1832 The 4400 season three ends

As with the second series, the 4400 has got better and better with each episode and builds up to an excellent crescendo of action and revelation which appears to set out the full story behind the series, but still provides no indication why it is to end in mid air, or does it, with the conclusion of the 4th and final season. As with the first two seasons there are the regulars and the comings and goings, including several resurrections.

The second part of the season begins with Bling which can be regarded as a divertissement. A young woman commits suicide as do two others and the cause appears to be a 4400 lady who found that oil from her hands had the effect of causing people she touched to come into hallucinatory contact with relatives or former partners with whom they continue to have unresolved issues.

Diana and Tom each receive a basket of cookies ostensibly from each other home delivered which given that they work in the same office is a little surprising and amazingly they both start to eat the gift before checking with each other. Given they are supposed to be crème a la crème operatives of the FBI seconded to the special 4400 monitoring, support and control unit and it has been established they the individuals can do what they like with the future being able to intervene at will this act of stupidity on their party should not have passed the editorial decision makers.

However the episode has a well intentioned purpose in providing a way for the viewer to understand how they became as they are. Tom meets his long departed father who was a street cop, drank too much and took out his frustrations and the impact of his job on his wife and son.

This usually results in high achievers who are self reliant with a tendency to become over dependent on work for their continuing sense of identity and equilibrium and explains the failure of his first marriage. His second “wife” is in fact an artificial creation of the future to provide the kind of support a true creative requires if he is to flourish.

Tom failed to get to his father’s bedside before he died. At the end of the programme they have a long chat before he returns from whence he came! Diana also has an interchange with the boyfriend who cheated on her just before their wedding and which has lead her never to having a serious relationship since. At present she is dating Marco the 4400 government unit geek but the hallucinatory drug makes her realise that the relationship will not progress and this is unfair to the young man. They are two of the most unlikely matchings in TV relationship history, and it is not surprising that the editors had to find away to create a more likely individual..

Before the four episodes viewed have concluded both Diana and Tom are into satisfying relationships with potential long term significance, but not with each other. This impression does not last!

Maia has an insight that Diana will marry a creative photographer who like Diana has been to India. In order to introduce the young man the plot fabrication is for her banished sister to call one day and to bring her fiancée to meet Diana as she has come back to Seattle where the boyfriend lives.

Diana discounts Maia‘s prediction but tells the young man why they should not have contact when he calls to bring her a framed photo of an area of India which they both know. However her sister calls to complain that Diana is responsible for breaking them up and when Diana confronts him he explains that even if they are not to get together the prophecy from a 4400 made him question the suitability of the sister for a life partner. When they accidentally meet at the supermarket they both accept there is chemistry between them and have a proper date in secret with the sister acting a baby sitter for Maia.

I have trying to decide if the failure of Diana in particular to give appropriate regard to Maia’s revelations is simply a plot weakness. Everything she has seen and said has proved accurate after all. Ryland, who is painted as the baddie, appears the only individual in the world who fully understands the implications of the return of the 4400 although he appears to have been given all the financial help, manpower and authority anyone could need to combat the threat. However once the threat was established any and all governments would have formally established mechanisms to combat the situation, in so far as anyone is able to do so, and I am yet to work out if the allegory is a fundamentalist Christian one with the future representing divine and devilish intervention and the conflict who are opposed to radical change because it threatens their individual and corporate interests between them or the difference between fundamental Muslims who want to change the world peacefully or use force to do so and the interests, primarily capitalist, arms dealers, militarists, pharmaceutical, government organisations and such like

Tom’s “wife” Alana is officially allowed to come back to the USA for reasons which will be explained in a moment and similarly Tom’s son Kyle is freed from prison where he has been serving a long sentence for the murder of Jordan Collier and refusing to have contact with his father. Things are looking good for the two investigators and monitors of the series who form a kind of X files duo.

There are three related major subjects as the seasons unfolds. The first is the attempt by Dr Burkoff to create a synthetic form of the chemical which appears to have given the 4400 their special powers but which have turned him into a horrible looking individual who has to continually regenerate himself to survive but with increasing difficulty. He is being assisted by the schizophrenic young girl at the psychiatric unit with the power to make people do things who got them to create the communication device which enabled Dr Burkoff to break out of his condition and begin to function as he had done before the onset of the illness. Why the future did not cure him before his return is a puzzle though. Because he believes the experiment is failing due to his metabolic construction he decides that his assistant should use her ability to make people do things to transfer the experiment to Diana. Why he does not just transfer the experiment to his assistant is another of those editorial storyline moves which makes this less than a top notch series despite the excellence of the overall concept

He is stopped before doing damage by Tom, after a team from the Ryland Group shoot him four times and leave him for dead but he survives and moves on Diana. Meanwhile we learn that Isabelle’s visits to the Ryland laboratory has been to create a huge supply of chemical which she is able to provide naturally and to do so in a quantity which is staggering as we are shown a vast area of phials stacked on shelves row upon row and amounting to three years supply for purposes we are yet to be advised. The shoot of the stacks reminded me of scenes from the X files as it reached its conclusion.

Dr Burkoff goes on the run with the his female assistant and changes back to his normal good looking self thus proving that he has found a way to create the chemical in a laboratory. As Ryland points out scientists all over the world will have been doing likewise and paying 4400’s untold wealth for their cooperation or taking them into state control. Government would be con entreating on the military and economic value while criminal and pharmaceutical corporations would be looking at the commercial opportunities. The Chinese would have been first, the Russian following closely with teh British doing it on the quiet.

The appearance of Dr Burkoff reminded of the beauty and beast transformation of the Troll into the beautiful Princess in the recent Merlin episode. This week there was reprise of the Mr Hyde and Jekyll concept as a beautiful young orphan Druid girl had been given up to the local mercenary witch finder and taken to the city for a reward from the king who Merlin rescues and falls in love only to find that she turns into a murderous monster at night. As is common with every episode there are several silly moments as well as touching ones and can be said to have replaced Dr Who as a Saturday night after football fixture as the latter has moved more to a late more adult audience.

In the 4400 episode there are three killings in the Seattle area where the victims are turned into solid blocks which I thought were wood like. Each of the victims has a number pinned to them which the team work out is a message although why the operative choose to do this is never made satisfyingly clear. A similar kind of coded message is provided in this week’s episode of Spooks.

In Spooks we are back to the unit facing a major terrorist threat which appears to be managed by the Russians after capturing a terrorist. Why the Russians should be behind such a move is the odd aspect of this programme. This is the story put forward by the Russian captor of Luke who tortured and befriended him for four years who comes to London offering to reveal information about the plot for a passport and a million dollars. Don’t the script writers know that a million dollars will only sustain a lifestyle for a year or two these days. A billion dollars and you are talking. Luke and the Russian play cat and mouse with each other and with their superiors until everyone works out the operative has instigated the whole thing to get the money and a new life.

The underlying storyline is the news that there has been a secret meeting of allegedly rogue western spooks with the Chinese to change the the world order, although it is not year clear if this a good or bad thing similarly to the master plot of the 4400. The USA controller of the beautiful Marta Hari who is having a lecherous affair with Luke and which is getting serious, tells Luke’s boss about the meeting in order he should be on his guard as someone from the UK is thought to have been involved. The crunch is when Marta Hari throws her boss to his death when she realises he is coming close to identifying her as the USA individual attending the meting. She was captured by the Russian defector suspicious of her cover story and who is rescued by Luke as he saves the city of London by getting the Russian to reveal the bomb code to his colleague with two seconds to spare, real Bond style that.
The Russian is handed over to his bosses in act of British solidarity! No! revenge, knowing they will sort him out in ways which the British justice system does not allow.

