As with the second series, the 4400 has got better and better with each episode and builds up to an excellent crescendo of action and revelation which appears to set out the full story behind the series, but still provides no indication why it is to end in mid air, or does it, with the conclusion of the 4th and final season. As with the first two seasons there are the regulars and the comings and goings, including several resurrections.
The second part of the season begins with Bling which can be regarded as a divertissement. A young woman commits suicide as do two others and the cause appears to be a 4400 lady who found that oil from her hands had the effect of causing people she touched to come into hallucinatory contact with relatives or former partners with whom they continue to have unresolved issues.
Diana and Tom each receive a basket of cookies ostensibly from each other home delivered which given that they work in the same office is a little surprising and amazingly they both start to eat the gift before checking with each other. Given they are supposed to be crème a la crème operatives of the FBI seconded to the special 4400 monitoring, support and control unit and it has been established they the individuals can do what they like with the future being able to intervene at will this act of stupidity on their party should not have passed the editorial decision makers.
However the episode has a well intentioned purpose in providing a way for the viewer to understand how they became as they are. Tom meets his long departed father who was a street cop, drank too much and took out his frustrations and the impact of his job on his wife and son.
This usually results in high achievers who are self reliant with a tendency to become over dependent on work for their continuing sense of identity and equilibrium and explains the failure of his first marriage. His second “wife” is in fact an artificial creation of the future to provide the kind of support a true creative requires if he is to flourish.
Tom failed to get to his father’s bedside before he died. At the end of the programme they have a long chat before he returns from whence he came! Diana also has an interchange with the boyfriend who cheated on her just before their wedding and which has lead her never to having a serious relationship since. At present she is dating Marco the 4400 government unit geek but the hallucinatory drug makes her realise that the relationship will not progress and this is unfair to the young man. They are two of the most unlikely matchings in TV relationship history, and it is not surprising that the editors had to find away to create a more likely individual..
Before the four episodes viewed have concluded both Diana and Tom are into satisfying relationships with potential long term significance, but not with each other. This impression does not last!
Maia has an insight that Diana will marry a creative photographer who like Diana has been to India. In order to introduce the young man the plot fabrication is for her banished sister to call one day and to bring her fiancée to meet Diana as she has come back to Seattle where the boyfriend lives.
Diana discounts Maia‘s prediction but tells the young man why they should not have contact when he calls to bring her a framed photo of an area of India which they both know. However her sister calls to complain that Diana is responsible for breaking them up and when Diana confronts him he explains that even if they are not to get together the prophecy from a 4400 made him question the suitability of the sister for a life partner. When they accidentally meet at the supermarket they both accept there is chemistry between them and have a proper date in secret with the sister acting a baby sitter for Maia.
I have trying to decide if the failure of Diana in particular to give appropriate regard to Maia’s revelations is simply a plot weakness. Everything she has seen and said has proved accurate after all. Ryland, who is painted as the baddie, appears the only individual in the world who fully understands the implications of the return of the 4400 although he appears to have been given all the financial help, manpower and authority anyone could need to combat the threat. However once the threat was established any and all governments would have formally established mechanisms to combat the situation, in so far as anyone is able to do so, and I am yet to work out if the allegory is a fundamentalist Christian one with the future representing divine and devilish intervention and the conflict who are opposed to radical change because it threatens their individual and corporate interests between them or the difference between fundamental Muslims who want to change the world peacefully or use force to do so and the interests, primarily capitalist, arms dealers, militarists, pharmaceutical, government organisations and such like
Tom’s “wife” Alana is officially allowed to come back to the USA for reasons which will be explained in a moment and similarly Tom’s son Kyle is freed from prison where he has been serving a long sentence for the murder of Jordan Collier and refusing to have contact with his father. Things are looking good for the two investigators and monitors of the series who form a kind of X files duo.
