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.
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.
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