The 4400 Jekyll and Hyde episode is called the Starzi Mutation. (Starzi is the real name of a specialist in transplants although spelt different it is also associated with the dreaded former East German secret service.) In the fictional work there was a problem which arose in the Seattle area when a flawed radio therapy machine caused slight mutations among a number of patients. There were over 100 individuals involved. What emerges is that
whereas a 4400 returnee who becomes a parent with a normal human being only produce a normal child, with one of the Starzi mutations they produced a 4400 powers child although it is not clear if they are Shaun’s the healers or Isabelle, the apocalypse! This is why many of the returnees settled in the Seattle area.

The government has selected a small team of service personnel to use the Isabelle provided chemical to develop super solder fighting powers. The individuals have all been reported dead to their families and one of the has gone AWOL after having problems. He goes after those affected by the radio therapy machine fault. The number pinned to them is the same as they appear on the official list and also official number of one of the soldiers reported dead whose body was never recovered and which leads the government monitoring unit to find the rogue soldier and his friend who kill each other.

The lack of clarity about motives for the behaviour is not revealed until the last episodes of the season. When Diana and Tom confront Denis Ryland he is forced to admit they have been creating the special unit of solders and pre-empt any independent disclosure by holding a press conference. Ryland defends the unit to Tom and Diana saying that the special soldiers are there to protect the interests of the USA and Tom or Diana makes the statement that the real intention is to go for the 4400, Ryland replies that controlling the 4400 and defending against the misuse of their special powers is what defending the interests of the USA is all about. This is a rational position

Behind the development is Isabelle who had moved her obsession of a relationship with Shaun into a marriage, contacted his family and inviting all the 4400 to the wedding. 1000 of them accept and one seeks a personal interview with Shaun to give one his manufacture red cigars in a presentation case. He discloses that his power is to enable people to see something of their own future and he has created the cigar for Shaun to look into his. Isabelle has admitted to Shaun that she had done bad things and will continue to do them and that Shaun is her counterpoint and the only person who may be able to stop her. Shaun who does not want to marry her decides to try out the cigar and has three insights. One is an extension of the other in which he is responsible for the death of Richard and the other he is unable to stop the death of Tom. All three visions occur in a world where war and terror has broken out between 4400 and their supporters and the states and their supporter. The first reaction of Shaun to is pull out of the marriage but he then decides to go through with the wedding in order to see if he can change what is to happen. Meanwhile Richard has developed kinetic powers which he tries to harness and one exercise is to think knives to fly off the kitchen shelf into a target and where the viewer has no doubt he has his errant daughter in mind.

This leads to the tour de force programme of the series so far, first tailored in the last frame at the end of the second season. Shaun comes out to greet the 4400 attendees before his wedding and one of them comes forward looking very much some depictions of Jesus of Nazareth but who is none other than the resurrected Jordan Collier. He then disappears and Tom and Diana are brought in to try and find him with Tom having the added incentive that if Jordan is alive then his son was wrongly convicted of murder. But Jordan is difficult to track down as he appears to have been all over the world at different times as a preacher Messiah and where his portrait has been created in mosaic tiles everywhere that a following has developed.

The two discover his diary which contains an epileptic(?) story about the future. Jordan visits Kyle in prison and when Tom and Diana find him, he still has no recollection of who is except that her has wondered through time as well as the earth world and that he has been to the future. This is the reason that Alana is brought back from her position as a fugitive in order to help Collier remember his identity which she does successfully.

His return unsettles Isabelle who misled Collier into believing he would not be assassinated. Collier orders her out of the centre and she joins the Ryland enterprise full time.

The next development is that the surviving members of the Nova group who are in custody are released by a member of the 4400 with the power to temporarily knock out all the staff including its security personnel.

This action is part of the Jordan Collier’s plan which he has kept from Shaun. He and Richard then tell Shaun they are planning to raid the military base where Ryland is using the Isabelle’s chemical to create the super military elite special force. Shaun is so upset that they are about kill people that he discloses that Collier was behind the break out of the Nova group and their plan to attack the special unit. This is in fact a blind for the real activity as Shaun is no longer trusted. The release of the Nova group was aimed at making use of the shape shifter He poses as Ryland and orders the moving of the three year store of chemicals made into 1700 units and the 4400 take possession. Ryland’s reaction is to believe the intention is to destroy the supply but then there is an internet video explaining that the substance will be distributed. The video is made at a safe house which the 4400 monitoring unit manage to locate. However when they arrived they find that Shaun has been called there to try and save the sister of the person who has made the video and who has taken the chemical and is showing an immediate adverse reaction. She dies. Shaun is taken into custody to try and find the location of the total supply. Tom and Diana confront Ryland who admits that some people have an adverse reaction within the first 48 hours and die. Half the selected 20 soldiers have died one way or the other. Hence the last episode of the third series is called 50 50.

Alana is persuaded to interrogate Shawn as a way to prevent torture being used and for her stay in the USA to be made official. However before she can see Shaun, Ryland arrives with the power to interrogate Shaun using Isabelle to get the information and she sends Shaun into a coma where he remains as the season ends. When they reach the centre where the supplies are being held first they find that the look alike drugs are fakes, then that Collier is in fact the shape shifter and that the place is wired for a major explosion. There si no explanation how the look alike drugs were created so quickly although one imagines Dr Burkoff was the brains for this development

Before she has obtained the information from Shaun Isabelle admits that she was created in order to kill all the 4400, something part of her did not want to do and she thought by giving the stuff to Ryland she would be able to achieve a standoff between the 4400 changing things and the her mission to kill them. She saw the marriage with Shaun, assuming Collier was dead, as another good way to achieve a synthesis between the thesis and antithesis, the equilibrium of the dialectic.

Ryland survives yet again, the third assassination attempt and so does Isabelle whose plan having failed sets out for the 4400 centre on a mission to kill all the members in her path.

Having seen what Isabelle has done to Shaun, Tom collects the syringe given to him by the future having reached the conclusion that killing her has become justified.

The relationship between Diana and the photographer has progressed. He has returned from London and asks Diana to leave her job and go with him to Spain where he has accepted a job which will last six months. Eventually Maia tells Diana’s sister about the relationship and predicted marriage as the sister has been sitting moping about her lost love and hoping he will come back to her. She is not as angry as Diana anticipated and comes to the conclusion she is not destined to have the stable long term relationship and effectively wishes the new couple well. Maia has seen that the sister will attend the wedding.

Because of the events at the centre Diana removes Maia from the school against the wishes of the girl but she returns when Diana is called away and on the day when Isabelle goes on the rampage and enters the class room asking which child will she kill first. Maia stand up to warn her that what she is doing will not work just as Diana comes in and shoots Isabelle down with Tom close behind to inject her the substance given by the future. However Isabelle recovers from the gunshots, the resurrections abound, and she knocks the syringe out of Tom’s hands and attempts to kill both Tom and Diana. Richard uses his kinetic power to move the syringe into the neck of Isabelle who collapses and then rises. Tom shoot her to be safe although subsequent tests reveal that she is back to being a normal human being without powers. Isabelle and Shaun are seen in adjacent wards in the hospital side by side, their futures uncertain.