There are three related major subjects as the seasons unfolds. The first is the attempt by Dr Burkoff to create a synthetic form of the chemical which appears to have given the 4400 their special powers but which have turned him into a horrible looking individual who has to continually regenerate himself to survive but with increasing difficulty. He is being assisted by the schizophrenic young girl at the psychiatric unit with the power to make people do things who got them to create the communication device which enabled Dr Burkoff to break out of his condition and begin to function as he had done before the onset of the illness. Why the future did not cure him before his return is a puzzle though. Because he believes the experiment is failing due to his metabolic construction he decides that his assistant should use her ability to make people do things to transfer the experiment to Diana. Why he does not just transfer the experiment to his assistant is another of those editorial storyline moves which makes this less than a top notch series despite the excellence of the overall concept
He is stopped before doing damage by Tom, after a team from the Ryland Group shoot him four times and leave him for dead but he survives and moves on Diana. Meanwhile we learn that Isabelle’s visits to the Ryland laboratory has been to create a huge supply of chemical which she is able to provide naturally and to do so in a quantity which is staggering as we are shown a vast area of phials stacked on shelves row upon row and amounting to three years supply for purposes we are yet to be advised. The shoot of the stacks reminded me of scenes from the X files as it reached its conclusion.
Dr Burkoff goes on the run with the his female assistant and changes back to his normal good looking self thus proving that he has found a way to create the chemical in a laboratory. As Ryland points out scientists all over the world will have been doing likewise and paying 4400’s untold wealth for their cooperation or taking them into state control. Government would be con entreating on the military and economic value while criminal and pharmaceutical corporations would be looking at the commercial opportunities. The Chinese would have been first, the Russian following closely with teh British doing it on the quiet.
The appearance of Dr Burkoff reminded of the beauty and beast transformation of the Troll into the beautiful Princess in the recent Merlin episode. This week there was reprise of the Mr Hyde and Jekyll concept as a beautiful young orphan Druid girl had been given up to the local mercenary witch finder and taken to the city for a reward from the king who Merlin rescues and falls in love only to find that she turns into a murderous monster at night. As is common with every episode there are several silly moments as well as touching ones and can be said to have replaced Dr Who as a Saturday night after football fixture as the latter has moved more to a late more adult audience.
In the 4400 episode there are three killings in the Seattle area where the victims are turned into solid blocks which I thought were wood like. Each of the victims has a number pinned to them which the team work out is a message although why the operative choose to do this is never made satisfyingly clear. A similar kind of coded message is provided in this week’s episode of Spooks.
In Spooks we are back to the unit facing a major terrorist threat which appears to be managed by the Russians after capturing a terrorist. Why the Russians should be behind such a move is the odd aspect of this programme. This is the story put forward by the Russian captor of Luke who tortured and befriended him for four years who comes to London offering to reveal information about the plot for a passport and a million dollars. Don’t the script writers know that a million dollars will only sustain a lifestyle for a year or two these days. A billion dollars and you are talking. Luke and the Russian play cat and mouse with each other and with their superiors until everyone works out the operative has instigated the whole thing to get the money and a new life.
The underlying storyline is the news that there has been a secret meeting of allegedly rogue western spooks with the Chinese to change the the world order, although it is not year clear if this a good or bad thing similarly to the master plot of the 4400. The USA controller of the beautiful Marta Hari who is having a lecherous affair with Luke and which is getting serious, tells Luke’s boss about the meeting in order he should be on his guard as someone from the UK is thought to have been involved. The crunch is when Marta Hari throws her boss to his death when she realises he is coming close to identifying her as the USA individual attending the meting. She was captured by the Russian defector suspicious of her cover story and who is rescued by Luke as he saves the city of London by getting the Russian to reveal the bomb code to his colleague with two seconds to spare, real Bond style that.
The Russian is handed over to his bosses in act of British solidarity! No! revenge, knowing they will sort him out in ways which the British justice system does not allow.
The 4400 Jekyll and Hyde episode is called the Starzi Mutation. (Starzi is the real name of a specialist in transplants although spelt different it is also associated with the dreaded former East German secret service.) In the fictional work there was a problem which arose in the Seattle area when a flawed radio therapy machine caused slight mutations among a number of patients. There were over 100 individuals involved. What emerges is that
whereas a 4400 returnee who becomes a parent with a normal human being only produce a normal child, with one of the Starzi mutations they produced a 4400 powers child although it is not clear if they are Shaun’s the healers or Isabelle, the apocalypse! This is why many of the returnees settled in the Seattle area.
The government has selected a small team of service personnel to use the Isabelle provided chemical to develop super solder fighting powers. The individuals have all been reported dead to their families and one of the has gone AWOL after having problems. He goes after those affected by the radio therapy machine fault. The number pinned to them is the same as they appear on the official list and also official number of one of the soldiers reported dead whose body was never recovered and which leads the government monitoring unit to find the rogue soldier and his friend who kill each other.
