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‘We’re going to show the world a new way – by force, if necessary. The real catastrophe is to sit back and do nothing.’

‘You’re just a boy.’
‘I’m a soldier, and there’s more of us every day.’ 


After the breakneck pace and nail-biting suspense of the two-part third-season opener, ‘The New World’, one would have expected The 4400 hard-pressed to match the same tempo in the very next episode.

‘Being Tom Baldwin’, however, manages the incredible feat of upping the ante. It’s a confident episode that uses the SF cliché of the shapeshifter to devastating effect.

Technically we’re back in familiar ‘returnee of the week’ format with this episode; but the introduction of the Nova group has provided a larger framework for the writers to elaborate on the tensions within the 4400 as a group, as well as its increasingly strained relationship with the rest of the ‘normal’ world.

Another fascinating subplot concerns Dr Kevin Berkhoff, who has embarked on an experimental regimen of promicin injections to effectively force his body to produce the substance itself. Thus he stands to become the first non-4400 to develop 4400-type powers.

Dr Berkhoff tells a horrified Diana that other people are sure to be doing exactly what he is doing. It’s an arms race to develop the first human weapon of mass destruction. This is a truly chilling thought, conveyed in a brilliantly compact scene that has become the signature trademark of The 4400.

Dr Berkhoff’s experiment begins to take a more ominous turn when he starts a strange physical transformation, including weird markings on his body, fingernails dropping off, and a sporadic ability to heal physical damage (he stabs himself through the hand with a scalpel in order to impress Diana; afterwards he tells her drily he wasn’t sure whether it would work or not.)

The episode begins with Tom Baldwin visiting the detention centre where TJ Kim is being held. He asks her what she knows about the Nova group. Resignedly she tells him she knows nothing more than what she has already revealed. Of course; there’s an entire season still to unravel the mysteries of the Nova group.

Tom pulls out a concealed gun with a silencer and shoots Kim twice in the head. Roll credits, which gives viewers the chance to pick their jaws up off the floor.

Meanwhile the newly-adult Isabelle has compiled a list of ‘rites of passage’ which she has missed out on. These include learning to swim, driving a car really fast … and having sex. Shawn is selected to initiate her in this last rite of adulthood. Initially reluctant, the episode fades to its end on their first kiss. And Isabelle’s first kiss ever.

However, there is a darker undertone to this scene, as earlier on Matthew Ross had instructed Isabelle to get as close to Shawn as she could, for the time was approaching when they would find themselves on opposite sides of an ‘ideological divide’. Black and white; light and dark; good and evil?

Tom Baldwin is having a shower when Diana barges in and tells him NTAC is on its way to arrest him for the murder of TJ Kim. Poor Tom is suitably appalled. He jumps out of a second-storey window when she isn’t looking … and so the chase is on. A chase for the truth, as well as a headlong hurtle into one of the darker secrets of the Nova group and the 4400 group itself.

Its turns out that the shapeshifter returnee is a youngster called Boyd Gelldar, who tells Tom and Diana he agreed to join the Nova group because for the past 50 years things had been going pear-shape for the planet and the species. He was a vanguard for the New Way – and Nova wouldn’t hesitate to use force if we refused to take our medicine.

So, are Tom and Diana still on the side of the good guys? Or has NTAC become so corrupted by the right-wing dogma of Ryland that they have become tainted merely by association?

And what are we to make of the Nova group? If it will not hesitate to resort to suicide missions, violence or intimidation, is it any different from NTAC, which it forcibly opposes?

The great thing about The 4400 is the strength of the characters. There is a tiny scene, insignificant in the overall story arc of the episode, where Richard is shown scattering the ashes of Lily. This quiet little scene packs a tremendous emotional punch that reveals the warm beating heart of the show.

We still know nothing about the mysterious fate of Jordan Collier, ironically himself a returnee (though from the far further realm of death, or so we believe), and neither have we seen Kyle since the season two finale.

But there are enough balls in the air at the moment to keep us entranced.

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