Setting up a perimeter to keep back the throngs of press and gawkers, NTAC is stunned to see the "comet" descend from the clouds and start to hover over the water near the beach, an enormous, glowing ball that suddenly explodes into a blinding corona of light. In the aftermath, out of the dissipating mist, walks... people. Blinking, confused, milling about in a disorganized crowd. Hundreds, thousands of people, with no idea of where they have been.

Quickly quarantined by an understandably spooked government, the "returnees" -- precisely 4400 of them -- are kept in a large containment facility while tests are run, interviews are conducted, and the press has a field day discussing the rights of these people, all of whom have been missing for varying periods of time, some just a few years, others dating back to the late 40's, all not having aged a day in the interim.

After several weeks of tests gives the Returnees a clean bill of health, they're finally allowed out of quarantine to return to their families..or at least, the families that are left after five, ten, twenty, even fifty+ years have elapsed in, to them, the blink of an eye. One of the NTAC agents assigned to keeping tabs on the Returnees (or "4400", as they're dubbed by the press) who settle in the Seattle area, Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch), has a very personal connection to the case... his own nephew, Shawn Farrell (Patrick Flueger), is one of the Returnees, having vanished without a trace three years earlier, in 2001, leaving behind Baldwin's son, Kyle (Chad Faust), who lapsed into a coma that night and hasn't spoken a word or moved a muscle since. Baldwin's partner in monitoring the 4400 is a former CDC agent, Diana Skouris (Australian actress Jacqueline McKenzie, who bears a striking resemblance to a young Mary Steenburgen), who views the Returnees as more of a "disease cluster" than as actual Human Beings. And, as it turns out, she may be right...

For you see, soon some of the 4440 start to develop strange, inexplicable abilities. A nine-year-old girl named Maia (Conchita Campbell), abducted way back in 1946, can apparently see future events before they happen. Baldwin's nephew Shawn can lay his hands upon the sick and dying and heal them (and, conversely, literally suck the life out of the healthy). Once the press gets wind of this phenomena, the 4400 quickly become a feared subclass by the world at large, who brand them "freaks" and start a great moral debate on whether or not their basic, human rights should be superceded in the interests of keeping the populace at large safe from the occasionally frightening abilities that have begun to manifest themselves amongst them. 

Soon, it's not only Tom Baldwin who has a familial connection with the 4400 (his nephew Shawn uses his powers to bring his son, Kyle, out of his years-long coma), but also Diana Skouris, who eventually adopts young Maia as her own daughter. But the rift between the 4400 and the "normal" folk who fear and distrust them is widened further when a wealthy Returnee named Jordan Collier (The Rocketeer's Billy Campbell) starts to hold meetings for the lost, shunned-by-society 4400 to have a place of their own, away from the prying eyes and mistrustful whispers that have made their post-abduction lives so difficult. Eventually funding "The 4400 Center", Collier not only offers refuge for "his" people, but also offers to help unlock the superpower potential locked within the mind of anyone who wishes to join his group, which quickly grows into a religion (or cult, depending on one's point of view).

So why were all these people taken and returned en masse? Once Kyle is awakened from his slumber, he reveals himself as a "vessel" of sorts for the consciousness of a scientist from the future, who before evacuating Kyle's body informs Tom Baldwin that the 4400 were plucked from the past, genetically altered to grow supernatural gifts, and returned all at the same time to get the world's attention concentrated upon their spectacular re-integration into the time stream. In doing so, they hope to create a kind of "Ripple Effect" that will change the course of history and help prevent a great, unspecified catastrophe that will bring most of the world to ruin, the privileged few living in fortified cities while the remainder of humanity is left to squabble amongst the bones of the shattered society left behind.