The lack of clarity about motives for the behaviour is not revealed until the last episodes of the season. When Diana and Tom confront Denis Ryland he is forced to admit they have been creating the special unit of solders and pre-empt any independent disclosure by holding a press conference. Ryland defends the unit to Tom and Diana saying that the special soldiers are there to protect the interests of the USA and Tom or Diana makes the statement that the real intention is to go for the 4400, Ryland replies that controlling the 4400 and defending against the misuse of their special powers is what defending the interests of the USA is all about. This is a rational position
Behind the development is Isabelle who had moved her obsession of a relationship with Shaun into a marriage, contacted his family and inviting all the 4400 to the wedding. 1000 of them accept and one seeks a personal interview with Shaun to give one his manufacture red cigars in a presentation case. He discloses that his power is to enable people to see something of their own future and he has created the cigar for Shaun to look into his. Isabelle has admitted to Shaun that she had done bad things and will continue to do them and that Shaun is her counterpoint and the only person who may be able to stop her. Shaun who does not want to marry her decides to try out the cigar and has three insights. One is an extension of the other in which he is responsible for the death of Richard and the other he is unable to stop the death of Tom. All three visions occur in a world where war and terror has broken out between 4400 and their supporters and the states and their supporter. The first reaction of Shaun to is pull out of the marriage but he then decides to go through with the wedding in order to see if he can change what is to happen. Meanwhile Richard has developed kinetic powers which he tries to harness and one exercise is to think knives to fly off the kitchen shelf into a target and where the viewer has no doubt he has his errant daughter in mind.
This leads to the tour de force programme of the series so far, first tailored in the last frame at the end of the second season. Shaun comes out to greet the 4400 attendees before his wedding and one of them comes forward looking very much some depictions of Jesus of Nazareth but who is none other than the resurrected Jordan Collier. He then disappears and Tom and Diana are brought in to try and find him with Tom having the added incentive that if Jordan is alive then his son was wrongly convicted of murder. But Jordan is difficult to track down as he appears to have been all over the world at different times as a preacher Messiah and where his portrait has been created in mosaic tiles everywhere that a following has developed.
The two discover his diary which contains an epileptic(?) story about the future. Jordan visits Kyle in prison and when Tom and Diana find him, he still has no recollection of who is except that her has wondered through time as well as the earth world and that he has been to the future. This is the reason that Alana is brought back from her position as a fugitive in order to help Collier remember his identity which she does successfully.
His return unsettles Isabelle who misled Collier into believing he would not be assassinated. Collier orders her out of the centre and she joins the Ryland enterprise full time.
The next development is that the surviving members of the Nova group who are in custody are released by a member of the 4400 with the power to temporarily knock out all the staff including its security personnel.
This action is part of the Jordan Collier’s plan which he has kept from Shaun. He and Richard then tell Shaun they are planning to raid the military base where Ryland is using the Isabelle’s chemical to create the super military elite special force. Shaun is so upset that they are about kill people that he discloses that Collier was behind the break out of the Nova group and their plan to attack the special unit. This is in fact a blind for the real activity as Shaun is no longer trusted. The release of the Nova group was aimed at making use of the shape shifter He poses as Ryland and orders the moving of the three year store of chemicals made into 1700 units and the 4400 take possession. Ryland’s reaction is to believe the intention is to destroy the supply but then there is an internet video explaining that the substance will be distributed. The video is made at a safe house which the 4400 monitoring unit manage to locate. However when they arrived they find that Shaun has been called there to try and save the sister of the person who has made the video and who has taken the chemical and is showing an immediate adverse reaction. She dies. Shaun is taken into custody to try and find the location of the total supply. Tom and Diana confront Ryland who admits that some people have an adverse reaction within the first 48 hours and die. Half the selected 20 soldiers have died one way or the other. Hence the last episode of the third series is called 50 50.