Diana and Maia call to say goodbye to Tom and Diana before their trip to Spain. Maia tells Alana that they will be back sooner than everyone thinks.

Kyle, Tom‘s son having been released from prison is expected to return to High School. He goes to see Collier who explains that what happened was necessary with both playing preordained parts. Kyle is impressed with the mission and decides to leave home and to work for the centre in whatever way Collier ordains. Alana who having fulfilled her mission expects to be allowed to remain with Tom and is suddenly whisked away from him by the future. Has his mission been completed with the neutralising of Isabelle?

Collier has already arranged for the real Isabelle produced chemical to be distributed by the 4400 to the most needy, the underclass which includes the very old and the sick with everyone given a warning that there is only a fifty fifty chance of it working and of dying if it does not. Most of those who accept the offer feel they have nothing else to lose. It is like being given the opportunity to become a lottery millionaire on the spin of a coin. Heads you win, tails you die. The 4400 centre appears to have been closed by the authorities and 4400 dispersed with Collier reflecting on what has happened from a log cabin by a lake- the lake?

In the final scene one of those accepting a syringe is Diana’s sister/ This is all warm up for the 4th season which was in fact the last although it ends in mid air with more questions than answers, so I am led to believe.

The X files series has been running on various Satellite channels and recently I looked in at the conclusion of an episode of Babylon 5 and saw that it was moving into its last phase as the plot for the whole series is uncovered and as with Babylon 5 a concentrated effort on going through all the seasons of series is justified but whether I will have time remains to be determined. The X files was a wondrous series for the conspiracy theorist with the basic question have terrestrial landed and their technology used by the government or perhaps they have been dictating to the government or was it all a splendid government creation to out manoeuvre the Soviet enemy. The series also has the power group within the state. Was is certain is that such groups exists within every state and between states and cuts across the usual differences. For example Past President’s of the USA government have get-to-gether’s and are invited to other groups of former leaders and with the people who walk with Presidents and Kings. The existence of such meetings is not generally secret although the precise information about locations and times usually is for security reasons. There are usually formal minutes which are checked and circulated to those attending but the main activity comes form private social occasions involving individuals, sub groups and the whole group. Often there is closeness reached between individuals who have held the same position as there are between people of the same political parties, religions, commercial interests and such like. It is the way of the world.

1832 The 4400 season three ends

As with the second series, the 4400 has got better and better with each episode and builds up to an excellent crescendo of action and revelation which appears to set out the full story behind the series, but still provides no indication why it is to end in mid air, or does it, with the conclusion of the 4th and final season. As with the first two seasons there are the regulars and the comings and goings, including several resurrections.

The second part of the season begins with Bling which can be regarded as a divertissement. A young woman commits suicide as do two others and the cause appears to be a 4400 lady who found that oil from her hands had the effect of causing people she touched to come into hallucinatory contact with relatives or former partners with whom they continue to have unresolved issues.

Diana and Tom each receive a basket of cookies ostensibly from each other home delivered which given that they work in the same office is a little surprising and amazingly they both start to eat the gift before checking with each other. Given they are supposed to be crème a la crème operatives of the FBI seconded to the special 4400 monitoring, support and control unit and it has been established they the individuals can do what they like with the future being able to intervene at will this act of stupidity on their party should not have passed the editorial decision makers.

However the episode has a well intentioned purpose in providing a way for the viewer to understand how they became as they are. Tom meets his long departed father who was a street cop, drank too much and took out his frustrations and the impact of his job on his wife and son.

This usually results in high achievers who are self reliant with a tendency to become over dependent on work for their continuing sense of identity and equilibrium and explains the failure of his first marriage. His second “wife” is in fact an artificial creation of the future to provide the kind of support a true creative requires if he is to flourish.

Tom failed to get to his father’s bedside before he died. At the end of the programme they have a long chat before he returns from whence he came! Diana also has an interchange with the boyfriend who cheated on her just before their wedding and which has lead her never to having a serious relationship since. At present she is dating Marco the 4400 government unit geek but the hallucinatory drug makes her realise that the relationship will not progress and this is unfair to the young man. They are two of the most unlikely matchings in TV relationship history, and it is not surprising that the editors had to find away to create a more likely individual..

Before the four episodes viewed have concluded both Diana and Tom are into satisfying relationships with potential long term significance, but not with each other. This impression does not last!

Maia has an insight that Diana will marry a creative photographer who like Diana has been to India. In order to introduce the young man the plot fabrication is for her banished sister to call one day and to bring her fiancée to meet Diana as she has come back to Seattle where the boyfriend lives.

Diana discounts Maia‘s prediction but tells the young man why they should not have contact when he calls to bring her a framed photo of an area of India which they both know. However her sister calls to complain that Diana is responsible for breaking them up and when Diana confronts him he explains that even if they are not to get together the prophecy from a 4400 made him question the suitability of the sister for a life partner. When they accidentally meet at the supermarket they both accept there is chemistry between them and have a proper date in secret with the sister acting a baby sitter for Maia.

I have trying to decide if the failure of Diana in particular to give appropriate regard to Maia’s revelations is simply a plot weakness. Everything she has seen and said has proved accurate after all. Ryland, who is painted as the baddie, appears the only individual in the world who fully understands the implications of the return of the 4400 although he appears to have been given all the financial help, manpower and authority anyone could need to combat the threat. However once the threat was established any and all governments would have formally established mechanisms to combat the situation, in so far as anyone is able to do so, and I am yet to work out if the allegory is a fundamentalist Christian one with the future representing divine and devilish intervention and the conflict who are opposed to radical change because it threatens their individual and corporate interests between them or the difference between fundamental Muslims who want to change the world peacefully or use force to do so and the interests, primarily capitalist, arms dealers, militarists, pharmaceutical, government organisations and such like

Tom’s “wife” Alana is officially allowed to come back to the USA for reasons which will be explained in a moment and similarly Tom’s son Kyle is freed from prison where he has been serving a long sentence for the murder of Jordan Collier and refusing to have contact with his father. Things are looking good for the two investigators and monitors of the series who form a kind of X files duo.

There are three related major subjects as the seasons unfolds. The first is the attempt by Dr Burkoff to create a synthetic form of the chemical which appears to have given the 4400 their special powers but which have turned him into a horrible looking individual who has to continually regenerate himself to survive but with increasing difficulty. He is being assisted by the schizophrenic young girl at the psychiatric unit with the power to make people do things who got them to create the communication device which enabled Dr Burkoff to break out of his condition and begin to function as he had done before the onset of the illness. Why the future did not cure him before his return is a puzzle though. Because he believes the experiment is failing due to his metabolic construction he decides that his assistant should use her ability to make people do things to transfer the experiment to Diana. Why he does not just transfer the experiment to his assistant is another of those editorial storyline moves which makes this less than a top notch series despite the excellence of the overall concept

He is stopped before doing damage by Tom, after a team from the Ryland Group shoot him four times and leave him for dead but he survives and moves on Diana. Meanwhile we learn that Isabelle’s visits to the Ryland laboratory has been to create a huge supply of chemical which she is able to provide naturally and to do so in a quantity which is staggering as we are shown a vast area of phials stacked on shelves row upon row and amounting to three years supply for purposes we are yet to be advised. The shoot of the stacks reminded me of scenes from the X files as it reached its conclusion.