So, the series proper (after this important information is doled out by the end of the show's first season) details NTAC's policing of the 4400, how the Returnees try to find a place for themselves in a world that has literally passed them by, and the growing divide between them and the populace at large, who question the safety and wise-ness of allowing these "freaks" their rightful spot in society. Things get messier and more complicated as the series progresses, however. Season two introduces a number of characters and plot devices the helped shape the remainder of the show's ever-evolving "mythology". In "Wake Up Call", a schizophrenic 4400 named Tess Doerner (Summer Glau from Firefly and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) uses her ability to control the thoughts and actions of those around her to compel her fellow psych ward bunkmates to create a strange antenna in the facility's back yard which, when activated, manages to somehow return one of the inmates named Kevin Burkoff (twitchy B-movie favorite Jeffrey Combs) to a semblance of coherent sanity. Burkoff, by season's end, has begun experiments in synthetically re-creating the drug "Promicin", an enzyme found within the brains of all of the 4440 that may just be able to create similar powers within "normal" people injected with the substance.

Meanwhile, Jordan Collier's growing sway over an ever-increasing throng of adoring 4400 and "regular" folk is rudely cut short by an assassination attempt predicted by young Maia, and a 4400 named Lilly Moore (Laura Allen), who came out of that ball of light with child despite not being pregnant when she was abducted, tries to raise her strange new baby, Isabelle, with the help of a former 50's Air Force pilot and fellow abductee Richard Tyler (Mahershalahashbaz Ali... try saying that name three times fast), only, in the season two finale, to discover the child has aged, literally overnight, from infancy to the shapely form of a 20-year-old woman (now played by the gorgeous Megalyn Echikunwoke).

The third season found Isabelle, mature in body but still childlike and innocent, trying to come to terms with her bizarrely accelerated growth spurt (which apparently is connected to her mother Lilly's equally overnight transformation from her early thirties to an elderly woman played touchingly by guest star Tippi Hedren) and the destiny hardwired into her genetic makeup by the backstabbing future scientists who placed her in Lilly's womb... to sabotage the "4400" project by any means necessary and preserve the timeline. Also running through the season is Kevin Burkoff's increasingly dangerous experiments with the Promicin drug, using himself as a guinea pig and actually managing to harness it to induce a new ability in himself (being able to heal himself after suffering grievous bodily wounds), but in the process turning himself into a Seth Brundle-esque carnival-show horror. By season's end, Jordan Collier (back from the dead after his apparent death in season two... his initials aren't subtle) has stolen Burkoff'd formula and has mass-produced the Promicin drug in order to offer it to anyone who wishes to take a shot of it in order to gain new abilities... with the sobering caveat that almost exactly fifty percent of those who take the shot will, instead of gaining an ability, will instead die a horrible death. Despite the 50-50 odds, as season four opens, many opt to take the drug, with deadly results, instigating a rash of deaths across the country and world, despite the government's futile attempts to root out those illicitly creating and supplying Promicin to the populace.

The show's fourth (and final) season also delves into Jordan Collier's creation of "Promise City", a run down slum smack dab in the middle of Seattle that is shielded from non-4400 entering, where he preaches about the new and vastly better world that Promicin will bring, despite the necessary (as he deems it) sacrifices of those who don't survive the shot, as well as the intriguing concept of "The Marked"; a group of scientists from the future -- determined to bring a halt to the spread of Promicin and the hoped-for "Ripple Effect" that the 4400 experiment was created for -- who have imprinted their consciousness into the bodies of several wealthy and high-ranking people from our time, hoping to monitor and sabotage the 4400, using Isabelle as their super-powerful pawn.

Running on the USA Network from 2004 through 2007, The 4400 offers echoes of many other science fiction television programs, and, like a lot of sci-fi, uses it's fantastical premise to offer some obvious yet intriguing parallels to contemporary cultural issues. The premise of a small group of "interlopers" being reluctantly absorbed into a larger society recalls the 1988 film Alien Nation (and the fine, if short-lived, Fox television series that followed), and the concept of a small-but-growing group of people using their newly-aquired superpowers to alter world events for good and evil purposes pre-dates NBC's Heroes by a full two years. But unlike Heroes, which was engrossing for the majority of it's first season but which, lately, has become lost in a morass of un compellingly dense mythology, endless retconning, and a baffling maze of half-realized alternate timelines, The 4400 thankfully keeps it's focus tight on the element that good science fiction should keep an eye on... the characters.