Alana is persuaded to interrogate Shawn as a way to prevent torture being used and for her stay in the USA to be made official. However before she can see Shaun, Ryland arrives with the power to interrogate Shaun using Isabelle to get the information and she sends Shaun into a coma where he remains as the season ends. When they reach the centre where the supplies are being held first they find that the look alike drugs are fakes, then that Collier is in fact the shape shifter and that the place is wired for a major explosion. There si no explanation how the look alike drugs were created so quickly although one imagines Dr Burkoff was the brains for this development
Before she has obtained the information from Shaun Isabelle admits that she was created in order to kill all the 4400, something part of her did not want to do and she thought by giving the stuff to Ryland she would be able to achieve a standoff between the 4400 changing things and the her mission to kill them. She saw the marriage with Shaun, assuming Collier was dead, as another good way to achieve a synthesis between the thesis and antithesis, the equilibrium of the dialectic.
Ryland survives yet again, the third assassination attempt and so does Isabelle whose plan having failed sets out for the 4400 centre on a mission to kill all the members in her path.
Having seen what Isabelle has done to Shaun, Tom collects the syringe given to him by the future having reached the conclusion that killing her has become justified.
The relationship between Diana and the photographer has progressed. He has returned from London and asks Diana to leave her job and go with him to Spain where he has accepted a job which will last six months. Eventually Maia tells Diana’s sister about the relationship and predicted marriage as the sister has been sitting moping about her lost love and hoping he will come back to her. She is not as angry as Diana anticipated and comes to the conclusion she is not destined to have the stable long term relationship and effectively wishes the new couple well. Maia has seen that the sister will attend the wedding.
Because of the events at the centre Diana removes Maia from the school against the wishes of the girl but she returns when Diana is called away and on the day when Isabelle goes on the rampage and enters the class room asking which child will she kill first. Maia stand up to warn her that what she is doing will not work just as Diana comes in and shoots Isabelle down with Tom close behind to inject her the substance given by the future. However Isabelle recovers from the gunshots, the resurrections abound, and she knocks the syringe out of Tom’s hands and attempts to kill both Tom and Diana. Richard uses his kinetic power to move the syringe into the neck of Isabelle who collapses and then rises. Tom shoot her to be safe although subsequent tests reveal that she is back to being a normal human being without powers. Isabelle and Shaun are seen in adjacent wards in the hospital side by side, their futures uncertain.
Diana and Maia call to say goodbye to Tom and Diana before their trip to Spain. Maia tells Alana that they will be back sooner than everyone thinks.
Kyle, Tom‘s son having been released from prison is expected to return to High School. He goes to see Collier who explains that what happened was necessary with both playing preordained parts. Kyle is impressed with the mission and decides to leave home and to work for the centre in whatever way Collier ordains. Alana who having fulfilled her mission expects to be allowed to remain with Tom and is suddenly whisked away from him by the future. Has his mission been completed with the neutralising of Isabelle?
Collier has already arranged for the real Isabelle produced chemical to be distributed by the 4400 to the most needy, the underclass which includes the very old and the sick with everyone given a warning that there is only a fifty fifty chance of it working and of dying if it does not. Most of those who accept the offer feel they have nothing else to lose. It is like being given the opportunity to become a lottery millionaire on the spin of a coin. Heads you win, tails you die. The 4400 centre appears to have been closed by the authorities and 4400 dispersed with Collier reflecting on what has happened from a log cabin by a lake- the lake?
In the final scene one of those accepting a syringe is Diana’s sister/ This is all warm up for the 4th season which was in fact the last although it ends in mid air with more questions than answers, so I am led to believe.
The X files series has been running on various Satellite channels and recently I looked in at the conclusion of an episode of Babylon 5 and saw that it was moving into its last phase as the plot for the whole series is uncovered and as with Babylon 5 a concentrated effort on going through all the seasons of series is justified but whether I will have time remains to be determined. The X files was a wondrous series for the conspiracy theorist with the basic question have terrestrial landed and their technology used by the government or perhaps they have been dictating to the government or was it all a splendid government creation to out manoeuvre the Soviet enemy. The series also has the power group within the state. Was is certain is that such groups exists within every state and between states and cuts across the usual differences. For example Past President’s of the USA government have get-to-gether’s and are invited to other groups of former leaders and with the people who walk with Presidents and Kings. The existence of such meetings is not generally secret although the precise information about locations and times usually is for security reasons. There are usually formal minutes which are checked and circulated to those attending but the main activity comes form private social occasions involving individuals, sub groups and the whole group. Often there is closeness reached between individuals who have held the same position as there are between people of the same political parties, religions, commercial interests and such like. It is the way of the world.
