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.
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.
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