Let's face it... the idea of missing a large chunk of one's life like a needle skipping across several grooves in an LP record is a compelling one, and while the series shied away from exploring this idea as fully as it could have, in it's first season, there's a palpable sense of melancholy in the cultural and emotional shock of the show's characters attempted to re-integrate themselves into lives that have passed them by to one degree or another. One agonizing subplot features Lilly Moore, taken in 1992, attempting to reconnect with her husband, only to discover not only has he remarried in the interim, but that he's raised their infant daughter (now 12) to believe that his second wife is her true mother. And Richard Tyler, threatened with a dishonorably discharge from the Air Force for dating a white woman circa 1951 before his abduction, comes back to a fascinating yet frightening world where interracial relationships are commonplace and smoking in diners in frowned upon by the kid with a nose ring in the next stall. Not to mention young Maia (taken in 1946) coming home in tears from a sleep over because the other girls teased her mercilessly for revealing her secret crush to be Frank Sinatra. 

The show's only major disappointment comes from the fact that the crippling writer's strike of late 2007 forced the show's home network, USA, to cease production of the series at the end of it's fourth season. While the series didn't exactly end on an outright cliffhanger (as Alien Nation, cancelled at the end of it's first season, did), it did leave many plot threads dangling, possibly never to be resolved. What was the futuristic cataclysm that the 4400 experiment was created to prevent? Who are the remaining members of "The Marked"? What of the dangling fate of Tom Baldwin's 4400 love interest, Alana Mareva (Karina Lombard), re-abducted at the end of season three and hurled back 100 years into the past as a form of punishment for Tom's refusal to assist the plot machinations of the future conspirators? What will the future bring to Seattle, which, in the final episode, fell prey to a plague of unintentionally induced Promicin which resulted in thousands of deaths and thousands of people with new abilities (including some recurring NTAC regulars)? We may never know. For a series as compelling and well-acted as The 4400, the lack of a true resolution to the majority of it's long-running storylines is frustrating, to say the least. At least give the show a couple of TV movies or a miniseries or a comic book to wrap everything up (which happened for Alien Nation in the mid-90's, and more recently ABC's Jericho, which was briefly given a stay of execution following a successful campaign by series fans for the show's resurrection following it's first-season cancellation).

Presentation
Being a series that's only four years old, The 4400 naturally looks just fine on DVD, with only the occasional image halo around light sources marring the otherwise crisp image. The 5.1 English soundtracks are equally fine, mixing good (if not overwhelming) use of the surround channels with deep, rich bass (particularly in the show's haunting theme song, crooned by Amanda Abizaid). Presentation-wise, these discs are extremely satisfactory.

Extras
Extra features on this complete series boxed set are all the same as the previously released individual seasons (with the exception of a bonus disc, the contents of which are discussed below). While season one has no extras whatsoever, beginning with season two, there are a number of fine bells & whistles...

Season Two

First off are a trio of audio commentaries featuring writer/producers Ira Steven Behr and Craig Sweeney and actors Joel Gretsch and Jaqueline McKenzie on the episodes "As Fate Would Have It", "The Fifth Page" and "Mommy's Bosses". These are entertaining chats with the actors being particularly funny and engaging.

Next up are a series of featurettes. Creating The Ball Of Light (8:48) looks at the origins of the show with thoughts by series creators Scott Peters and Ira Steven Behr and others associated with the program. Return Of The 4400 (11:26) discusses how the series proper was shaped following the initial miniseries (where the creators were forced to reveal the whole "sent back from the future" origin of the 4400 at the end in case the miniseries wasn't picked up for a second season). A Stitch In Time (9:41) offers several scientific theories about the "real world" feasibility of time travel. TVFX (12:50) takes a gander at creating the show's special effects on a modest TV budget.