The second part of the season begins with Bling which can be regarded as a divertissement. A young woman commits suicide as do two others and the cause appears to be a 4400 lady who found that oil from her hands had the effect of causing people she touched to come into hallucinatory contact with relatives or former partners with whom they continue to have unresolved issues.
Diana and Tom each receive a basket of cookies ostensibly from each other home delivered which given that they work in the same office is a little surprising and amazingly they both start to eat the gift before checking with each other. Given they are supposed to be crème a la crème operatives of the FBI seconded to the special 4400 monitoring, support and control unit and it has been established they the individuals can do what they like with the future being able to intervene at will this act of stupidity on their party should not have passed the editorial decision makers.
However the episode has a well intentioned purpose in providing a way for the viewer to understand how they became as they are. Tom meets his long departed father who was a street cop, drank too much and took out his frustrations and the impact of his job on his wife and son.
This usually results in high achievers who are self reliant with a tendency to become over dependent on work for their continuing sense of identity and equilibrium and explains the failure of his first marriage. His second “wife” is in fact an artificial creation of the future to provide the kind of support a true creative requires if he is to flourish.
Tom failed to get to his father’s bedside before he died. At the end of the programme they have a long chat before he returns from whence he came! Diana also has an interchange with the boyfriend who cheated on her just before their wedding and which has lead her never to having a serious relationship since. At present she is dating Marco the 4400 government unit geek but the hallucinatory drug makes her realise that the relationship will not progress and this is unfair to the young man. They are two of the most unlikely matchings in TV relationship history, and it is not surprising that the editors had to find away to create a more likely individual..
Before the four episodes viewed have concluded both Diana and Tom are into satisfying relationships with potential long term significance, but not with each other. This impression does not last!
Maia has an insight that Diana will marry a creative photographer who like Diana has been to India. In order to introduce the young man the plot fabrication is for her banished sister to call one day and to bring her fiancée to meet Diana as she has come back to Seattle where the boyfriend lives.
Diana discounts Maia‘s prediction but tells the young man why they should not have contact when he calls to bring her a framed photo of an area of India which they both know. However her sister calls to complain that Diana is responsible for breaking them up and when Diana confronts him he explains that even if they are not to get together the prophecy from a 4400 made him question the suitability of the sister for a life partner. When they accidentally meet at the supermarket they both accept there is chemistry between them and have a proper date in secret with the sister acting a baby sitter for Maia.
I have trying to decide if the failure of Diana in particular to give appropriate regard to Maia’s revelations is simply a plot weakness. Everything she has seen and said has proved accurate after all. Ryland, who is painted as the baddie, appears the only individual in the world who fully understands the implications of the return of the 4400 although he appears to have been given all the financial help, manpower and authority anyone could need to combat the threat. However once the threat was established any and all governments would have formally established mechanisms to combat the situation, in so far as anyone is able to do so, and I am yet to work out if the allegory is a fundamentalist Christian one with the future representing divine and devilish intervention and the conflict who are opposed to radical change because it threatens their individual and corporate interests between them or the difference between fundamental Muslims who want to change the world peacefully or use force to do so and the interests, primarily capitalist, arms dealers, militarists, pharmaceutical, government organisations and such like
Tom’s “wife” Alana is officially allowed to come back to the USA for reasons which will be explained in a moment and similarly Tom’s son Kyle is freed from prison where he has been serving a long sentence for the murder of Jordan Collier and refusing to have contact with his father. Things are looking good for the two investigators and monitors of the series who form a kind of X files duo.