Dr Burkoff goes on the run with the his female assistant and changes back to his normal good looking self thus proving that he has found a way to create the chemical in a laboratory. As Ryland points out scientists all over the world will have been doing likewise and paying 4400’s untold wealth for their cooperation or taking them into state control. Government would be con entreating on the military and economic value while criminal and pharmaceutical corporations would be looking at the commercial opportunities. The Chinese would have been first, the Russian following closely with teh British doing it on the quiet.

The appearance of Dr Burkoff reminded of the beauty and beast transformation of the Troll into the beautiful Princess in the recent Merlin episode. This week there was reprise of the Mr Hyde and Jekyll concept as a beautiful young orphan Druid girl had been given up to the local mercenary witch finder and taken to the city for a reward from the king who Merlin rescues and falls in love only to find that she turns into a murderous monster at night. As is common with every episode there are several silly moments as well as touching ones and can be said to have replaced Dr Who as a Saturday night after football fixture as the latter has moved more to a late more adult audience.

In the 4400 episode there are three killings in the Seattle area where the victims are turned into solid blocks which I thought were wood like. Each of the victims has a number pinned to them which the team work out is a message although why the operative choose to do this is never made satisfyingly clear. A similar kind of coded message is provided in this week’s episode of Spooks.

In Spooks we are back to the unit facing a major terrorist threat which appears to be managed by the Russians after capturing a terrorist. Why the Russians should be behind such a move is the odd aspect of this programme. This is the story put forward by the Russian captor of Luke who tortured and befriended him for four years who comes to London offering to reveal information about the plot for a passport and a million dollars. Don’t the script writers know that a million dollars will only sustain a lifestyle for a year or two these days. A billion dollars and you are talking. Luke and the Russian play cat and mouse with each other and with their superiors until everyone works out the operative has instigated the whole thing to get the money and a new life.

The underlying storyline is the news that there has been a secret meeting of allegedly rogue western spooks with the Chinese to change the the world order, although it is not year clear if this a good or bad thing similarly to the master plot of the 4400. The USA controller of the beautiful Marta Hari who is having a lecherous affair with Luke and which is getting serious, tells Luke’s boss about the meeting in order he should be on his guard as someone from the UK is thought to have been involved. The crunch is when Marta Hari throws her boss to his death when she realises he is coming close to identifying her as the USA individual attending the meting. She was captured by the Russian defector suspicious of her cover story and who is rescued by Luke as he saves the city of London by getting the Russian to reveal the bomb code to his colleague with two seconds to spare, real Bond style that.
The Russian is handed over to his bosses in act of British solidarity! No! revenge, knowing they will sort him out in ways which the British justice system does not allow.

The 4400 Jekyll and Hyde episode is called the Starzi Mutation. (Starzi is the real name of a specialist in transplants although spelt different it is also associated with the dreaded former East German secret service.) In the fictional work there was a problem which arose in the Seattle area when a flawed radio therapy machine caused slight mutations among a number of patients. There were over 100 individuals involved. What emerges is that
whereas a 4400 returnee who becomes a parent with a normal human being only produce a normal child, with one of the Starzi mutations they produced a 4400 powers child although it is not clear if they are Shaun’s the healers or Isabelle, the apocalypse! This is why many of the returnees settled in the Seattle area.

The government has selected a small team of service personnel to use the Isabelle provided chemical to develop super solder fighting powers. The individuals have all been reported dead to their families and one of the has gone AWOL after having problems. He goes after those affected by the radio therapy machine fault. The number pinned to them is the same as they appear on the official list and also official number of one of the soldiers reported dead whose body was never recovered and which leads the government monitoring unit to find the rogue soldier and his friend who kill each other.

The lack of clarity about motives for the behaviour is not revealed until the last episodes of the season. When Diana and Tom confront Denis Ryland he is forced to admit they have been creating the special unit of solders and pre-empt any independent disclosure by holding a press conference. Ryland defends the unit to Tom and Diana saying that the special soldiers are there to protect the interests of the USA and Tom or Diana makes the statement that the real intention is to go for the 4400, Ryland replies that controlling the 4400 and defending against the misuse of their special powers is what defending the interests of the USA is all about. This is a rational position

Behind the development is Isabelle who had moved her obsession of a relationship with Shaun into a marriage, contacted his family and inviting all the 4400 to the wedding. 1000 of them accept and one seeks a personal interview with Shaun to give one his manufacture red cigars in a presentation case. He discloses that his power is to enable people to see something of their own future and he has created the cigar for Shaun to look into his. Isabelle has admitted to Shaun that she had done bad things and will continue to do them and that Shaun is her counterpoint and the only person who may be able to stop her. Shaun who does not want to marry her decides to try out the cigar and has three insights. One is an extension of the other in which he is responsible for the death of Richard and the other he is unable to stop the death of Tom. All three visions occur in a world where war and terror has broken out between 4400 and their supporters and the states and their supporter. The first reaction of Shaun to is pull out of the marriage but he then decides to go through with the wedding in order to see if he can change what is to happen. Meanwhile Richard has developed kinetic powers which he tries to harness and one exercise is to think knives to fly off the kitchen shelf into a target and where the viewer has no doubt he has his errant daughter in mind.

This leads to the tour de force programme of the series so far, first tailored in the last frame at the end of the second season. Shaun comes out to greet the 4400 attendees before his wedding and one of them comes forward looking very much some depictions of Jesus of Nazareth but who is none other than the resurrected Jordan Collier. He then disappears and Tom and Diana are brought in to try and find him with Tom having the added incentive that if Jordan is alive then his son was wrongly convicted of murder. But Jordan is difficult to track down as he appears to have been all over the world at different times as a preacher Messiah and where his portrait has been created in mosaic tiles everywhere that a following has developed.

The two discover his diary which contains an epileptic(?) story about the future. Jordan visits Kyle in prison and when Tom and Diana find him, he still has no recollection of who is except that her has wondered through time as well as the earth world and that he has been to the future. This is the reason that Alana is brought back from her position as a fugitive in order to help Collier remember his identity which she does successfully.

His return unsettles Isabelle who misled Collier into believing he would not be assassinated. Collier orders her out of the centre and she joins the Ryland enterprise full time.

The next development is that the surviving members of the Nova group who are in custody are released by a member of the 4400 with the power to temporarily knock out all the staff including its security personnel.

This action is part of the Jordan Collier’s plan which he has kept from Shaun. He and Richard then tell Shaun they are planning to raid the military base where Ryland is using the Isabelle’s chemical to create the super military elite special force. Shaun is so upset that they are about kill people that he discloses that Collier was behind the break out of the Nova group and their plan to attack the special unit. This is in fact a blind for the real activity as Shaun is no longer trusted. The release of the Nova group was aimed at making use of the shape shifter He poses as Ryland and orders the moving of the three year store of chemicals made into 1700 units and the 4400 take possession. Ryland’s reaction is to believe the intention is to destroy the supply but then there is an internet video explaining that the substance will be distributed. The video is made at a safe house which the 4400 monitoring unit manage to locate. However when they arrived they find that Shaun has been called there to try and save the sister of the person who has made the video and who has taken the chemical and is showing an immediate adverse reaction. She dies. Shaun is taken into custody to try and find the location of the total supply. Tom and Diana confront Ryland who admits that some people have an adverse reaction within the first 48 hours and die. Half the selected 20 soldiers have died one way or the other. Hence the last episode of the third series is called 50 50.

