1817 4400 second seasons ends in WOW

But to day Friday has been different. Lots of work and lots of film experiences, beginning with the last three episodes of the second season of the 4400 Lockdown, The fifth Page and Mummy’s Bosses and all three episodes are part of the build up to the Finale.

In Lockdown the HQ of the Government 4400 centre is attacked by a cerebral wave which makes everyone aggressive and homicidal which as the episode ended appeared to have been caused by a 4400 due for quarterly assessment who protected herself by wearing headphones. It was never clear why this attack was made but my guess is a war by the future against further Government action against 4400 members. It was not until the next two episodes that we learnt the nature of action.

Maia came out in a rash was being treated as Hives or an allergy. Which given my own recent condition and now in the process of clearing. What was I writing a couple of days ago about coincidences Shawn also came down in this rash and lost his power to heal and tried to keep what happened to him secret. In the next episode an increasing number of the 4400 are similarly afflicted and the government orders them all to be placed back in quarantine. This provides the opportunity for two people to return to the series. The first is Dennis Ryland the former head of the Unit who we now learn had been promoted to Washington but had been told to take charge again when his replacement is incapacitated from a gun shot wound during the Lockdown incident. The second is the originator of the theory about the potential power of the unused areas of the brain, Kevin Burkhoff the scientist in the mental institution who inspired the building of the communications device which broke his catatonic condition. He has been working on attempting to unlock the brain power through scientific method and is highly critical of the methods of Collier centre in inviting normal people to pay for a process which has no hope of giving them 4400 powers.

He has accepted an invitation from the Collier Organisation to work for them trying to understand and replicate the special abilities but understanding and unlocking the power within the brain
He brings his research to the government centre on learning of the extent of the spread of the infection among the 4400 in the hope the government will also share its knowledge with the common purpose of finding a cure. His help is we

After Diana and Tom or Tom and Diana obtain the secret medical files Kevin reveals that the 4400 are afflicted not by a disease but the side effect of a synthetic substance that has been placed in their blood stream named Promicin inhibitor and that is gathering in the lymph nodes, In Mummy Bosses we are taken through a flashback to the early days of the series and the aggressive telekinetic behaviour of a returnee. The Scientist doctor working at the centre Doctor Max Hudson is explaining to Dennis Ryland that the body produces four neurotransmitters and that the aggressive telekinetic returnee Orson has five and which enables him use those parts of the brain dormant in every one else and that as a consequence it can be assumed the other could have similar powers with different outcomes. He develops the synthetic substance which is designed to inhibit restrict the development of such power called anti Promicin and Dennis with the approval of a range of people in Government decide to inject the substance into the 4400 during the their quarterly medical check ups without their knowledge and approval and therefore an illegal action according to the constitution and current legislation. (Promicin is fictitious)

Kevin Burkhoff then works out that the side effect can be eliminated by the blood of a returnee who has not been subject to the quarterly medical checks. This is the daughter Isabelle born to Lily and Richard after she returned and which is obviously why Jordan Collier regarded her as the salvation of the 4400 and the future, There is a sub story in this respect as Lily ahs become possessive over her daughter when she finds she can no longer communicate has she been, as the anti Promicin takes effect but instead the daughter can communicate with Richard. When Shawn is also afflicted and loses his power and has to enter quarantine Richard is appointed temporary head and he organises a safe house for some of the key returnees when teh government orders them into quarantine and Lily runs off with her child and seeks the help of her first husband, There is a situation where eh says his new wife and departed and he still has feelings for Lily and wants them to get together, When he tries to take her by force she kills him but Isabelle makes the body vanish and then reappear as if nothing has happened.

After Kevin create the anti anti Promicin he uses it first on Shawn who with his power back is able to cure everyone at the centre, Isabelle had cured her mother beforehand and the series ends as Lily having returned to their home at the centre HQ finds he daughter has gone and we switch to the Jordan centre where Shawn is in his office and a young woman enters and says she is Isabelle having been transformed overnight!

A second sub story is that Kyle becomes tormented by the fact that teh person charged with the Collier murder could face a life term of imprisonment. He gets to know the girlfriend and brother of the accused and decides to give himself up something which his father is opposed to. When teh crisis is over Kyle visits Shawn and admits he killed Jordan and Shawn uses his power to free Kyle of the alien power still within him. This enables him to find the inner peace and stability to insist giving himself up for the murder,

Tom has become even more emotional irrational at times during the three episodes. Yet he is also the one to understand what has happened in Lockdown and tries to remove all guns and other weapons to prevent killings under the influence. His condition is also affected when Alana is other dimension wife of eight years begins to slip between dimension as she is afflicted and has to go into quarantine. She is one of first to be cured by Shawn.

Diana is also having her moment as first she nearly shoots Tom in order to protect her daughter who is one of the first to become afflicted and lose her ability and then she rewards the geek Marco Pacella who has a crush on her and who worked out how to counter the cerebral attack and also helped to steal the medical papers which led to the cure. She invites him to dinner to celebrate the end of the crisis, but Maia warns that it has only just begun.

Tom was able to enable the cure to be used by blackmailing Dennis to call off the removal of everyone including Isabelle, from one of the safe houses. He and Diana have managed to find a secretary witness to the use of the anti Promicin inhibiter and kept a copy of all the key papers. The outcome is that Denis Ryland and the other who authorised the action are arrested and the doctor who behind the action is found dead in his car.

At the very end we also see a tramp returning to the site where the 4400 returned and this is Jordan Collier! Whatever next?

1816 The Celestine Insights and the 4400

Ideally I needed to be occupied without challenging thoughts but as often is my situation what I chose to do was the opposite. I switched on the TV to relax and found what appeared to be a stock Sci Fi channel film called the Celestine Prophecy. This proved to be a bad film with poor script, second level acting and third level sets and is organised filmmaking construction but the ideas on which the film is based exceptionally interesting and fitting in with many of my own thoughts over recent years although with significant variations

The Celestine Prophecy was published in 1993 in the United State and is an attempt to explain the purpose of human existence through the ideas of Eastern religious beliefs and sold 20 million copies world wide. The author James Reffield has since published two more volumes on the same subject and is working on a fourth.

