The story opens with a girl with bright read hair being interrogated; the next moment we see her in a class at college and after the class is over her boyfriend proposes to her. Her name is Sydney Bristow; part time student full time CIA agent; life is good for her... until she tells her fiancé about her work for the CIA. Her world is then turned upside down when she returns from a mission and finds he has been murdered and when she doesn't return to work an attempt is made on her life. She is rather surprised when she is rescued by her father. It turns out that unbeknownst to her he works for the same organisation she does. What she didn't know until then though is that that organisation, DS-6, is not a covert division of the CIA as she believed but part of a group known as 'The Alliance of Twelve' which is in fact an enemy of the United States. He gives her the means to get out of the country so she can go into hiding but instead she goes to Taipei to get a device wanted by SD-6; she isn't planning to become a knowing traitor though; after handing the device over the her boss at SD-6 she pays a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley with the intention of becoming a double agent. He she learns that she isn't the only CIA agent working inside SD-6... her father is too!
This pilot episode did the job perfectly; grabbing the viewer with a scene showing the heroine in peril then showing us how she got to be there. It was surprising just how much was packed into this one hour episode; all the main characters were introduced and there was still time for more action than appears in some films of the same genre. Jenifer Garner does a great job as Sydney; presenting her as a believable character and being brilliant in the action scenes. The support cast are fine too; most notably Victor Garber as her father and Kevin Weisman who brings some humour to the situation as Marshall Flinkman; SD-6's answer to James Bond's Q. J.J. Abrams did a fine job as both writer and director; it is of no surprise that he has gone on to direct some major Hollywood movies. When I first saw this it got me hooked and I couldn't wait to see what happened in the rest of the series and even though I've now seen it several times it seems as exciting as ever.
This pilot episode did the job perfectly; grabbing the viewer with a scene showing the heroine in peril then showing us how she got to be there. It was surprising just how much was packed into this one hour episode; all the main characters were introduced and there was still time for more action than appears in some films of the same genre. Jenifer Garner does a great job as Sydney; presenting her as a believable character and being brilliant in the action scenes. The support cast are fine too; most notably Victor Garber as her father and Kevin Weisman who brings some humour to the situation as Marshall Flinkman; SD-6's answer to James Bond's Q. J.J. Abrams did a fine job as both writer and director; it is of no surprise that he has gone on to direct some major Hollywood movies. When I first saw this it got me hooked and I couldn't wait to see what happened in the rest of the series and even though I've now seen it several times it seems as exciting as ever.