Alana is persuaded to interrogate Shawn as a way to prevent torture being used and for her stay in the USA to be made official. However before she can see Shaun, Ryland arrives with the power to interrogate Shaun using Isabelle to get the information and she sends Shaun into a coma where he remains as the season ends. When they reach the centre where the supplies are being held first they find that the look alike drugs are fakes, then that Collier is in fact the shape shifter and that the place is wired for a major explosion. There si no explanation how the look alike drugs were created so quickly although one imagines Dr Burkoff was the brains for this development

Before she has obtained the information from Shaun Isabelle admits that she was created in order to kill all the 4400, something part of her did not want to do and she thought by giving the stuff to Ryland she would be able to achieve a standoff between the 4400 changing things and the her mission to kill them. She saw the marriage with Shaun, assuming Collier was dead, as another good way to achieve a synthesis between the thesis and antithesis, the equilibrium of the dialectic.

Ryland survives yet again, the third assassination attempt and so does Isabelle whose plan having failed sets out for the 4400 centre on a mission to kill all the members in her path.

Having seen what Isabelle has done to Shaun, Tom collects the syringe given to him by the future having reached the conclusion that killing her has become justified.

The relationship between Diana and the photographer has progressed. He has returned from London and asks Diana to leave her job and go with him to Spain where he has accepted a job which will last six months. Eventually Maia tells Diana’s sister about the relationship and predicted marriage as the sister has been sitting moping about her lost love and hoping he will come back to her. She is not as angry as Diana anticipated and comes to the conclusion she is not destined to have the stable long term relationship and effectively wishes the new couple well. Maia has seen that the sister will attend the wedding.

Because of the events at the centre Diana removes Maia from the school against the wishes of the girl but she returns when Diana is called away and on the day when Isabelle goes on the rampage and enters the class room asking which child will she kill first. Maia stand up to warn her that what she is doing will not work just as Diana comes in and shoots Isabelle down with Tom close behind to inject her the substance given by the future. However Isabelle recovers from the gunshots, the resurrections abound, and she knocks the syringe out of Tom’s hands and attempts to kill both Tom and Diana. Richard uses his kinetic power to move the syringe into the neck of Isabelle who collapses and then rises. Tom shoot her to be safe although subsequent tests reveal that she is back to being a normal human being without powers. Isabelle and Shaun are seen in adjacent wards in the hospital side by side, their futures uncertain.

Diana and Maia call to say goodbye to Tom and Diana before their trip to Spain. Maia tells Alana that they will be back sooner than everyone thinks.

Kyle, Tom‘s son having been released from prison is expected to return to High School. He goes to see Collier who explains that what happened was necessary with both playing preordained parts. Kyle is impressed with the mission and decides to leave home and to work for the centre in whatever way Collier ordains. Alana who having fulfilled her mission expects to be allowed to remain with Tom and is suddenly whisked away from him by the future. Has his mission been completed with the neutralising of Isabelle?

Collier has already arranged for the real Isabelle produced chemical to be distributed by the 4400 to the most needy, the underclass which includes the very old and the sick with everyone given a warning that there is only a fifty fifty chance of it working and of dying if it does not. Most of those who accept the offer feel they have nothing else to lose. It is like being given the opportunity to become a lottery millionaire on the spin of a coin. Heads you win, tails you die. The 4400 centre appears to have been closed by the authorities and 4400 dispersed with Collier reflecting on what has happened from a log cabin by a lake- the lake?

In the final scene one of those accepting a syringe is Diana’s sister/ This is all warm up for the 4th season which was in fact the last although it ends in mid air with more questions than answers, so I am led to believe.

The X files series has been running on various Satellite channels and recently I looked in at the conclusion of an episode of Babylon 5 and saw that it was moving into its last phase as the plot for the whole series is uncovered and as with Babylon 5 a concentrated effort on going through all the seasons of series is justified but whether I will have time remains to be determined. The X files was a wondrous series for the conspiracy theorist with the basic question have terrestrial landed and their technology used by the government or perhaps they have been dictating to the government or was it all a splendid government creation to out manoeuvre the Soviet enemy. The series also has the power group within the state. Was is certain is that such groups exists within every state and between states and cuts across the usual differences. For example Past President’s of the USA government have get-to-gether’s and are invited to other groups of former leaders and with the people who walk with Presidents and Kings. The existence of such meetings is not generally secret although the precise information about locations and times usually is for security reasons. There are usually formal minutes which are checked and circulated to those attending but the main activity comes form private social occasions involving individuals, sub groups and the whole group. Often there is closeness reached between individuals who have held the same position as there are between people of the same political parties, religions, commercial interests and such like. It is the way of the world.

1830 Everyone is not as they seem 4400, Nautilus, Planet of the Apes and Babylon 5

As with the second series of the 4400 the subsequent episodes of the third series are significantly better than the openers. The stories and the acting are stronger. The major story line which has a bearing on the whole series is the taking of Maia and several other of the children by the future because those who have returned have not made the required impact to alter the direction of humanity to avoid future disaster. We only learn that the kidnappers are the future in the second part of the opener. A woman posing as Maia’s younger sister, born to her parents several years after the her original disappearance, makes friends and then just when Diana is having her checked out takes Maia when she is out playing. However Maia has indicated a premonition about what will happen in her diary and directly to Diana who she says will forget her.

When the children are reprogrammed they are returned to earth at different times and several are subsequently identified as having made important contributions to humankind already although Maia is reported to have died of smallpox while part of a Go West Wagon Train at the age of 25.

The aspect of what then happens after the children are reprogrammed should ring alarm bells all over the fictional world and with Tom and Diana and their boss in particular, because the future appears to have the ability to eliminate all knowledge of the children from those with whom they lived, went to school with or who had records of them, including the removal of any photographs since their return. This is awesome power which presumably can be directed at will and raises the question as to why the future needs the 4400 to change the Timeline in the past. We are back to issues of determinism, Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect raised previously.

However Diana has whispers of concern about something she cannot identify and when Tom goes on one of his trips into an alternative reality with his “wife” they encounter a figure representing Maia who suddenly stands in the road before their fast moving car. She also subsequently appears as her true self and when Diana joins with Tom’s wife she goes back to the day of the adoption. Once they realise the children existed but memories and records and been wiped they work out that Maia had sent a message about where to look for her but when they get to a house with six look alike bedrooms on one floor where we know the children were housed, it is empty and a prospective purchaser is being shown round by an estate agent.

Meanwhile Maia and the other children have been using their powers to break free from their captors in the same building but when Maia does open the front door it leads directly in the room where Tom has entered in the building used by the 4400 foundation/as the Governor Jordan Collier art centre and where he first encountered his wife during the prolonged alternative reality which last eight years. The room continues to remind me of a scene in a 1940’s era film.

