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I watched the entire 4400 last night on video sent to me by a wonderful friend.
Cool show in very many ways. But full of propaganda. Wow! None too subtle either. It starts with America's latest secret police (Homeland Security) being the heroes. And then there are all the messages that it is a 'good' thing that nobody has any rights anymore! The 'good guys' threaten a person with "in the good old days I had to get permission to get a phone tap or have a reason to detain you or stop you getting on any airline anywhere in the world, but this isn't the good old days". The new secret police are able to abduct anybody they want with impunity. One of the secret police gleefully rams a gun in the face of one of the bad guys and tells him "you don't have the right to silence; you don't have the right to an attorney" etc. And seeing all the security guards lined up firing guns at people on a public road because they suspected them of badness was chilling.
The one journalist who is able to operate beyond the control of the secret police is portrayed as a baddie with her insistence on freedom of the press. One of the other baddies is a guy who comes in to investigate the secret police's actions.
It is weird that justice is never mentioned. All they want is to find out what happened and they consider people as just pawns to be used as they see fit in the pursuit of that knowledge. Human rights should not exist, and freedom of the press is a bad thing, and the secret police should remain beyond accountability. Scaaary.
That is not to say there weren't any good messages. Two of the heroes are an interracial couple deeply in love. And social rejection of people just because they are seen as different is shown as awful. The little girl with precognition who says "I don't want this; I want to be normal, like you" is told "Normal people like me want to be special like you".
But on the whole, the sub-text is actually scarier than the main science fiction story itself. The SF storyline was a good one though, with some neat twists. I just wish it hadn't been woven in with such dangerous propaganda.
Cool show in very many ways. But full of propaganda. Wow! None too subtle either. It starts with America's latest secret police (Homeland Security) being the heroes. And then there are all the messages that it is a 'good' thing that nobody has any rights anymore! The 'good guys' threaten a person with "in the good old days I had to get permission to get a phone tap or have a reason to detain you or stop you getting on any airline anywhere in the world, but this isn't the good old days". The new secret police are able to abduct anybody they want with impunity. One of the secret police gleefully rams a gun in the face of one of the bad guys and tells him "you don't have the right to silence; you don't have the right to an attorney" etc. And seeing all the security guards lined up firing guns at people on a public road because they suspected them of badness was chilling.
The one journalist who is able to operate beyond the control of the secret police is portrayed as a baddie with her insistence on freedom of the press. One of the other baddies is a guy who comes in to investigate the secret police's actions.
It is weird that justice is never mentioned. All they want is to find out what happened and they consider people as just pawns to be used as they see fit in the pursuit of that knowledge. Human rights should not exist, and freedom of the press is a bad thing, and the secret police should remain beyond accountability. Scaaary.
That is not to say there weren't any good messages. Two of the heroes are an interracial couple deeply in love. And social rejection of people just because they are seen as different is shown as awful. The little girl with precognition who says "I don't want this; I want to be normal, like you" is told "Normal people like me want to be special like you".
But on the whole, the sub-text is actually scarier than the main science fiction story itself. The SF storyline was a good one though, with some neat twists. I just wish it hadn't been woven in with such dangerous propaganda.