I begin with challenging the idea that human life has a purpose other than to live and live as well as its possible for an individual given their inherited body and personality and such abilities and capacities as their nature and nurture provides in the era and particular society and social circumstances in which have been. I am therefore in conflict with fundamental aspects of many faith systems which have arisen because the founders did not understand matter, energy, time and space, the infinite nature of the universe and the capacities and abilities of human beings, let alone of other beings which are likely to inhabit an infinite universe. We can all speculate and imagine and construct from the existing knowledge base of our particular human time but the bottom line is that without having the capacity to communicate and see across the universe we can never know and unless there are infinite sentient beings no being can ever know.

The big idea of the Celestine Prophecy, or more accurately Celestine Insights, is similar to the 4400, in that within every human being there are powerful forces, energies which can be unlocked and which enable individuals to establish a harmony and a connection with the universe, time past and present and yielding an insight into the nature of a heaven and hell experience within the human self conscious awareness and but which can also be shared with others. Having promoted ideas about the infinity of space and time, and that we inherent individual memories of ancestral experience and that we are all directly connected with time past as we are to the accumulation of good and bad thoughts and deeds and to the pull of such forces in a dialectic metaphysical as well as material. (Marx‘s failure of not understanding the true nature of matter as static energy and the nature of metaphysical energy?) , I was immediately interested and encouraged to find a film which dealt with some of these matters, however bad the cinematic film! I have not read the books or plan to do so.

My understanding is that the book and film are about the discovery of ancient scrolls, going back 600 years before the time of Christ in the former civilization of Peru and then hidden by the Catholic Church as the middle ages ended because of the challenge what they said posed for the religion as it had then developed. The discovered Scrolls consist of eight translated insights which have to be experienced in sequence before an individual becomes sufficiently enlightened to grasp the next and so on. Other scrolls are thought/known to have existed.
The First insight is that a new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture: an awakening, a journey, in which we are led forward in mysterious coincidence. An Awakening brought about by a crucial mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding. We are asked to accept that it was no accident that the insight came to someone 600 years before the Christian religions from a small Jewish sect promoting the idea of not being phased by every day realities including the persecution, torment and execution by the state and using non violent acceptance to combat the forces of violence and injustice in society. The hiding of truth then occurs before the age of Enlightenment in Europe and North America. However these truths have to be experienced before they can be understood and this implies that they are not truths for everyone.

I have never been happy with the concept of mystery because of its emotional connotations and believe puzzle is a more legitimate expression. I am at ease with coincidence because I believe that all events have a history related to each particle of matter of beings, human, animal fish etc. Because each event has a history it becomes predictable through the collation of all the information relevant to it.

The second insight appears created only for the present world in that it argues that through the awakening process human being will learn to break away from their increasing dependence on secular survival and technological progress and by turning away from the secular path individuals can learn their truth purpose and the nature of he universe. Now I doubt if in 600 BC there was the concept technology or dependence on consumer materialism. I also challenge that the majority of human being are dependent, including those in economically developed countries.

For most of the experience of humanity the belief was in a physical world which was static from an overall flat earth with starts and heaven above and the fires of hell below and that one would fall off into space if one reached the edge of the known world.

For the third insight the author uses the awareness of energy to argue that individuals can interact and harness energy in a constructive way. He does not appear to also make the point that such energy can also be harnessed in a destructive and negative way. This fits in with the 4400 belief that within the brain there is the capacity to use energy to move objects, and therefore rationally it should be possible for individuals with the developed ability to collectively harness such force into greater to both concentrated and distributed power.

Not having read the book it is difficult to criticise aspects of the propositions which he may have covered but the basic premise of the film is that modern day Catholicism joins forces with the military power seeker in Peru to destroy the insights so their power to create a new age spiritual world will be lost if not for ever, for the foreseeable future. This clearly is rubbish because throughout the history of the human kind while it is true that the already enlightened, as well as the powerful, tend to suppress knowledge and change which threatens their position there are those who also appreciate that the advances can be used to reinforce and widen power with evil intent as well as for good, with atomic and hydrogen energy the most obvious example. The last thing any tyrant would do is to destroy something which could aid their power and at the end of World War 2 Russia and Comrade Stalin used German Nazi scientists to the same extent as did the USA and the UK.

The Fourth insight concerns the nature of human interaction based on the natural inclination of human beings to influence and control, to lead and to dominate others in order to develop out a sense of worth security but which also results in other becoming weaker and provoking retaliation which is the root of interactive conflict.

This brings me to one of the one off episode of the 4400 called Carrier in which a woman who has been dominated all her life, experiencing disappointment, frustration and failure is a 4400 returnee who suddenly finds that when under psychological and emotional attack her metabolism changes and her hands explode into a virulent venom which first kills all 270 odd citizens of her immediate community, then an unmarried lorry driver who attempts to make her into an instant born again Christian is found and then the biologically protected suited government agents sent to help her, demonstrating that her force when roused is more powerful than any existing defensive system known to humans. At first she attempts to kill herself and the order is given to incinerate her in the vehicle she travels when she refuses to respond to the request to be helped, and then when she somehow escapes from this fate and is located moving into the most populated area she can find, believing the intention of the 4400 is that she should beg Armageddon, Diana manages to shoot her in the heart as Tom tries to reason with her.

Regarding the fourth proposition while I have sympathy as with the previous I do not accept that human brings are by nature intent on dominating each other and our history continues to be full of collective and individual collaborative relationships which improves the lives of those participating as well as of those who do not.