Maia tries to resist the reprocessing. Diana then uses Tom’s wife to try and turn permanently into an alternative reality situation with her adopted daughter but with the consequence that her life in the present is rapidly deteriorating as she goes into a coma. This can also be interpreted to eb a message about addiction to drugs and other substances under which he individual is happier than in the day upon day of the reality of their “normal” existence.

In order to break the position Tom devises a scheme to communicate with the future by attempting to hang himself off a bridge, believing that the future having marked him as a communications conduit will not let him die. Tom makes the case for the return of the children which is agreed on the basis that he does them a favour. When the children are returned he learns that the favour is to kill Isabelle.

Given yesterday’s Butterfly Effect 2 film and the first in that series “be careful what you wish for/ask of the Gods who may grant you what you wish etc the development in the 4400 is not surprising.

Time Travel and believing it is possible to alter timelines is also the subject of a two hour film called Nautilus which I have not come across before. Nautilus was made famous by Jules Verne in his novels. This 2000 film is also about time travel and an under water submarine vessel which returns from a near destroyed earth planet to try and alter the course of what happened. In 1990 when the present day of the film is set and international energy corporation is drilling into the earth core as part of a way to create a renewable energy system. The owner hires a specialist security agent to manage the last 23 hours before the product launch to a small team of specialists interests which includes one CIA agent. The agent is also in a covert operation with traditional energy firms who want to sabotage the new development and in this respect he is sympathetic to a group who are dropped from a helicopter and then swim underwater to attached plastic explosive devices the foundation of the drilling platform and at various places on the platform. They are stopped and held prisoners.

At this point the Nautilus intervenes and calls upon the drilling operation to be stopped on the grounds that it will tap into a fault which has so far been undetected with the consequence that the core will explode through demolishing cities and setting in motion a world in chaos and decay. To convince those on board he proposes to arrange for the owner of the project, and the scientists directly involved to come over to their craft and obtain the required proof.
The response of the USA government alerted by the CIA with full support of the owner is to arrange for a nuclear submarine in the area to try and sink the attacking craft. The White House and armed forces of the USA are not advised of the nature of the mission or the claim of time travel but are forced to ask questions when the two torpedoes launched about turn and take out the launch submarine killing all those on board, The next attempt is to launch rockets from two, planes and again the rockets are used to destroy the launching crafts. The security man on board thinks this is immoral and against eh code which si extraordinary given his role and background.

The party requested to come to the time machine assemble and are surprised to find that it is daughter of he captain who comes over to meet them in a small unit. The new project security chief joins them after an attempt to capture the visitor from the future fails. The quartet are not easily convinced and the manner of the persuasion with a video of the future and of how the world moved into greater chaos and anarchy eventually convinces except for the owner of the project.

While they are away the CIA contact releases he prisoners after believing he has done a deal in which they will destroy the project as in their original mission. They kill him later. The Time Traveller’s daughter then returns the visitors to the drilling platform with the exception of the female scientist who asks to remain ion board the time travelling craft. She then separates the captain from his crew and takes over the vessel with a view to using it to destroy the drilling platform admitting she was an inside member of the attack group.

At this point the captain realises his mistake, it is his craft which caused the explosion which set off the destruction of the planet. He finds a away to communicate with the aircraft carrier from which the attacking planes had been launched and provides information enabling it to destroy the time machine with explosives. At the same time his daughter and the security chief are able to regain control of the drilling platform dismantling devices which would have initiated the new energy scheme and planet destruction. The daughter is therefore marooned in the present but has struck up a relationship with the head of security. The film is good fun but lacks originality and the kind of script and acting which made The Planet of the Apes such a success in 1968 and led to four film sequels and two TV series.

The 1968 film is in two distinct parts. Charlton Heston plays the captain in a no return exploratory deep space operation where the craft is able to fly so fast that while the crew only age eighteen months two millennium pass on earth. The experiment goes wrong and the craft crashes onto the waters of an unknown planet where the three men of the crew are able to escape, with the sole female having not survived the journey during their hibernation transit phase. They find themselves in a lunar type of landscape with only three days of rations and no indication of other forms of life, food and water. There are exchanges between the trio about their motives for undertaking the mission until they discover a single rock plant which leads to more and more vegetation and a natural waterfall and clear water in which they bathe after striping. Their clothes and supplies are then removed and partially destroyed by a primitive form of human beings who behave like animals in a pack but who nevertheless wear clothes for cinematic modesty. The “animals” are found enjoying the food of a cultivated area until the arrival of apes and gorillas on horseback with the power of speech.

They control a small area of habitable earth where they have created a primitive human kind of society similarly to those of the middle ages in Western Europe with a religious and belief system based on laws and a bible in which scientific truth is defined by the belief system. One of three space explorers is killed and later found stuffed in a museum while the second is captured and his speech and brain functions surgically neutered.

Only the Captain, played by Charlton Heston, survives by falling into the hands of an ape “animal” behavioural scientist and her anthropological scientist boyfriend who discovered important remains when exceeding his authorization and going into a cave in the forbidden zone. While a wound has rendered Heston temporarily unable to speak out loud he is able to mouth words and write and with the help of the young couple he is able to communicate his story which no one appears to believe and even his female behaviourist friend only accepts that he is a unique specimen which merits study, possibly can be domesticated and should not be subjected to the gelding and lobotomy which the rulers of the community decide should be his fate.

Eventually the two break Heston out from his confinement along with the mute female given to Heston as a playmate, They go to the forbidden zone where they are met with the scientific elder who is also keeper of the faith out to stop them uncovering the known truth. The anthropologist shows him the evidence he found which far from proving that the apes were always superior to humans, appears to show that the Apes may have been a development from the humans in a reversal of human history. The elder admits all this was already known and he had come to eliminate the evidence and those who has gained the knowledge. He is captures and used as a bargaining tool.

They eventually do a deal in which Heston and his woman ride off further into the forbidden zone while the evidence is blown up but the two scientists are able to return without being tried for treason or such like. As they ride across the shoreline Heston stops and sinks to the ground off the horse in disbelief and realization they his craft had returned to earth and that man had engaged in a nuclear holocaust. “We finally really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn You, God Damn you all to hell.” The picture ends as the remains fo the Statue are revealed in one of the most powerful and effective images in cinema history. I wrote that and then was impressed that it was also part of the Wikipedia review thus there are at least to of us with the same opinion. I wonder what Dr Mark Kermode thinks?

The film was remarkable and trend setting in a number of respects. It was far more effect in its message of concerns about the impact on humans and the environment as most of the message films of the day and since, although Neville Shute’s On the Beach stands well, alongside Dr Strangelove, with the former and continuing to be shown on Sat TV.

The Planet of the Apes was ahead of its time in terms of the realistic looking gorillas and apes. It was also brilliant in standing on its end the approach of many religious groups towards creation and the role of humans in relation to animals and the planet.

The film is based on the book by the French write Pierre Boulle La Panete des singes. As previously observed, a note in the Wikipedia article points out that the animals are naked in the book and anything other than this is ludicrous and reflection of the self imposed censorship of Hollywood. In the book the apes also speak their own language which the human space man has to learn and the spaceship survives so that the survivor is able to return to earth where he finds that the planet has evolved parallel to earth because of the nuclear catastrophe soon after the exploration set off.

