The Marked

Actually, I think this season is the best so far of the series. Most seasons of The 4400 hundred, start out good in the first episode, end really good in the last couple of episodes, and is damned boring for just about every episode in between.  We are half way through the 4th season, and there has not only been no boring episodes to date, but some of the best the series as a whole, has had to offer.

And yes the idea surrounding the marked is very cool. We've known all along there were people from the future who did not agree with The 4400 program, and that eventually they would move to undo the 4400. Isabel Sanford was obviously their first attempt, but just because that one failed, does not mean they will simply lie down and give up; or even attempted a failed strategy again - just bigger and more powerful this time around. A more sublime strategy is perfect, and knowing that the new chief at NTAC is in on it, only sweetens the deal. Besides, in how many other TV shows do you actually get to point the finger at the Bill Gates-alike character and know he's in league with evil forces.

Well it always comes down to a religious story. Actually I prefer that much more than just another terrorist storyline - which was the main plot idea of the last seasons

I'm looking forward to the new twists, although I have to confess that I don't like the picture of Collier being a new Jesus

Well Changer, you'll be happy to know that the Collier character isn't going to be ruined by turning him into one of the Marked. Thank goodness too, as I agree with your assessment of the character and really do feel he is one of the best realized fictional characters on TV today.

Nightcrow, sorry you can't stand the religious angle the show is taking, but it's not bad writing like you say. It's actually brilliant and I am impressed that anyone writing for American TV would be so frank about religion's real purpose in the human space; that being the purpose of creating a self replicating meme designed to spread an idea that at some point, very few or no one will question, but just except as the truth. This is not the first time such and event has transpired in human history and would not be the last. For example, historically, the spread of Islam, Christianity and Judaism has nothing to do with getting people to a perfect afterlife and more to do with one culture waging a war of ideologies over another - or every other as is the inherent mandate of every major Western religion.

The 4400 has made it clear on more than one occasion, that Jordan Collier himself does not believe in all the religiousy pyscho-babble that he is spewing, but like powerful people before him, he understands the nature of the human mind and understands that when you engage people on a level of faith, any real critical thought pretty much goes out the window and you can spread a meme  (in this case, that Promicin is God's gift of redemption to an errant humanity), extremely quickly, efficiently and virulently. The same holds true for patriotic/nationalistic (Nazi-ism) thinking, which is just another form of religious thinking. Just like religious thought, it is primarily engaged to remove any critical thoughts from the minds of the believers that go against the agenda of the meme it is attempting to spread. This is why in 2003, it was so easy to just simply wave a flag or evoke the name of God, and suddenly you have half the American populace supporting a preemptive war on another country, despite the fact that all the evidence pointed in the opposite direction. It was not something that was too hard to do, and is a dirty trick that men of power have been using over the masses, dating back before the beginning of recorded history.

So to not include this sort of "meme-ing" technique in the script of a show that is essentially a telling of how "one man started a movement that changed the world and all of humanity for the better", not including this angle is actually the dumb option. To anyone who bothers to study history or even the human psyche, it is very realistic and appropriate, and if Jordan Collier was ever going to have any degree of success at spreading a pro-Promicin ideology in the context of the show (for better or worse), something of this nature was going to have to be evoked at some point or another; there simply was no logical way around it. Especially not when Collier was beset on all sides by a society and a government who was dead set in opposition (see season three) to allowing anyone else outside of themselves any measure of real power.