The fifth is that is security and violence ends when we individually experience the inner connection with the divine energy within, a connections described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness and buoyancy along with the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. My only issue is with the understanding of divine.

The sixth argues that the more we become and stay connected the more we become acutely aware fo those times when we lose connection, and usually arises in condition of stress, and it is through the connection that we come to understand our individual path in life and spiritual mission and which is the way we contribute to the future of the world. The author then argues that human tend to seek to become interrogators, Intimidators, aloof and Poor me at times as means of taking energy from others. The author called this stage Clearing the past and learning how to avoid continuing to travel along paths which take us away from our individual missions. To some extent this is what my work installations has been about although it is entwined with the overall mission itself.

The seventh is that when we know our mission and keep on the pathway and there will be a flow of mysterious coincidences to guide to our destinies but this is not an easy progression and we will have to understand and follow dreams, day dreams and our intuition and these insights usually come synchronistically through the wisdom of other human beings. Mumbo Jumbo alas although there are aspects which have a relevance

I find the eighth whimsical in that the basic proposition is fine that we are helped in our individual mission by helping others in theirs but we have to watch out for the problems which arises from romantic relationships and we need to be especially kind and loving towards children.

The ninth where the film ends is fanciful in that as we evolve and progress in the spiritual mission the technology will automate what we need to survive this free us to evolve into a higher form of life transforming the body into a spiritual force and enabling a unity with after life dimensions and thus ending the cycle of birth and death.

It will be appreciated that writing this cycle into a mystery thriller is quiet a task and which one will have to read the book(s) to come to a judgement. The author acknowledges the influence of the work Games People Play by Dr Eric Bernie which I acquired in paperback soon after publication in 1964. (The work is also said to touch on Zen, Chi, New age spirituality and other mystic and philosophical thinking0.

The film story is in the form of an adventure in Peru although the artificiality of the locations with their absence of bird and insect life is astounding as well as the use of colour filter lens to depict heightened vision and sensation is laughable. However there is a brave attempt to translate the propositions into cinematic action moments but it is understandable that unlike the book, the film flopped and has been consigned to free film channels.

So far there is yet to be any connection between the one off mini stories of the 4400 and the development of the main story and its characters and the series appears to be becoming vehicles for raising moral and social questions of the day. In Rebirth Richard is invited to the funeral and wake of one of his group in the Korean War and he sees this as an opportunity to confront the former colleague who was the main racist responsible for his being framed and beaten up. The others appear apologetic to varying degrees having adapted to present day North America. When he confronts his adversary he finds an unrepentant old man dying. But Richard is nevertheless able to close the door on this aspect of his past. It remains unclear what his power and mission for returning is other than acting as the Joseph figure for the Virgin Lily, Virgin only in the sense that she has been impregnated by Richard while they were away without either knowing of any previous contact.

In Hidden the issue is the position of War criminals who can make an important contribution to the future of mankind. On of the returnees is a Rwandan doctor who works as nurse in a USA hospital and uses an ability to repair brain damaged babies before their birth. He agrees to be assessed by the 4400 watch unit as long as his anonymity is protected. However the Collier Foundation also get to know of the development and its new managing director/communication/publicity Director leaks the information and the man is identified as a war criminal in that he was aware this his clinic used a sanctuary and for those being murdered was about to be raised and he did nothing to prevent his patients from visiting or to protect them when the military led mob arrived. The publicity outs his background but the government then decides that his curative powers are more value than his extradition to be executed by the present government in Rwanda. It is something which all governments have done throughout time

There was also no further major revelations. Alana, Tom’s other dimension wife of eight years now carries on where the couple left off although I am not clear if she has moved in permanently or is keep her own home as well as art gallery. She is not listed in teh Wikipedia information which suggests she either objected to the Wikipedia articles or had her credit removed from the series. I shall have to check the official site if there is one.

The continuation of another dimension relationship takes Kyle, Tom son, some getting used to as he becomes more and more brooding when he begins to realise that he was the killer of Jordan Collier. He runs off and is hidden by his natural mother, Eventually Tom works out that Kyle was involved during a blackout and manipulated by the 4400, fortunately just before other members of the unit begin to follow leads which brings them to a station left luggage locker in which they find a weapon bought at the same time as the riffle and also containing a photo of Jordan C. Alana finds the key for the locker hidden in Kyle’s room and they are able to remove and hide the incriminating weapon before the 4400 investigation unit arrives. Tom, his former wife and Alana then arrange for Kyle to hide in Mexico where Alana has family but someone else who also fits the identity picture is then arrested and brought to the unit and Kyle is told he can return home, which is obviously a stupid thing to do without knowing why he is having the black outs and recent memories of what he has done during them,

Diana had been warned by her psychic daughter Maia not to continue to be involved with the search for Jordan’s killer as it will lead to someone close to her being hurt. When the suspect is apprehended he pulls a gun out and Diana pushes Tom and the bullet misses by a micro second in freeze frame. Diana assumes this it what Maid has seen but when she says that Tom is safe, Maia comments, For now.

Diana is not fit for purposes in many respects as having an inbuilt second carer with her sister while she spend the greater part of the time in her work, she then throws the sister out who tries to use Maia to predict bets so she can made some money. Diana is also prepared to allow a colleague to fake Maia’s Diana. While I have sympathy about her guilt at having broken her daughter’s trust in reading it the diary in the first instance she was prepared to disclose its existence when it came to trying to prevent the death of Jordan Collier and then she decides to sit on whatever else the book reveals. I would have no hesitation in dismissing Diana on the spot and slapping a confidentiality order on her after gaining possession of the diary and the idea that the government would accept whatever she submits without first authenticating with the child is ludicrous.
The disappearance of Jordan Collier’s body, did he suddenly come alive and go to ground? Question is left in the air while Shawn is finding his role as centre Godfather and faith healer impossible and wants a sabbatical to heal himself and adjust to his new role as the Messiah. It is at this point that that a publicity communications’ man, a friend of Jordan, steps in to say it was Jordan’s intention that he should take over as Shawn’s MD and quickly establishes himself as more single minded, ruthless and devious in the cause than Collier himself, although he also confides that he is not a believer!