There are three related major subjects as the seasons unfolds. The first is the attempt by Dr Burkoff to create a synthetic form of the chemical which appears to have given the 4400 their special powers but which have turned him into a horrible looking individual who has to continually regenerate himself to survive but with increasing difficulty. He is being assisted by the schizophrenic young girl at the psychiatric unit with the power to make people do things who got them to create the communication device which enabled Dr Burkoff to break out of his condition and begin to function as he had done before the onset of the illness. Why the future did not cure him before his return is a puzzle though. Because he believes the experiment is failing due to his metabolic construction he decides that his assistant should use her ability to make people do things to transfer the experiment to Diana. Why he does not just transfer the experiment to his assistant is another of those editorial storyline moves which makes this less than a top notch series despite the excellence of the overall concept
He is stopped before doing damage by Tom, after a team from the Ryland Group shoot him four times and leave him for dead but he survives and moves on Diana. Meanwhile we learn that Isabelle’s visits to the Ryland laboratory has been to create a huge supply of chemical which she is able to provide naturally and to do so in a quantity which is staggering as we are shown a vast area of phials stacked on shelves row upon row and amounting to three years supply for purposes we are yet to be advised. The shoot of the stacks reminded me of scenes from the X files as it reached its conclusion.
Dr Burkoff goes on the run with the his female assistant and changes back to his normal good looking self thus proving that he has found a way to create the chemical in a laboratory. As Ryland points out scientists all over the world will have been doing likewise and paying 4400’s untold wealth for their cooperation or taking them into state control. Government would be con entreating on the military and economic value while criminal and pharmaceutical corporations would be looking at the commercial opportunities. The Chinese would have been first, the Russian following closely with teh British doing it on the quiet.
The appearance of Dr Burkoff reminded of the beauty and beast transformation of the Troll into the beautiful Princess in the recent Merlin episode. This week there was reprise of the Mr Hyde and Jekyll concept as a beautiful young orphan Druid girl had been given up to the local mercenary witch finder and taken to the city for a reward from the king who Merlin rescues and falls in love only to find that she turns into a murderous monster at night. As is common with every episode there are several silly moments as well as touching ones and can be said to have replaced Dr Who as a Saturday night after football fixture as the latter has moved more to a late more adult audience.
In the 4400 episode there are three killings in the Seattle area where the victims are turned into solid blocks which I thought were wood like. Each of the victims has a number pinned to them which the team work out is a message although why the operative choose to do this is never made satisfyingly clear. A similar kind of coded message is provided in this week’s episode of Spooks.
In Spooks we are back to the unit facing a major terrorist threat which appears to be managed by the Russians after capturing a terrorist. Why the Russians should be behind such a move is the odd aspect of this programme. This is the story put forward by the Russian captor of Luke who tortured and befriended him for four years who comes to London offering to reveal information about the plot for a passport and a million dollars. Don’t the script writers know that a million dollars will only sustain a lifestyle for a year or two these days. A billion dollars and you are talking. Luke and the Russian play cat and mouse with each other and with their superiors until everyone works out the operative has instigated the whole thing to get the money and a new life.
The underlying storyline is the news that there has been a secret meeting of allegedly rogue western spooks with the Chinese to change the the world order, although it is not year clear if this a good or bad thing similarly to the master plot of the 4400. The USA controller of the beautiful Marta Hari who is having a lecherous affair with Luke and which is getting serious, tells Luke’s boss about the meeting in order he should be on his guard as someone from the UK is thought to have been involved. The crunch is when Marta Hari throws her boss to his death when she realises he is coming close to identifying her as the USA individual attending the meting. She was captured by the Russian defector suspicious of her cover story and who is rescued by Luke as he saves the city of London by getting the Russian to reveal the bomb code to his colleague with two seconds to spare, real Bond style that.
The Russian is handed over to his bosses in act of British solidarity! No! revenge, knowing they will sort him out in ways which the British justice system does not allow.
The 4400 Jekyll and Hyde episode is called the Starzi Mutation. (Starzi is the real name of a specialist in transplants although spelt different it is also associated with the dreaded former East German secret service.) In the fictional work there was a problem which arose in the Seattle area when a flawed radio therapy machine caused slight mutations among a number of patients. There were over 100 individuals involved. What emerges is that
whereas a 4400 returnee who becomes a parent with a normal human being only produce a normal child, with one of the Starzi mutations they produced a 4400 powers child although it is not clear if they are Shaun’s the healers or Isabelle, the apocalypse! This is why many of the returnees settled in the Seattle area.
The government has selected a small team of service personnel to use the Isabelle provided chemical to develop super solder fighting powers. The individuals have all been reported dead to their families and one of the has gone AWOL after having problems. He goes after those affected by the radio therapy machine fault. The number pinned to them is the same as they appear on the official list and also official number of one of the soldiers reported dead whose body was never recovered and which leads the government monitoring unit to find the rogue soldier and his friend who kill each other.
