4400

I haven't written about any movies lately because I've been instead going through the past science fiction tv series The 4400 ....

In the pilot episode, what was originally thought to be a comet deposits a group of exactly 4400 people at Highland Beach, in the Cascade Range foothills near Mount Rainier, Washington. Each of the 4400 had disappeared at various times starting from 1946 in a beam of white light. None of the 4400 have aged from the time of their disappearance. Confused and disoriented, they remember nothing between the time of their disappearance and their return.


- the youngest returnee is an eight year old girl scooped in the 40s, Maia

The show has an interesting concept - I don't think I'll be revealing any big secret to say that by the end of the first season, it becomes known that the people supposedly "scooped" by little gray men were actually taken by human from Earth's future instead, where they were changed in a number of ways and then brought back to the present so that they could avert by their actions a coming catastrophe.


- Agent Tom Baldwin with his nephew Shawn (Patrick Flueger), a returnee, and his son Kyle (Chad Faust)

The show so far (I'm into season 3) is about how the world handles these reterness with their special abilities, and about how the returnees manage (or don't manage) to make worthwhile lives for themselves after having been gone and while being "different". Two of the main characters are Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch, who now plays Catholic priest Fr. Jack on the series V) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie), agents of The National Threat Assessment Command (NTAC), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of the returnees. Peter Coyote plays Dennis Ryland, their boss. The returnees are eventually let out of quarantine and one of them, Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell), builds a complex where 4400s can live independently of society. The story follows a a worsening of the relationship between the government and the returnees until, at the point I've reached, there's almost a war between "normal" people and the 4400s. I think it's pretty good overall.


- Jordan Collier with other returnees Lily (Laura Allen) and Richard (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) and their mysterious baby