One of his first acts is to promote Lily as his Director of Human Resources and persuade Shawn not to go off but to restrict his healing to one case a day and to set up a Foundation with an international committee to decide on which deserving cases among the millions seeking help should be chosen. Shawn has made up with his young brother and his mother but when the brother is shown around the centre his tour guide is Liv. The attractive young woman Shawn rescued from street life poverty, drugs and prostitution and has become a study disciple at the centre. She steals some drugs which she uses to tempt the brother into a relationship but they are caught after Shawn has warned his brother from getting involved with the girl. However this is not out of protection for his brother but because he fancies herself himself. The MD steps in and warns Shawn that he is being unrealistic in contemplating having a relationship with the girl given her background. Shawn retaliates that teh role did not stop Jordan bedding every willing female in sight. The MD points out that Jordan was not the faith healer messiah that Shawn has become and that he better sooner than later get used to the demands and restrictions which are intrinsic in this role.

The effect on judgement and potential misuse of official position over a pretty face and yielding body is the subject of the great War time film find of the decade called The Ascent. Not included in this piece

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1812 4400

The 4400 disk two episodes 4-6

In the sixth defined episode of the 4400 hundred I felt the series had come of age and that however derivative its concept it was executed in excellent fashion and had been unpredictable whereas the previous one had. None of the three episodes of the second disk of season, however, came Criminal Justice nor did Sandra Bullock, as a creative disturbed and driven detective controlled by her past in the film Murder by Numbers. This writing could be called three degrees of detection seriousness, two of them criminal.

The third episode of the second disk of the second season of the 4400 (Life Interrupted) stands out because it while it features Tom and his son, Shaun, his young brother and girl friend, their parents, Tom’s ex wife and Homeland security agent Diana, it is not about the 4400 directly. Tom is at the 4400 headquarters for the funeral of Jordan Collier when he is called to the room when the body had been laying in state only to find that it had disappeared. How Jordan Collier came to die was the subject of the previous episode. When Tom returns to the home where he and his son live he is immediately struck by the warmth of his son and when he returns to the office of the 4400 investigation Unit he finds everything normal except the 4400 has not existed and he is welcomed back after being on sick leave after an underground operation where he had been caught, imprisoned and tortured, followed by rescue, a period in hospital and sick leave for recovery. He has little time to work out what has happened when the unit is called to the Collier centre which is the same building but now an arts centre, because of a suspect reported in the building. Jordan Collier is just not dead but the state governor although he does not appear in the episode which one suspects is a clue of some kind. In the chase around the building Tom is separated from his colleagues and thinks he has seen a man enter a room which unlike all the others in the building which have solid wood doors, has a round window through which he looks and cannot enter when he tries to do so. His colleagues enter and apprehend the suspect. The door had become like all the others and room bears no relationship with that Tom had seen although we the audience had only obtained a fleeing glimpse.

When Tom returns home he finds his family and friends have gathered for a return to work party. In addition to his son being the fun loving student, his cousin Shaun is there, his younger brother and his beautiful, intelligent wife, Alana, who we subsequently learn owns an art gallery in the city centre. We learn that Tom is on good relations with his ex wife and her second husband and has a satisfying life as part of a good middle America urban community. When he persists that this is all unreal to him, the same words used by his son when he came out of the coma, his partner Diana traps him into a situation where he is then taken off to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

It is at this point his “wife“ admits that she too is a returnee who has no recollection of him or his life and is just as distressed and perplexed about her present situation which appears to be a parallel reality much explored in the Star Trek and Dr Who series. They agree to cooperate with the medical and other authorities so that Tom can return home and together they can work out what has happened to them. This appears to work and two establish a good relationship which over two years develops into a loving an close one and what had been the charade of their marriage becomes an important reality. At one point Tom returns to the building and enters the room with teh glass window in its door and finds a corpse laying on a medical type table at the centre, in a room reminiscent of the second concert hall at the Sage which is circular with several narrow balconies. However this room is dark and stark and there are showy individuals standing looking down and for some reason I think of The Way to the Stars, although I may have got the film title wrong. Just when he is about to uncover the body on the table the room shatters and he finds himself in the room which existed when he first entered and remained when he had returned. For several days and weeks subsequently he returns to the centre to keep watch on the door hoping the mystery of what had happened has been revealed but as the relationship with his “wife” develops and he has the warmth and strength of his family and work colleagues around him he and his wife accept their situation and the episode jumps eight further years as they renew their marriage vows and go off on a honeymoon with all their friends and family at the ceremony, including his son who has become a doctor. He is set to become the new regional director of the Homeland security unit.

It is at this point he returns to the centre and finds the room and is able to enter and to remove the cover from the face of the body on the table and discovers it is that of his wife. He learns that all that he has experienced over past decade has happened in an instant and was intended to provide him strength for the challenge of coping with the 4400 and their purpose in the years ahead and that the way to break out of the dimension is for both to accept that this is unreality and end what is in effect a prolonged dream. However because they can now control their experience they bring together their family and friends to announce they have decided to extend their trip which is something they had been wanting to do for sometime but wanted to say goodbye and as they do they eliminate the present reality person by person and local community and home. He returns to his office and find it is back to the time of the 4400 and the challenges which they pose. He has just missed a returnee whose form he recognises and runs after her not only to find that it is the woman who has been his wife for eight years in his mind but she knows who he is and they embrace and we believe he is to have the love and support in reality which those who had unlocked the powers of the 4400 said he needed to help fulfil their mission. However I could find no reference to his wife and the actress who played her in the Wikipedia notes on the episode.

