What if?
For a science fiction program, those two words are the starting point — and the answer tells whether the show has a future. The USA Network’s new offering, “The 4400,” debuts Sunday with a fairly decent response.
What if hundreds of random citizens — 4400, to be precise — simply reappeared years, or even decades, after they appeared to fall off the face of the earth? And what if they returned physically unchanged, but possessed of startling powers?
The answers to those “what ifs” are only hinted at in the two-hour premiere (the show will subsequently pare down to an hour and air 9 p.m. Sundays).
Episode one introduces a large ensemble cast, headed by an understated Peter Coyote (most recently on HBO’s “Deadwood”) and an over-the-top Michael Moriarty (the former “Law & Order” prosecutor).
Coyote plays Dennis Ryland, head of the Washington state Department of Homeland Security. Moriarty plays life insurance salesman Orson Bailey, a member of the 4400 who disappeared in 1979.
He returns home to find his job gone and his wife in a nursing home. One other thing has changed: Bailey can crack a man’s skull like an eggshell, simply by losing his temper.
Bailey’s telekinesis is reminiscent of “Carrie,” which isn’t the only derivative ingredient in this sci-fi stew. Lead investigators Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie) echo the Mulder-Scully tag-team of “The X-Files.” And there are echoes of the cult movie favorite “Alien Nation,” along with a bit of Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone.”
The show’s producers bring experience in the sci-fi field. Co-creator Scott Peters wrote, produced and directed several episodes of “The Outer Limits,” while executive producer Rene Echevarria penned more than 30 episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
New immigrants?“The 4400” opens with little Maia Rutledge (creepily played by Conchita Campbell) disappearing into a bright light from the sky during a family picnic on a rainy afternoon.
The date is March 3, 1946, and Maia is 8 years old. She’s also No. 1 of the 4400.
She’s followed on screen, in rapid order, by a U.S. fighter pilot from the Korean War in 1951; Moriarty’s insurance man in 1979; and a beer-swilling teen out with his cousin in 2001.
They, along with the rest of the 4400, make a dramatic reappearance by a comet that threatens to destroy the world. A flash of light leaves the group wandering around Mount Rainier, like 21st century immigrants at a new Ellis Island.
The metaphor is further stretched when the group is quarantined. But times have changed; the American Civil Liberties Union, backed by a federal appeals court, orders the release of the 4400 just six weeks after their arrival.
By then, the group has bonded. They identify each other by the year of disappearance, almost like alumni returning to their college campus (”Class of ’81, anybody?”).
But for most of the 4400, there are no happy returns. Maia’s parents are long dead. Lily Moore (Laura Allen) finds her husband remarried, and her daughter unaware of her existence. Fighter pilot Richard Tyler (Mahershalalhazbaz Ali) finds his St. Louis home gone — and a strict no-smoking policy at a local diner. Shawn Farrell (Patrick Flueger) is derided by his friends as a freak.
Such changes are expected. But then life takes a turn for the weird. Moore is inexplicably pregnant. Farrell gives life to a dead bird. Little Maia peers into the future like a pint-sized Nostradamus. Bailey becomes a murder suspect.
It’s quite a maze of characters and intercutting plot lines — and there’s one more twist. Returnee Farrell was with his cousin Kyle when he disappeared; Kyle slipped into a coma that same night.
And Kyle’s dad is investigator Baldwin, who wants Shawn to provide some answers about what went wrong.
More questions than answers are raised in the curtain raiser, as expected. As the 4400 achieve cult status around the country — there’s even a Web site! — the folks at Homeland Security are left to wonder what’s happening.
“You have to admit, it’s a nice round number,” Skouris tells her partner as they discuss the 4400 new arrivals.
His reply is perfect: “You mean if 3,781 people suddenly showed up that night, it wouldn’t be as strange?”
Maybe not. What if ... ?