Alias (TV Series) Before the Flood (2005) User Reviews

"Alias" does "Resident Evil"

[gridoon2024 · 8/10 · 24 January 2010]

Sydney, Jack, Irina, Nadia and Vaughn parachute into the Russian city that is under Elena's attack, and look for a way to disable her giant device while avoiding the attacks of the infected population; back home, Marshall and Weiss desperately try to cancel the planned Russian air strike that will have catastrophic worldwide consequences. This is basically "Alias"'s version of an urban zombie movie. It's very tense from start to finish, with the only comic relief provided by the (well-matched) team of Marshall and Weiss. Of course as a season finale it has to end with a cliffhanger or two, and the ones here are quite shocking. At the same time, this episode - and the entire second half of season 4 in general - gives us more closure than anything in the show before: Irina's disappearance, Sloane's reformation, the Covenant's agenda, the Rambaldi prophecy about The Chosen One and The Passenger doing battle for the sake of a sphere, even the person who's pulling the strings that Lauren was talking about at the end of season 3, all these are made more clear now. Two minutes before this episode, and this season, is over, you are left wondering where the show can possibly go next. And then - BAM! *** out of 4.

A great season finale with shock in the final seconds!

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 22 September 2010]

This episode begins where the last concluded; the team arrive in the Russian city of Sovogda and find that there is something very wrong with the population. They have been infected by a waterborne agent and this has been activated by the Rambaldi device. The effect is that they become uncontrollably violent and behave in a similar way to those infected in the film '28 Days Later' their presence will make it much more difficult for the APO team to get to the building where Elena has set up the device. They manage to get there by using an underground train but in the process Nadia is left behind and it looks as if the infected hoard have killed her. As the train arrives at its destination they find Sloane waiting for them along with several dead soldiers; he claims to have been working to bring down Elena the whole time and is soon helping them capture her. When Sydney goes to deactivate the machine she makes a shocking discovery; Nadia survived the hoards but was captured and infected by Elena; if she wants to deactivate the device she may have to kill her own sister! While all this is going on in Russia Marshall and Weiss are struggling to hack in to the Russian satellite system; it was a good job Sloane had kept a copy of the Covenant's 'blackmail list' as it enabled them to get the password from a Russian minister. The neutralising of the device isn't the end of the episode though; we get what appears to be a cheerful epilogue Sydney and Vaughn discuss their wedding plans then in the last couple of seconds we are hit by a double-whammy that I won't spoil here.

This was an exciting conclusion to the series with some nice twists; it was pleasing to see that Sloane had managed to remain one of the good guys after all even if his actions were unauthorised. I hope that Nadia can be cured early in the next series as she was a welcome addition to the team; Mía Maestro was very good in the role making Nadia a strong character with a hint of fragility that her older sister does not have. While the action scenes were fine the most fun was seeing Marshall and Weiss blackmailing the Russian minister; we aren't shown what they know about him but it is clearly rather perverse. After the dark scenes in Russia the epilogue seemed light and breezy till the last seconds which set up what is bound to be one of the main stories of the fifth and final season.