The film was remade in 2001 as a “reimaging” with a very different storyline and ending. I enjoyed the remake but it remains light years away from the greatness and significance of the original. Although the film made a profit there have been no sequels.

Returning to the 4400 the relationship between Shaun and Isabelle has developed despite the opposition of her father Richard that she has the emotional intelligence still of a child while the body of a young woman. Under the encouragement of Mathew Ross, said to be Richard’s Collier’s choice as adviser and protector to Shaun, she defies her father and establishes a physical relationship with Shaun, Mathew select her clothing down to her underwear in order to get Shaun into the frame of body to be influenced by Isabelle in ways which Mathews dictates, The couple keep their relationship secret out of respect to the wishes of her father and Shaun’s position in the movement.

Mathew attempts to increase his power over Shaun with the help of Richard who has discovered that large sums of money have disappeared from the foundation set up by Collier and which Richard’s wife had run. Shaun admits that he had used the money to bank role the terrorist Nova group before he realised what they were up to. Eventually he is able to admit this was an error of judgement and to accept the advice of Richard. The Nova group continue to exert pressure on Shaun for support and funds and when he refuses they commence to make threats on his life leading to mind bending which causes Shawn to become psychotic and self harming. Richard consults the 4400 government much to the opposition of Isabelle but despite her protests Shaun is placed in a private secure psychiatric establishment. Isabelle begins to exert her authority which culminates in the episode Graduation Day. She gives her father a warning heart attack but stops of killing him. She then kills Matthew when he tries to strop her break out Shaun from the institution. She also appears to be responsible for the deaths of the remaining members of oft eh Nova group but her defence is that their special powers turned in on themselves and killed them. At the end of the episode having been released from custody under suspicion she present herself to Dennis Ryland at his corporation and institute.

Dennis the former head of the 4400 supervision unit has survived the scandal of the special powers inhibitor which led to the deaths of 4400 returnees because of its side effects. He has not only become head of a major corporation but has been given major agency powers by the government to intervene in the control of the 4400, and the development of counter measures. In the next episode, The Home Front we find that Isabelle is submitting her brain and body to tests which are helping scientists to understand the phenomenon and make use of the new knowledge. Isabelle it should be reminded, is the only individual in the series born with special powers after the return of her parents, although there is now also Dr Kevin Burkoff who has developed a drug which can induce special powers, in his instance of self regeneration. As a result of the actions of Isabelle Shaun returns to his position with his abilities restored but decides that is wrong for the two to continue as a couple.

This enables the plot designers to reintroduce the former high school girl with a crush on him before he disappeared and who had established a relationship with his younger brother. The excuse for her to make contact is that her father has an incurable cancer which Shaun cures and agrees to have Sushi meal with her one evening. Isabelle who has already made it plain to her father and to Shaun that he is the only person she wants to share her life in adult relationship makes plain her concern about his growing interest in the former girl friend and Shaun is forced to break with the girl out of her own interest, although this is the opposite of what he wants to do.
The main function of the episode, The Home Front, is to explain the departure of Karina Lombard who plays Tom’s second “wife” Alana Marvea. She has gone to work at the 4400 special school where she is working with Heather Tobey, the returnnee who in an earlier episode had problems at the school where she worked because of her ability to bring out the creative talents locked into some ordinary children. Agents working for the government under the control of Dennis Ryland arrest Heather when it is discovered that the tip off to one time member of the Nova group Gary Navarro, the last known member at large, prevents his capture by Tom and Diana. When Heather provides an alibi she admits to Tom that the person who has access to her room while she was away was Alana. Alana gives herself up in order to prevent Heather being tortured for the information. Tom then brokers a deal with Dennis Ryland to exchange Alana for Gary. This takes place but Diana and Tom both have doubts about the morality of what they are doing and break Gary free from Ryland resulting in that he and Alana must flee as fugitives, going first to the Canadian border. Tom and Diana then blackmail Ryland from using what they have done against them and from pursuing Alana and Gary with any vigour. Alana will appear in the series again

The reason why Tom and Diana feel obligated to Gary despite his association with the Nova group and his near successful attempt on the life of Ryland is that todate they failed in their commitment to protect him when he agreed to assist with his special power of hearing what is inside the head of other people. Against his will he was taken into permanent custody of the state in order to be trained to use the power in the service of his country. He had renounced violence and wanted to live a quiet life without using his powers which he had come to be able to control.

This still leaves Tom with the obligation to kill Isabelle. He has a dream in which he is in a position to kill, egged on by Diana who wants nothing to hamper the continuing return of Maia. Tom has a real life experience of being able to kill Isabelle who appears accepting of her fate. Tom hesitates and then decides against carrying out his commitment saying he will wait until he finds out why she has to be killed. During his time back with the future they disclose that in their time there are two forces at work. Those who want the 400 to succeed to prevent the way the world develops and those who do not who want the situation to continue so that in their present time they can exercise even more power over everybody else than they are able to do so in their present. This fits into my own view that it impossible to change in a fundamental way the forces that operate within all human beings and where the forces of evil will always gain ascendancy over the good for varying periods of time both in terms of personal relationships, individual communities and nations as well as between nations. It is the moral and social dialectic as well as the political and economic.

The issue formed part of the episode of Babylon Five which concerns the power of the planetary Earth Corp of individuals who can read peoples minds. The episode centres on the attempt by members of the Corp police, both dislikeable characters, to capture an alleged rogue member who is known to have had a close relationship with the Corp member assigned to the station. He has come to say goodbye to her and to enlists the help of the station Commander to finish the transformation which is the culmination of a secret experiment in which he was forced to participate. The scheme was enhance the power of the Corp ho are graded up to level 12 which each level having the power to overcome blocking devices more effectively. The experiment also enabled the development of kinetic powers which by the end of episode have led to a state where the individual has exploded much like that of the black monoliths in 2001 and 2010. And in this instance into a super being with superpower who has unity with all matter and all knowledge. He admits to having unintentionally killed the research officer leading the experiment because he feared the power it would bring to the Corp, and their ambitions, and in order to escape and prevent destruction of the Babylon Five he kills one of the two Corp police trying to stop him and the other is restrained by the Commander and forced to return to earth. As with the 4400 and Lost it takes time for the master plan of the series to unfold but as is a feature of the latest episodes, everyone is not as they seem.

1828 Dr Who Babylon 5 4400 series 3

Sunday in mid November has been a day with good work completed in the morning followed by several hours of science fiction TV.

David Tennant is the second of two fine young British actors who have performed the role of Dr Who. I say young although David is approaching forty and already has a number of the great Shakespearean roles to his name was well as enjoying the light-hearted stuff such a couple of Harry Potter films and St Trinians where he is appears in the latest follow up in 2010.

He has brought an adult approach to this original, in every sense, pioneering British mini series which introduced aliens from the distant corners of the universe to school children and their parents. The series commenced in 1963 and after several years, when the assumption was it had run its course, it was resurrected in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston and winning two Bafta’s in 2006. David Tennant is the 10th Doctor and last year it was announced he would be replaced by the relative unknown Matt Smith but with David contributing one off hour length shows during the year.

For forty years Dr Who has been a six pm early evening Saturday fixture on return from the 3 o’clock afternoon football matches and enabling the older primary school audience watch if parents permitted before bed time and the eschewing nightmares about Daleks, Cybermen and a range of one off alien monster creations.