This episode contrast with the previous two in which Richard‘s wife Lily turns to her former husband a lawyer, for help when Richard is taken into custody for his failure to register as a 4400 living in the community. This leads him to Jordan Collier who comes a calling, and begs the couple and their child to return. Jordan has revealed that prior to trying to stop Richard and his wife taking the child away from the centre he had been full of personal ambition, power and the wealth of the situation but although the child and threatened his life when he had touched Lily, he had been fundamentally changed and become focussed on the mission. He wanted them to come back and participate in the mission freely and he wanted contact with the child again because he believed his present life would be validated. This turns out to be so and Jordan become a grandfather/uncle in their life and that of the child. Everything continues to go well as the time of great reunion approaches when the returnees will assemble from all parts oft he world.

It is as this point that Maia has a prediction about Jordan who she sees on TV, he is to die. Diana and Tom first persuade their boss that it is important to try and intervene and then persuade Collier that he needs to take greater precautions and allow them to his help protect him and try and prevent what so far has been the inevitability of Maia’s predictions. In this respect they are supported by Shaun who argues that Jordan becoming a martyr would place the Mission in jeopardy and Jordan himself is ambivalent about what to do, agreeing that the unit and Tom and Diana can enter the 4400 complex centre and take control of security. They would still like the reunion postponed

Jordan decides to consult the child of Lily and Richard and while we do not immediately learn the outcome, Jordan believes that he should continue and that everything will work out well. For a time this also appears to be likely outcome as one major suspect is apprehended having come close to achieving the assassination. Then Jordan is shot from a vantage point outside the building where the main reunion ceremony is taking place, a flaw because in the real word this possibility would have been taken into account and he would have been moved to a position in the building where an external shooting could not occur. (Have you not noted the way Parliamentary building chambers are designed, The Houses of Commons and Lords, the Senate and Congress Houses and the UN building in New York. Although Shaun attempts to revive , Jordan, he is declared dead.

I suggest that no one is surprised that the body then disappears leaving the way open for a resurrection, reminding of Bobby Ewing in Dallas, nor is anyone surprised when we learn that the shootist, reminiscent of the shooting of President Kennedy also in Dallas, is none other than Tom’s son. This is not et tu Brutus but Judas.

The son and Shaun’s cousin have become increasingly aggressive towards the 4400, attacking everyone and everything associated with the returnees, especially Jordan and his chief assistant Shaun, with Kyle resentful and afraid of his ability to lose time and find himself transported from one situation into another and without memory of what has occurred in the intervening period.

Shaun also remains troubled as his commitment to the mission of the 4400 grows. He is challenged by a group of young misfits, drugs addicts, petty criminals surviving by voluntary hand outs and prostitution, living in the shadow of the city, in the first upside on teh disk, Suffer the children, a continuing problem in the Sates but which has been largely eliminated in the UK by in effect Government and police action supported by the establishment of refuges by independent bodies funded by voluntary contributions and government funds.

Shaun encounters one of these groups gate crashing a ceremony in which the guests are provided free food and he takes an interest in a young woman of similar age to himself and to her plight and those of her friends, donating food, blankets and medical supplies. Jordan warns against revealing his healing powers because to do so to one and all will seek help and it is not practical for him to heal everyone. However he responds to a call from the girl when her boyfriend appears to be a bad drugs trip and Shaun cures him with the consequence as Jordan predicted all the down and outs want his help. This leads to the girl being disillusioned with Shaun who has become her hero and potential saviour. He persuades her to enter the 4400 which does, we suspect not out of conviction but to get close to him. Unfortunately Jordan has been assassinated and Shaun has to take over the role of leader and becomes too busy with too great responsibilities to have a personal relationship and symbolically the doors to his office are closed to her as she approaches him having progressed within the 4400 process of enlightenment. The scene reminds when Corleone’s son becomes the Godfather.

The main focus of Suffer not Little Children is a returnee teacher accused of child abuse by some parents at her school because some of children have been changed dramatically for the good while others have not. She explains she has been able to recognise the untapped potential in many of the children, some creatively in playing a musical instrument, painting and sculpture with others in more traditional scholastic subjects but not all. One particular father and one pupil becomes very aggressive towards her and getting her removed from the school. When Tom and Diana investigate they are satisfied with the explanation of her power and she is returned to the school with protection but too late to prevent the most disturbed pupil from entering her class with a gun, not to kill in her but to persuade her to change him so his father will be proud The father has become the town failure the teacher explains that not everyone has untapped talent which can be immediately recognised and transformed this does not mean the boy will turn out like his father and does not find contentment through his work and relationships in the future. It is the father who persuades his son to hand the gun over and it is time for the teacher to move to an environment where her abilities will be appreciated and use to their potential.

So much of the second season second disk has been constructive and optimistic but there are warnings. The consequence of first husband assisting in getting Richard out of jail has led to problems with his second wife and to her first daughter overhearing and discovering that her first mother is alive and going in search and making contact. However when she has contact with her half sister there is a discordant note and later when she returns home she becomes seriously ill so the first husband makes contact with her mother when the danger is over for her visit in hospital, Do we detect jealousy and a child who requires the exclusive attention of her parents? There is also pressure on Diana and daughter Maia. The child continues to wrestle with her powers and wish to be normal while discovering that she is having further visionary predictions, Homeland Security subpoenas their employee to surrender the diary. Why did the baby tell Jordan he would be safe if he went ahead with the Reunion? One would like more answer and to know more those returnee who pass by only in one episode

1811 The 4400 Season 2 disk one

I began by suggesting that David Cameron like the writers of the 4400 appeared to have drawn on the work and approach of others to get their message over. The references to previous sci fi and other work are many and I was immediately struck in the two part opener for the second series by the similarity between the feverish activity of inmates and staff in a an institution for the mentally ill with that in Close Encounters of the third kind. There individuals were called to a place on a large hill. In and given the opportunity for a new life in a world within the stars. In Wake Up Call a long term patient suffering from schizophrenia who had been abducted has a compulsion to construct a communications device with the future, having established at the end of the first series that the purpose of the 4400 is to save mankind in the future. This for some reason the authorities object to and an attempt to stop and destroy but are prevented by Tom and Diana with the consequence that the device works and there is an impulse burst which appears to knock everyone off their feet for a few seconds but to have not other consequence. Then a brilliant former scientist who became disturbed in his thirties and has not spoken for years speaks and says that he feels better, The man had been working on the unlocking of areas of the brain which he felt could give human beings the power to predict future events, move objects and develop other abilities which the some of 4400 have commenced to exhibit.

