Ok, so I haven’t really watched much Alias until the last, oh, 7 or so episodes. Either I wasn’t around or the West Wing was on. So when I got my DVR, I decided to tape it because I heard it was good.
So this is what I got from my episode watching… (spoilers, obviously)
Everyone works for this sub-CIA group. It’s headed by Sloane and Jack (or Jack is lesser in rank than Sloane, but de facto the same). Sloane was really taken in by this Rimbaldi thing, which, I think, is a set of writings by a renaissance Leonardo Da Vinci type to create a device which could be used for chaos. Sloane agreed, at some point, to give up his obsession for this thing because it created problems at work. The main baddies (at this point) seem to be the Derevko sisters while Elena being the worst. Irena was Jack’s wife (but I thought I heard Jack call his wife Laura when they were reconstructing 1981… though I may have been hearing things). Irena was Sydney’s mother (with Jack) and Nadia’s mother (with Sloane). Jack thought Irena put a hit out on Syd’s life and killed her, but later found out it was actually Elena who did so. Now Irena is supposedly alive and they have to stop Elena in the Season Finale.
So did I get all that right? What exactly is Rimbaldi? Who are the Derevko sisters and what is their background? And what else of the backstory is imporant to know?
At this point in time, that is like asking, “what is the storyline of General Hospital”?
The good news is that you have pieced it together in a very tiny nutshell. Carry on.
My suggestion would be to rent the first few seasons, out on DVD, and catch up. I will leave it to others who might be able to fill you in on with a larger nutshell.
Well I didn’t mean every small tiny thing… but a general history in a few paragraphs. I don’t need to know everything, just the general stuff so I can understand what is going on better.
As I understand it, in the proverbial nutshell, he was a visionary who left clues to many devices that may, or may not, save the world/destroy the world, depending on who was the first to decipher his messages. You are on the right track with DiVinci, but I don’t believe it has ever been determined what the goal was/is.
Sloane was a bad guy in the first two, three (?) seasons–he’d set up a phony CIA special ops group to collect all the Rimbaldi artifacts and recruited Sydney to join–she thought she was working for the CIA but wasn’t. She told her fiance she worked for the CIA–Sloane had her entire house bugged and killed the fiance. She figured it out and then Jack recruited her to be a double agent for the CIA. Vaughn was her CIA contact.
Irina was a Soviet agent planted to seduce and marry Jack (as I type this, I’m not sure why–simply because he was CIA?). She also supposedly killed several CIA agents in the 70s, including Vaughn’s father. She faked her own death when Sydney was a kid.
Thanks guys… the whole Sloane thing (with Dixon not fulling trusting him the last show) makes a lot more sense. I got the clue that Sloane was allowed to work for the ‘good guys’ by renouncing Rambaldi, but why did they just forgive his past bad guy stuff? Was there something in particular they needed him for and so said, ok, we’ll let you work for us?
Before he went rogue, Sloane was already rising to the top of the CIA. He’s very, very smart. He’s very, very, very good at his job. Because of that, and his previous criminal activities, he has a network that the government can use and the ability to use it.
He’s considered to be too valuable an asset to destroy.
ISiddiqui, part of the problem of giving the backstory, is that this show has been retooled at least 3 times (by my count). The network has wanted to make it more accessible to a wider audience, and so things get destroyed, they start over, they get confused. Story arcs have gotten abandoned, others have come from nowhere. On even a straightforward show, that would make the backstory confusing. But when you’re dealing with a show that is based on the idea of deception and subterfuge, it makes it even more horribly convoluted.
People who have been watching from day one would have a problem succinctly telling the story because it isn’t succint, in a lot of places it isn’t coherent, and sometimes, it’s just stupid.
Just for the record, what were those retoolings? I figure one has to do with the actress who played Irena’s refusal to come back for a second season… and maybe another had to do with last season’s season finale’s last two minutes (which looked like they were aabout Project Xmas, but ended up being about Jack’s supposed assassination of his wife in the season opener).
SD-6/The Alliance are dismantled (ep 2.13 Phase One)
Syd disappears for two years (ep 2.22 The Telling/ep 3.1 The Two)
SD-6 is reformed as APO (ep 4.1 & 4.2 Authorized Personnel Only)
Then there’s the minor stuff, like Jack not being an Alliance member after all (he told Syd he was in the pilot) and Kendall going from being an FBI guy to CIA to head of whatever that other project was called.
So does the show still take place two years in the future?
I laughed my ass off when they made that decree that Syd had been missing for two years… At the time I think it was 2003… and I looked at my friend who loves the show and asked “So does the show take place in 2005 now? My what wondrous stories will unfold… in the future!”
It hasn’t been specifically addressed in at least a season. There was a big “What happened to Syd during the lost years” story arc (answer: I haven’t the faintest recollection) and there was some talk on the boards about how they could absorb the two years so that the show’s timeframe was synched back up with reality. I think it’s safe to assume, based on the creators’ failure to address it, that it’s taking place in the present day. Not that it really matters one way or the other IMHO.
Syd was “brainwashed” to be an assassin named Julia Thorne. She “killed” Sark’s father, Lazeray, except the whole thing was a setup to fool the Covenant. Syd and Lazeray were in on it, as was Kendall (?!). Jack had no idea where Syd was, although he had the tape of Lazeray’s “assassination.”
Jack had gotten imprisoned by Kendall’s bosses because of his actions in looking for Syd. He got out once Syd returned and cut a deal. Kendall told Sydney all about her actions, including that she’d been in contact with him and that he was in charge of a secret Rambaldi project in the Nevada desert.
Eventually, Syd remembered everything, including that she’d been held in Russia and tortured to break her so the Covenant could reprogram her. Fortunately, Jack’s training kept her from cracking, and she even had to kill a man to keep up the act that she was brainwashed.
She also worked with a team of international mercenaries for a while.
amarinth is a little harsh. No one is a more devoted fan of the show than I am, and I haven’t found anything particularly incoherent. Sure, it’s complex and you have to pay attention, but there’s not much I’d call nonsensical (provided you have a healthy suspension of disbelief).
The “retoolings” I’d consider more a natural and logical evolution of the plot. The Alliance was dismantled halfway through season 2; a year and a half of that storyline was sufficient and it had to be wrapped up. That premise couldn’t last forever. I’ll grant that this season is sort of a big reset button, but it was done to my satisfaction. YMMV.
I don’t find the “two-year gap” problematic. I just mentally push the prior two seasons back two years, and voila – we’re in the present day. Or if you prefer, push the present forward two years. Dates are never mentioned on the show so it doesn’t matter.
Irina/Laura was a Soviet spy and married Jack to get info on Project Christmas, the system he was developing for training/brainwashing children to be future spies. Sydney is a product of this project.
In the pilot, Jack first told Syd he was an Alliance member, but by the end he was revealed to be working undercover for the CIA, so that wasn’t pulled out of the air at a later date – it was all part of setting up the premise.
The info Sloane gave the CIA allowed them to dismantle dozens of criminal and terrorist cells around the world; in exchange he was given a Presidential pardon for his crimes. Of course it wouldn’t behoove the CIA to “officially” have a criminal mastermind working for them; hence part of the reason for the black ops nature of APO.
Any more questions, just ask. Consider me your Alias guru.