The lack of clarity about motives for the behaviour is not revealed until the last episodes of the season. When Diana and Tom confront Denis Ryland he is forced to admit they have been creating the special unit of solders and pre-empt any independent disclosure by holding a press conference. Ryland defends the unit to Tom and Diana saying that the special soldiers are there to protect the interests of the USA and Tom or Diana makes the statement that the real intention is to go for the 4400, Ryland replies that controlling the 4400 and defending against the misuse of their special powers is what defending the interests of the USA is all about. This is a rational position
Behind the development is Isabelle who had moved her obsession of a relationship with Shaun into a marriage, contacted his family and inviting all the 4400 to the wedding. 1000 of them accept and one seeks a personal interview with Shaun to give one his manufacture red cigars in a presentation case. He discloses that his power is to enable people to see something of their own future and he has created the cigar for Shaun to look into his. Isabelle has admitted to Shaun that she had done bad things and will continue to do them and that Shaun is her counterpoint and the only person who may be able to stop her. Shaun who does not want to marry her decides to try out the cigar and has three insights. One is an extension of the other in which he is responsible for the death of Richard and the other he is unable to stop the death of Tom. All three visions occur in a world where war and terror has broken out between 4400 and their supporters and the states and their supporter. The first reaction of Shaun to is pull out of the marriage but he then decides to go through with the wedding in order to see if he can change what is to happen. Meanwhile Richard has developed kinetic powers which he tries to harness and one exercise is to think knives to fly off the kitchen shelf into a target and where the viewer has no doubt he has his errant daughter in mind.
This leads to the tour de force programme of the series so far, first tailored in the last frame at the end of the second season. Shaun comes out to greet the 4400 attendees before his wedding and one of them comes forward looking very much some depictions of Jesus of Nazareth but who is none other than the resurrected Jordan Collier. He then disappears and Tom and Diana are brought in to try and find him with Tom having the added incentive that if Jordan is alive then his son was wrongly convicted of murder. But Jordan is difficult to track down as he appears to have been all over the world at different times as a preacher Messiah and where his portrait has been created in mosaic tiles everywhere that a following has developed.
The two discover his diary which contains an epileptic(?) story about the future. Jordan visits Kyle in prison and when Tom and Diana find him, he still has no recollection of who is except that her has wondered through time as well as the earth world and that he has been to the future. This is the reason that Alana is brought back from her position as a fugitive in order to help Collier remember his identity which she does successfully.
His return unsettles Isabelle who misled Collier into believing he would not be assassinated. Collier orders her out of the centre and she joins the Ryland enterprise full time.
The next development is that the surviving members of the Nova group who are in custody are released by a member of the 4400 with the power to temporarily knock out all the staff including its security personnel.
This action is part of the Jordan Collier’s plan which he has kept from Shaun. He and Richard then tell Shaun they are planning to raid the military base where Ryland is using the Isabelle’s chemical to create the super military elite special force. Shaun is so upset that they are about kill people that he discloses that Collier was behind the break out of the Nova group and their plan to attack the special unit. This is in fact a blind for the real activity as Shaun is no longer trusted. The release of the Nova group was aimed at making use of the shape shifter He poses as Ryland and orders the moving of the three year store of chemicals made into 1700 units and the 4400 take possession. Ryland’s reaction is to believe the intention is to destroy the supply but then there is an internet video explaining that the substance will be distributed. The video is made at a safe house which the 4400 monitoring unit manage to locate. However when they arrived they find that Shaun has been called there to try and save the sister of the person who has made the video and who has taken the chemical and is showing an immediate adverse reaction. She dies. Shaun is taken into custody to try and find the location of the total supply. Tom and Diana confront Ryland who admits that some people have an adverse reaction within the first 48 hours and die. Half the selected 20 soldiers have died one way or the other. Hence the last episode of the third series is called 50 50.