Season Three

More commentaries are available on "The New World" (Ira Steven Behr), "Gone, Part 2", "The Ballad Of Kevin & Tess" (both with Jacueline McKenzie, Joel Gretsch, and Scott Peters) "Terrible Swift Sword" and "Fifty-Fifty" (both with Ira Steven Behr). 

Featurettes include The Architecture Of Series Storytelling (21:07), which looks at how the series struggled to juggle personal, character-based stories within the show's ever-more-elaborate sci-fi "mythology". Powers Grid (4:39) dissects coming up with suitably interesting powers for the various 4400 characters. 

Character Tree offers mini-featurettes sketching out the various characters and how they interact with each other, including Marco Pacella (1:34), Jordan Collier (2:40), Shawn Farell (1:28), Richard Tyler (1:30), Kevin Burkoff (1:54), Isabelle Tyler (2:15), Tom Baldwin (2:34), Alana Mareva (2:10), Nina Jarvis (1:43), Matthew Ross (1:22), Diana Skouris (2:41) and Maia Skouris (1:22).

Being Tom Baldwin: The First Draft is a DVD-ROM feature which allows you to view an early draft of this particular episode's screenplay when you pop the disc into your computer or laptop. 

The 4400 Gag Reel (8:21) cuts some of the show's tension with some flubbed lines and technical malfunctions and overall goofing off (Billy Campbell and Patrick Fleuger have a great run of improvised jokes involving James Brown).

Only one commentary is on tap for this final season, for the episode "Till We Have Built Jerusalem" (Scott Peters).

Featurettes include Season IV: Factions At War (27:04), an overview of the show's last season, and Jordan Collier: The Grey Man (7:48), which looks as Billy Campbell's character arc throughout the series. Another amusing -- if too short -- Blooper Reel (3:31) is also here, as well as Deleted Scenes from the episodes "The Wrath Of Graham" (3:05), "Fear Itself" (2:54), "The Truth And Nothing But The Truth" (4:13), "Try The Pie" (2:40), "The Marked" (2:02), "No Exit" (3:33), "Daddy's Little Girl" (1:26), "Ghost In The Machine" (0:58) and "Tiny Machines" (2:45). There's also a slightly-extended director's cut (45:32) of the season/series finale "The Great Leap Forward", with optional commentary by writer/director Scott Peters.

Bonus Disc

A bonus disc exclusive to this complete series set includes a Video Introduction by series creator Scott Peters (1:17), and a newly-recorded Pilot Episode Audio Commentary by Scott Peters and Joel Gretsch. The title of The 4400: The Ghost Season (14:37) had me initially intrigued, as I hoped it would contain a discussion about the potential plotlines of the aborted fifth season, but instead it's a pretty forgettable chat with Scott Peters discussing the show's cast. Promicin: The Moral Choice offers a trio of amusing featurettes featuring faux footage from TV shows, commercials, and internet postings involving the various reactions to the fourth-season spread of Promicin users. Enjoy Viral/Grassroots (9:05), Political (5:40) and Show-Specific (5:50). Deleted Scenes are also on tap from season one (3:07, "Pilot") season two (10:15, "Wake Up Call", "As Fate Would Have It", "Carrier", "The Fifth Page", "Hidden") and season three (17:50, "The New World", "Gone", "Gone, Part II", "The Homefront", "The Ballad Of Kevin & Tess", "The Gospel According To Collier" and "Fifty-Fifty"). All this stuff is nice (the pilot commentary in particular), but whether or not it's worth re-buying the entire series for those who have collected the previous season sets is up to the individual collector.

Bottom Line
Like all good science fiction delivered on a television budget, The 4400 is a series about ideas rather than whiz-bang special effects, and it's a compelling show peopled with engaging characters and thoughtful parallels to contemporary culture. This sturdy, handsomely-packaged complete series set offers a great deal for the price.