has happened to him, and Alf seems to have the most regard for Brian's feelings throughout the series than any other member of the cast. Alf will go to great lengths for Brian both to cheer him up if he's upset, or to help out when he needs it though his plans tend to go awry, though Brian usually forgives him for any problems he's caused because he knows the alien is simply trying to help.

Eric

Eric Tanner is the younger son of the Tanner family. He was born during the last episode of the third season.

Lucky

Lucky is the Tanner family's cat. Since cats are a common dinner on Melmac, ALF occasionally tries to eat it, though he refrains from doing so because the Tanners trust him.

Uncle Neal

Neal Tanner is Willie's younger brother, Neal lived with the Tanner family briefly after his wife Margaret left him, before moving on to his own apartment and gaining employment in the same apartment building as a handyman. Neal met Margaret in the Future Farmers group at Claremont High School. ALF originally did not like Neal as he was forced to hide, but eventually got to form some friendship after Willie revealed ALF's existence to Neal. He is portrayed by Jim J. Bullock

Other characters who know about ALF

Dorothy Halligan

Kate's mother is a widow, played by Anne Meara. She has a love-hate relationship with ALF, often threatening to hand him over to the military if he does not behave. She is afraid to remarry, until ALF in his own way convinces her it would be a good idea not to die lonely. She eventually marries a jazz musician nicknamed "Whizzer".

"Whizzer" Deaver

Grandma Dorothy's second husband, played by Paul Dooley, a talented jazz musician. He meets ALF in Season 4 accidentally. He ran into the kitchen where ALF usually hides when there is company, and before the Tanners were able to hide him, Whizzer fainted when he first saw him, and they both eventually came to hate each other.

Jody

A blind woman, portrayed by Andrea Covell, who ALF befriends in the first season of the series. She appeared again in Season 2 when ALF celebrated a reunion, featuring everyone who's ever met him at a party. After she moves out of her apartment, ALF invites her to stay with the Tanners until she finds a new one. When she does find a new apartment, ALF moves in with her uninvited, until Kate and Willie manage to make him move out again. Jody is unaware that ALF is an alien and rather thinks he is just a weird person.

Larry the Shrink

Larry Dykstra, played by Bill Daily, appears in numerous episodes of the ALF TV Series. He first appears in Season 1 when ALF and Willie Tanner have problems living together, in Season 2 when ALF is addicted to a ventriloquist dummy who starts controlling ALF, and one last time in Season 3 when ALF seemed too bored to do anything.

Luis

Luis is a Mexican boy who was taken in for one night by Willie. Luis meets ALF when ALF mistakes him to be the neighbours dog. They have "tilled together" and "mulched together", according to ALF. Luis is the only one not invited back to ALF's reunion featuring the friends who have met him. After the episode featuring Luis, he is never heard from again.

Tiffany

In episodes 12 and 13 of season 2 Alf meets a terminally ill child named Tiffany. They become friends, when they realize that they are both in similar ways alone on this planet.

The Ochmoneks

Trevor

Trevor Ochmonek, played by John LaMotta, is a Master of Arts graduate, who played football for 7 years through high school. He is a veteran of the Korean War, where he served as a pilot. He is a heavy cigar smoker and often unintentionally rude.

Raquel

Raquel Ochmonek, played by Liz Sheridan, always wanted children, but never had any. She is very nosy, often spying on the neighbours with a looking glass and spreading rumors. One time she spots ALF and reports him to the Alien Task Force. When Jake came to live with her, she considers him a replacement for the children she never had. She also was cheerleader in high school and, according to her husband, still has the same figure.

Jake

Jake Ochmonek, played by Josh Blake, is the nephew, who was sent to live with Raquel and Trevor after his father was incarcerated. His mother struggles with kleptomania and is unable to care for Jake. A mechanical genius, he has an unrequited crush on Lynn, although he also falls for a schoolmate named Laura. He was one of ALF's best friends. His girlfriend appeared in one episode in Season 3.

The Alien Task Force and other Government

Various actors appeared in the ALF TV series as the Alien Task Force in many episodes, such as the ALF pilot (both versions), and the Thanksgiving special. Also, many police officers appeared at their house whenever there was chaos in the neighborhood, including when a notable actor appeared as a thief in an episode of Season 1. Also, Air Force One appears in an episode in Season 1, where it shows two men monitoring phone calls made by ALF, until we finally hear Ronald Reagan's voice, but the President does not appear in the show. Two FBI agents showed up at their house when they found out ALF was making phone calls to the President, which were misconstrued as threatening, when in fact Alf was trying to convince the president to disassemble the nuclear weapons program due to nuclear war being the cause of the destruction of Melmac, something he feared would happen to Earth as well if countries continued to stockpile nuclear weapons.

Melmacians

Most Melmacians appear in the animated series. But Rhonda, Skip, and Rick have appeared in the live-action series.

• Bob Shumway, Gordon's father, voiced by Thick Wilson.
• Flo Shumway, Gordon's mother, voiced by Peggy Mahon.
• Curtis Shumway, Gordon's little brother, voiced by Michael Fantini.
• Augie Shumway, Gordon's little sister, voiced by Tabitha St. Germain (as Paulina Gillis^[1]).
• Harry, Shumway family's pet bird.
• Neep, Shumway family's pet vespa, a species like a dog.
• Rhonda, Gordon's girlfriend, voiced by Tabitha St. Germain (as Paulina Gillis^[1]).
• Skipper "Skip", one of Gordon's friends, voiced by Rob Cowan.
• Rick Fusterman, one of Gordon's friends, voiced by Paul Fusco.
• Larson Petty, the villain of the series, voiced by Thick Wilson.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Damian Inwood. "Pi Theatre, Independent Vancouver Theatre >> The Baroness and the Pig". http://pitheatre.com/the-baroness-and-the-pig/. Retrieved October 30, 2011. "That’s what Vancouver actresses Diane Brown and Tabitha St. Germain do with the delightful black comedy, The Baroness and the Pig. (...) St. Germain – better known to Vancouver audiences as Paulina Gillis – plays the Baroness as a naïve gentlewoman, full of prissy mannerisms and twittering, bird-like movements." 

See also

• ALF: The Animated Series
• List of ALF episodes