Alana is persuaded to interrogate Shawn as a way to prevent torture being used and for her stay in the USA to be made official. However before she can see Shaun, Ryland arrives with the power to interrogate Shaun using Isabelle to get the information and she sends Shaun into a coma where he remains as the season ends. When they reach the centre where the supplies are being held first they find that the look alike drugs are fakes, then that Collier is in fact the shape shifter and that the place is wired for a major explosion. There si no explanation how the look alike drugs were created so quickly although one imagines Dr Burkoff was the brains for this development
Before she has obtained the information from Shaun Isabelle admits that she was created in order to kill all the 4400, something part of her did not want to do and she thought by giving the stuff to Ryland she would be able to achieve a standoff between the 4400 changing things and the her mission to kill them. She saw the marriage with Shaun, assuming Collier was dead, as another good way to achieve a synthesis between the thesis and antithesis, the equilibrium of the dialectic.
Ryland survives yet again, the third assassination attempt and so does Isabelle whose plan having failed sets out for the 4400 centre on a mission to kill all the members in her path.
Having seen what Isabelle has done to Shaun, Tom collects the syringe given to him by the future having reached the conclusion that killing her has become justified.
The relationship between Diana and the photographer has progressed. He has returned from London and asks Diana to leave her job and go with him to Spain where he has accepted a job which will last six months. Eventually Maia tells Diana’s sister about the relationship and predicted marriage as the sister has been sitting moping about her lost love and hoping he will come back to her. She is not as angry as Diana anticipated and comes to the conclusion she is not destined to have the stable long term relationship and effectively wishes the new couple well. Maia has seen that the sister will attend the wedding.
Because of the events at the centre Diana removes Maia from the school against the wishes of the girl but she returns when Diana is called away and on the day when Isabelle goes on the rampage and enters the class room asking which child will she kill first. Maia stand up to warn her that what she is doing will not work just as Diana comes in and shoots Isabelle down with Tom close behind to inject her the substance given by the future. However Isabelle recovers from the gunshots, the resurrections abound, and she knocks the syringe out of Tom’s hands and attempts to kill both Tom and Diana. Richard uses his kinetic power to move the syringe into the neck of Isabelle who collapses and then rises. Tom shoot her to be safe although subsequent tests reveal that she is back to being a normal human being without powers. Isabelle and Shaun are seen in adjacent wards in the hospital side by side, their futures uncertain.
Diana and Maia call to say goodbye to Tom and Diana before their trip to Spain. Maia tells Alana that they will be back sooner than everyone thinks.
Kyle, Tom‘s son having been released from prison is expected to return to High School. He goes to see Collier who explains that what happened was necessary with both playing preordained parts. Kyle is impressed with the mission and decides to leave home and to work for the centre in whatever way Collier ordains. Alana who having fulfilled her mission expects to be allowed to remain with Tom and is suddenly whisked away from him by the future. Has his mission been completed with the neutralising of Isabelle?
Collier has already arranged for the real Isabelle produced chemical to be distributed by the 4400 to the most needy, the underclass which includes the very old and the sick with everyone given a warning that there is only a fifty fifty chance of it working and of dying if it does not. Most of those who accept the offer feel they have nothing else to lose. It is like being given the opportunity to become a lottery millionaire on the spin of a coin. Heads you win, tails you die. The 4400 centre appears to have been closed by the authorities and 4400 dispersed with Collier reflecting on what has happened from a log cabin by a lake- the lake?
In the final scene one of those accepting a syringe is Diana’s sister/ This is all warm up for the 4th season which was in fact the last although it ends in mid air with more questions than answers, so I am led to believe.
The X files series has been running on various Satellite channels and recently I looked in at the conclusion of an episode of Babylon 5 and saw that it was moving into its last phase as the plot for the whole series is uncovered and as with Babylon 5 a concentrated effort on going through all the seasons of series is justified but whether I will have time remains to be determined. The X files was a wondrous series for the conspiracy theorist with the basic question have terrestrial landed and their technology used by the government or perhaps they have been dictating to the government or was it all a splendid government creation to out manoeuvre the Soviet enemy. The series also has the power group within the state. Was is certain is that such groups exists within every state and between states and cuts across the usual differences. For example Past President’s of the USA government have get-to-gether’s and are invited to other groups of former leaders and with the people who walk with Presidents and Kings. The existence of such meetings is not generally secret although the precise information about locations and times usually is for security reasons. There are usually formal minutes which are checked and circulated to those attending but the main activity comes form private social occasions involving individuals, sub groups and the whole group. Often there is closeness reached between individuals who have held the same position as there are between people of the same political parties, religions, commercial interests and such like. It is the way of the world.
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