Sunday night’s 7pm programme merited a 9pm watershed start such was its theme, the monster creations, the outcome and the intensity of the acting. The subject has been covered several times before, an outpost on an otherwise deserted planet, this time the first outpost on Mars, and the threat comes from a virus, into the water system where one drop can turn a human into a water flowing zombie with crazy distorted features around the mouth.

The Dr lands on the planet unaware of the time or purpose of the visit until he remembers media records that all the members of the five year mission perished in an explosion where the cause has never been known. As the tragedy unfolds he tries to bring consolation to the leader of the mission who as a child had an encounter with the Dalek on earth around 2010 in which her parents disappeared and where the Dalek looks at her through a window and moves away. Dr Who’s view is that the creature was able to see that her death was fixed in the future. The consolation is that her daughter and granddaughter is to become a leading space explorer. Just when the station is to be blown up to prevent the alien infection from getting to earth via the escape rocket the Doctor decides to intervene and in a last second transfer to the Tardis Police Box he rescues the expedition leader and two members of the team back to earth and to the front of the former homer of the leader as snow falls on London. However she decides he has been playing God and had no right to intervene with the future of human beings in this way and shoots herself. The Doctor questions if he has gone too far and if his appointed hour has come, Soon, but now.

In the first past of the afternoon I had intended to watch England play in the second 20 20 match against South African but it was evident after the toss was won by the home side and they elected to bat on another perfect wicket which way the game was going to go after the first few overs. I had discovered a re-showing of the pilot two hour series Babylon Five which remains the best Sci fi adventure series to date outshining the various transformations of Star Trek and the cinematic Star Wars. As with Star Trek the attraction is an excellent master storyline, individual episode adventures and the interactions between the regular cast members. I was not in the mood to watch the subsequent episodes of the first series shown on the FX UK channel and turned to the third series of the 4400 and the first three of its episodes. Babylon Five merits close attention on another day along with Star Trek, Star Wars Superman and Batman.

I continue to have reservations about aspects of the 4400 series although the primary concept is a good one. It will be remembered that 4400 human beings have been taken during the 20th century by the future and returned without memory of what happened while they were away, but with an awareness that they have a role to play in saving the future of humanity by using their special powers. These follow the belief that all beings have paranormal powers locked away within the brain, and which can be unlocked or suppressed by chemical means. These include the ability to see into the future and to cause objects to move and with a reminder of the recent film The Men who stared at Goats or the secret CIA sponsored research work on brain power and manipulation, the ability to get other human beings to commit acts against their nature and knowledge. In the first three episodes of the 13 part third season the ability to regenerate is explored in the first double episode, The New World, together with shape shifting, the subject of both the Star Trek and Babylon Five series which also deals with mind reading which again is part of the New World episodes.

The underlying issue of the third series and the whole concept is that if Christ returned with a new set of apostles and performed miracles, if aliens from other planets arrived to help save the planet or if as in the is instance earth humans return with such a mission, far from being greeted with enthusiasm and cooperation, governments will unite and at best regard such individuals as dangerous freaks to be watched and if necessary imprisoned, rendered ineffective or destroyed.

This is not an unreasonable position if taken by responsible governments and in reality it is more likely that individuals government would work to pursue their own ends, commercial and militarily if such a situation occurred in reality. The idea that competing governments , let alone cold wear enemies, will work together if there is a common threat without taking account of their own interests was exploded when Russia joined Germany and then the Allies during World War II after which the two national blocs waged economic and political war on each other directly and indirectly in the countries of others.

Given that the individual possess supernormal powers it is also not unreasonable that governments will also adapt existing security measures to meet the new threat. It is also not surprising that the state become hostile if members of a group adopt violence and terrorism as a means of furthering their cause and start to talk in terms of preparing for war. I say this because a group of the 4400 begin talking in terms of the coming war and commence to use their powers in terrorist activities with the raid on the command centre and with a demonstration project of their potential power scheduled for a date which becomes known to the authorities but where they fail to determine the form. This instance of the New World the demonstration is not a negative one but the transformation of part of a desert into wheat growing.

As with the other episodes in the first two seasons there is a continuation of the lives and relationships of the core characters. The main development concerns the former US pilot Richard, his wife Lily and their daughter Isabelle. At the end of series two Isabelle had been transformed overnight from a baby into a twenty year old young woman and at the commencement of the new series her mother has aged by the same two decades but although Isabelle stops her mother progressively deteriorates and Shawn’s curative power cannot halt this development. Richard takes Lily back to their hideaway in the forest by the river where they had found happiness until discovered by the evangelical Minister where she dies. Tipi Hedren, famous for her Hitchcock roles as Marnie and the Birds plays the aged Lily in the two episodes as the original actress had decided to leave the show between seasons.

Isabelle tries to kill herself as a way of preventing the death of her mother but discovers she had has the power to regenerate. She also sets out on a mission to experience everything she would have as a teenager and the eventually results in having a relationship with Shawn. Who begun to question the activities of the undercover group which he has bankrolled through 4400 centre funding.

The former head of the Government unit, Denis Ryland is asked to appear before a Congressional Committee during which he takes full and sole responsibility for devising the abnormal powers inhibitor programme and about which he remains unrepentant. Then his legal counsellor attempts to stab him to death under the influence of the same young woman who was used previously on the attack on the command centre. She is captured with the help of Shawn when he is asked to give more funds and the young woman is sent instead of the apparent leader of the breakaway group which is known as the Nova group.

Dr Kevin Burkoff, the former institutionalised scientist with published work about the brain and is potential powers has started to experiment on himself with the development of a drug which will enable all human being to develop similar powers to those of the 4400.

Also reintroduced into the series is Gary Navarro the former baseball star who can hear what is in people’s head, and who is being used by the government as part of the national security services. Garry found his powers overwhelming as he could not discriminate between the thinking of people, especially when confronted with crowds. However he has become able to control and focus his powers from accepting what he is. Unknown to Tom and Diana he feeds them false information about the Nova group and he then tries to kill Ryland with an injection who is recovering from the knife attack in hospital. Ryland survives again.

Tom Baldwin, the main government investigator and 4400 security agent, who previously was explained the purpose of the return of 4400 by the future, following the taking of Shaun instead of his son, is taking trips into fantasy reality by his wife who also now has control of the power which first brought them together. Fellow agent Diana is also concerned about the future of her daughter and with some reluctance takes her to the 4400 centre school.

Being Tom Baldwin is the third episode and is natural progression from the openers. The main subject is the death of the Nova terrorist in custody allegedly by Tom Baldwin. This plot follows closely pilot of Babylon 5 in which the station commander is thought to have been the person attempting to poison the last representatives of the great races of the known universe who are to become members of the Council based at the station and where the races are represented by Ambassadors. In both programme the culprit is a shape shifter, someone able to appear as the identical of real people. The most famous science fiction shape shifter appeared the Star Trek series and the ability to transform goes back to ancient mythology and folklore in many countries and times. Tom is exonerated and the episodes also reveals that Dr Burkoff’s experiment has result in him have regenerative power with various unpleasant side effects. This also brings to mind the battle in the series the X Men between the Mutants and the rest of humanity, including the approach taken by governments. I am interested in what happens next but it does not form a main experience in my life.