Later I learnt that this concept is based on the work of prolific writer of science fiction horror, poet and scientific commentator P Lovecraft, Necronomician, Herbert West re-animator, At the Mountains of Madness and In the Shadow of our Time. The suggestion in the double first episode of the second series is that the recovered scientist should be in a position to develop his work on which human being in the future has developed from his ideas which had stopped when the illness took hold. This is as far as the main story progresses over the first four episodes of the second series called Wake Up Call 1. And 2. Voices Carry and Weigh of the World. What I do not understand is why those from the future did not adduct the mentally ill scientist in the first place!

In Voices Carry a returnee is a former baseball player abducted just when he was about to break into the major league game. His problem is that he begins to hear what everyone within his vicinity is saying which made playing in a public arena impossible. He returns to quarantine for help where the new head of the unit promised Tom and Diana that the man will be helped to reduce the force of the multiple hearing if he agrees to help find out what Richard is doing at what has become the 4400 centre in having dealing with an international gangster arms dealer and gangster. While he is successful in this project the state renegades on the promise to help him because of his military potential.

There is also a one off story in Weight of the World when a returning salesman who reunites with his now grown up daughter finds that his saliva has the power to cause dramatic overnight drops in weight. The commercial potential of this is quickly realised and major companies enter an auction to sign him up giving up an advance of $1 million dollars as part of a $40 million deal. However the gangster money lender and his wife who accidentally come across this power then find that they are starving and cannot replace the lost calories quicker enough so they starve to death. The company has immediately launched a trial of the instant new product with 100 people and their is a race to find solution for them and to neutralize his power

Meanwhile there is a continuation of the lives of the ongoing chanters so far. Diana has been able to officially adopt Maia, the eight year old who has returned after sixty years with presumably no blood relatives interested or able to be interested in her. It is interesting that of all the agents in the world of homeland security two of those selected for key tasks with the 4400 also have direct links or interests with the returnees which reminds of the X Files where both investigators one a believer and one a cynic also had links in their own lives between what they were investigating which they only gradually discovered as the various series progressed.

In the first four episodes of the second series the adjustment of Maia an the parent child relationship begins. Maia understandably wants to be a normal child and resents the specific and general protection provided by Diana who has not been a parent before and who appears to rely a great deal on the provision of home carers. That she has any free time with the child is amazing and I would not have recommended an adoption in such a circumstance unless she had been prepared to give up her 4400 job and take something where she could have resulted on the parent role being a day to day realtiy, but then times and attitudes have changed and the upper classes in the UK were always able to continue with their social lives and personal interests sending their children off to boarding school and arranging for nanny to care for them while they continue to holiday and party as the opportunity arose. The contrast between her relationship and that between Tom and his son is relevant because Kyle is constantly complaining about his father having to attend to 4400 work at vital moments in their relationship after he has recovered from the three year coma.

Maia like Kyle wants to be normal and insists on going over to a sleep over but returns distressed because of the comments of other children participating, and which appeared to centre on her saying she had a crush on Frank Sinatra. At least the other parent involved is responsible, caring and does not reject. The main issue with Maia is her ability to predict and the trouble this usually creates for her so her response as has been the response of others in this situation, to pretend she has lost the power while writing up what happens in her diary, a diary which she does not attempt to hide and therefore we can presume wants her mother to find. The high point in their relationship is when she refers to Diana as her mother and the low is when she appears to prefer to be in the company of her Diana’s sister who as in the X Files there is a bundle of issues between the two. The sister is spontaneous and life loving, taking the girl out from school to show her the sights and allows her to eat whatever she fancies. She is a tattooist and appears that the purpose of this is to make body art respectable after decades when it was not. The number of new Tattoo shops has dramatically increased but nothing like the tanning parlours the new tobacco industry of teh 21sdt century.

The problem with Kyle is that remnants of the being from the future appear to remain in his body and which causes him to have blank moments one of which leads him to be the suspect in a store trashing a second after he was drinking alcohol at a wild student party. The main development so far is his attempt to see Shaun at the 4400 new headquarters from which he prevented but when he does meet up with Shaun he dos not understand the perspective of his cousin. In general Shaun appears content with his new role as a healer and life within the 4400 centre community although he has considerable reservations about the commercial approach of its leader - Jordan Collier, and his fascination with the very things he denounces about contemporary society. Jordan had written and published a book about his aim of releasing the 4400 in everyone and which connects with the Lovecraft concept that there are unused parts of the brain which could give humans significant new powers if they could be unlocked. There are three aspects of Jordan’s behaviour which concern Shaun. First the naked selling of Shaun’s power to the highest bidders. Secondly his involvement with the international arms dealer and gangster and thirdly his taking up with a mega super star celebrity who was not an abductee but who is welcomed into the centre and its induction programme for other 4400 returnees. Shaun finds that Jordan and the woman are sleeping together. This also has an impact on one of the other returnees and a devoted helper assistant to Jordan who is in love with him and who attempts to commit suicide when she discovers his latest affair. Jordan tries to placate Shawn by saying that he has arranged for the young man to take over from him in the event of anything happening before the mission is accomplished. The Unit are concerned of the development of 4400 as a cult, a following led by someone who has written that he has declared war on the world as it is. The Christ symbolism between Shaun and parts of Jordan are obvious.

This brings us to the child of Richard, the black airman from the Korean War and his young bride who returned to find her husband remarried and a step mother pretending to be the birth mother of her daughter. In the first series the couple escape to a deserted cabin in the countryside to await the birth of what appears to be their child and who is six months of age when they find a flyer at the property condemning the 4400 and seeking the vengeance of God for the those who have been with the devil. Richard then finds that this is not the work of someone who has discovered their identity but a local preacher complete with large hat spitting fire and brimstone and with two gun totting sons prepared to do his bidding. They stay but the problem arises when his wife goes to the local store for supplies and encounters the Preacher who reacts to them and that the baby is mixed racial. The child reacts to this situation and to others which develop. We begin to appreciate that the child appears to have all the powers of others, the ability to know what others are thinking and feeling directly, the power to predict what is going to happen, the ability to intervene in nature as well as move matter and the power over the minds of other human beings. This is first demonstrated when the couple have to flee at night when the preacher and his two sons come calling with their weapons and the vehicles kids off the road into the forest where the couple try and escape via the a river bed back to teh highway. They are hungry and his wife comments it is a pity that the season is wrong for some edible berries and child makes these develop instantly but whereas this power is constructive, when the Preacher and the sons catch up with the couple who have separated, one trying to lead the pursuers from the other, the child intervenes and three men turn the guns on themselves. From Wikipedia I learn that they are able to fun their existence from money Richard has been due from his interrupted military service although if it is mentioned in the films I missed. However they flee before it arrives and taking refuge in a motel when his wife requests another blanket and is refused until she parts with a five dollar bill at the expense of food, the child opens the till for her when the man is called away and she takes not only the five dollars but more for food. This upsets Richard, the dishonesty and his inability to provide for his family. He is also concerned about the power of the child and how it has been used.

They, the Fugitives, always it seems having to move just when they have settled, go for help to another of the returnees who had become a self employed handyman, living in a middle class country style homestead in a part oft he country with great sunsets, climate in general and local accepting community. This is the best of middle America and a good place to settle when Richard is offered in effect a partnership with his friend and they begin to socialise with friends including a young black couple, where the wife is the daughter of a military man who has passed to her his admiration for the original black pilots what they achieved and how they managed to achieve it. Her husband is resentful of this, and jealous, controlling and abuse and picks a fight with Richard who shows that despite his actual and historical age is able to defeat his opponent and warns him to behave in the future, particularly towards his wife. The man retaliates by informing homeland security for the whereabouts of the couple who decide they must take to the road again from fear of the information finding its way to Jordan and his ambitions for the child.

1809 The 4400 season one

Why is it some people can make consistently better choices than others when outcomes are evaluated. Is it a question of intelligence, intuition, childhood background, education, experience, divine intervention? I believe it is having the right mix of all these and more, except into relation to the latter when from experience I understand that intervention is not in the form of human understanding but the ability to keep within a balance of forces which make up the universe.

When I discovered that the second disk of the series the 4400 was missing with its three final episodes of the first series I was tempted to continue with the remainder, expecting it could take some time to replace the duplicated first disk. I decided to contact the gift provider and amazing quickly the good customer relations of Amazon had supplied not just the disk but a replacement full set. Although watching West Wing had been my priority, I elected to start with the 4400 in the run up to the Christmas Season.

(section deleted as not directly applying to 4400)

So having digressed about the exercise of choice and its outcomes, back to the 4400 and where the whole series appears to hinge upon the choice that of one young man three years before the date when the series is set after 9/11 and the formation of Homeland security in the USA

First I had to remind myself that the series is about 4400 people, (will we learn the significance the number or was it just a creative notion which sounded good?) who are returned from where they have been after having disappeared for up to a century but interestingly not longer. Was this because the creators were limited in their imagination or because it would have been difficult for those from previous generations to have made an adjustment to the present had society accepted their return There return is associated with a Comet which become a large white light cylinder in shape and subsequently has the form of a white electrical charge.

It was evident from the two episode pilot and the one that which followed that the series would follow the experience of three distinct groups of people and this was confirmed from watching the three episodes of the second disk to complete the first season on Friday afternoon.

The first group are the investigators/monitors. There are three of these who work for the new Threat Assessment Unit part of the Homeland Security Service in the USA. Tom Baldwin, played by Joel Gretsch works for the government and is assigned to monitor what happened when the 4400 are released into the community after it is legally decided it would be unconstitutional to hold them for longer in quarantine. The reason why the 4400 are considered a threat and ostracised by the society generally is because the public becomes aware that they have extra terrestrial, Godlike or devil like powers.

Tom’s role becomes more significant when we learn that his son was one of those intended to have been taken three years before but his cousin moved him out of the white light force/electric charge and takes his place. This is the exercise of choice with profound consequence for both of them. The son Kyle, is played by Chad Faust and lived with his mother Linda (Lori Ann Trioli),until the event which has left him in a coma who is estranged from her husband, but they really love other and it appears to be his work which has caused the rift. More on the significance of the choice when I have covered everyone and everything else that has occurred to date. She appears to have no control over what and when she sees.

Tom works closely with Diana Skopuris (Jacquline McKenzie) a single woman who can barely cope with her own life but appear to be good as her job. She befriends the youngest of the returnee Maia born 28 Feb 1938 and disappears in 1946 aged 8. She is the first often returnees to attract the interests of the authorities because of her uncanny knack of predicting what is going to happen with infallible accuracy. She begins to write her visions in a diary.

This duo are commanded by Denis Ryland (Peter Cope) who heads National Threat Assessment Unit. Because the majority of the 4400 chose to settle in the area of his posting. Washington, we learn has doubts about his abilities and sends someone to keep an eye on and potentially take over as the first season progresses.

The second grouping are the majority of the 4400, who we never learn of their backgrounds or their role in the mystery although a selection become the main subject in every episode. The third group are the core returnees, five todate who are to have an on going role, or at least this is what the first series indicates with Maia already mentioned..

Lily Moore Tyler (Laura Allen), is a young woman who finds she is pregnant when she returns and that her husband has had her declared missing believed dead and remarried and where his new wife is bringing up Lily‘s child as her own. She was character born August 1966 and disappeared May 26th 1993. Her grandmother had an unrequited relationship with Richard Tyler born 1922 (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), who was abducted May 11th 1951 15 years before the birth of Lily, after being framed for assaulting a white girl when it became known he had a white girlfriend. Richard is amazed at the progress in race relations and rights since his abduction and he is struck by the similarity in appearance between Lily and his former love and when both find they do not fit in and do not have relatives with whom they can relate they establish a relationship even though Richard knows Lily is pregnant, assumed by her former husband. Lily has the ability to communicate with her unborn child. There is the possible parallel of Lily being the Virgin Mary, Richard is Joseph and the child, well we shall see! However the twist which emerges towards the end of the first season is that the unborn child has the same DNA as Richard. What does this mean?

When they find life in the community difficult with bomb attacks on some of the returnees they seek the help of another returnee Jordan Collier. He is featured in the first season episode (4) Becoming, A real estate financier and developer he disappeared in April 2002 and when he returns he decides to take on the government and society by declaring that he is a returnee and offering a new luxury private housing estate as a refuge for other trainees and he offers to provider a home free for the Lily and Richard and a job as head of security for Richard. However his support becomes suspect when he takes an intense interest in finding out what is happening to the pregnancy and when he attempts to separate the couple. They break out of the estate with the help of the unborn child and going into hiding until the baby is born. How they manage to fund their life is not explained and I learn that their fully furnished log cabin they use was found abandoned!

The main focus of the episode Becoming is the suspicion that another of the returnees Oliver Knox was a serial killer before he disappeared and is responsible for a further series of killings since his return. What emerges is that Oliver is able to get other men to kill victims he identifies to them and to then take the blame for the original killings thus taking the pressure away from himself. He is however apprehended. It is a relative of one of the murder victims who starts the bombing campaign against 4400 returnee and he and a associate are caught before their attack on Jordan Colliers property refuge takes place. Oliver disappeared in 1983 and uses mind control through speech.

The pilot is a double episode and in the second the main story focus is on Orson Bailey a partner in an insurance firm who disappeared in 1979 only to find on return that he has been removed from his company which is now being used in a corrupt way. When put under stress and frustrated Orson finds that he has awesome telekinetic power in the form of shaking vibrations to the extent of causing a minor earthquake and the death of the man who has taken over his company. However when it appears that his power is out control is shot by homeland security but lives and is taken into secure custody.

The third episode also is about a character, Carl Morrissey, the New and Improved Carl Morrissey, a minor Supermarket employee, also some who disappeared recently and returns to live with his wife and his old job. He is presented as someone who accepts what life throws at him but rebels when eh finds that the part where he courted his wife has been overrun by drug addicts, and gangs including rapists. He finds that he has developed great strength and movement and sets about cleaning up the park at night. He is the first to communicate the idea of being on a mission, However he misunderstands his abilities and is killed when taking on several hooligans at the same time. However this is not the end of his mission as the community responds to his death by getting together to reclaim the park. This can be viewed as an episode message that it is up to communities to band together to sort out similar situations but also alerts the viewer, and the investigators that the returnees are on a mission but which we have seen appears to have contradictory purposes ranging between extremes of good and violent evil.

This brings me to the significance of Tom’s son Kyle who was drinking beer on a beach at night in 2001 when the white light strikes him but on appeal to his drinking companion and cousin Shawn Farrell, it is Shawn who pushes Kyle out of the way and takes the full force of the light and is abducted. Kyle remains in a coma visited by his parents until Shawn returns.

On his return Shawn discovers he has the power to heal which eh finds it difficult to admit to and this includes healing the hand of the girl friend of his young brother who has a relationship with a girl at the High school who had a crush on the disappeared brother before his departure. This leads to a violent confrontation with his brother and taking teh decision that he needs to take refuge run by Jordan Collier who previously had taken an interest in the young when realising the nature of his powers. Shawn is upset to find the condition of his friend and on a visit to hospital places a hand on Kyle who appears to make progress which does not last. When eh visits again Kyle appears to regain full control over himself but cannot remember anything or anyone of his past including his father and mother. He claims that he is not their son and appears driven towards searching for someone or something. Meanwhile the person placed to watch over the activities of the Special Task Force takes Kyle into protective custody and for study and Tom and Diana embark on a plan to break the boy out of quarantine and into a place of safety with his mother. They are successful but the young man forces them to take him back to the beach where he was abducted and where father and son become transfixed by the white light which appears tom hold them in a trance like state. We the view know that this is not the situation as the being who has taken over the son is having a conversation with Tom. This is not evident to both the head of the unit and the man planted to take over when they arrive or to Diana, however the spy in the camp pulls a gun a shoot Kyle and breaks the white light connection. The episode is called The White Light. Kyle recovers from the shooting after the being inside him leaves and he appears fully recovered but to where he was three years previously.

And the conversation between Tom and the being ? We learn that the being is not an alien but a human, from the future, unstated time, and that the human race is dying out and that the time travelling was take the selected 4400 and return them in order to change things to change the future. So there is a mission which the 4400 must be allowed to undertaken. Kyle had been selected as the one to communicate the task when they returned but because of the intervention of Shawn he had not been taken and had been kept in the coma state until the appropriate time. They were therefore using Kyle to communicate with Tom and given him the responsibility of protecting the 4400 and the in so doing the future saving of humanity from extinction. Hmm!