NBC's "Heroes" Science Fiction Series Off to Great Start

When we first meet Mr. Bennet of television's "Heroes," it is difficult to tell, not only if he is good or evil, but it isn't easy to see where his allegiance lies. He works for a paper company that is actually a front for an organization that investigates people with superhuman powers. People like his daughter Claire, a high-school cheerleader who can heal from any injury, no matter how horrible. At first, it is easy to worry about Claire because she is just the sort of person that her father hunts down, kidnaps and takes to a lab for testing.

As time goes on, however, the viewer sees that all is not black-and-white in the "Heroes" world. Bennet, we soon realize, is a man who plans to save the world and his family-using any means necessary. Even if that means forcing newly clean artist Isaac Mendez to shoot up again so he can paint the future, something he can do only under the influence of heroin. He doesn't know that Mendez's girlfriend's new boyfriend has a brother who can fly and who can, himself, absorb the powers of anyone he happens to be standing near, or that the two are working in conjunction with a Japanese science fiction fan named Hiro Nakamura, who can bend the space-time continuum, to save Claire's life.

Someone is on a serial rampage to take the brains of these gifted individuals. Someone who can kill without ever touching his victims. One of their own kind.

There are others as well: The police officer who uses his newly found telepathic abilities to find a lost little girl and to save his own marriage, a man who is so radioactive that he finds himself arrested on suspicion of terrorism, a woman whose alter ego has super strength and incredible cunning and whose husband can phase shift. And, oh yeah, they have a little boy with the ability to control electrical signals, which allows him control over machines and electrical devices. A sort of "metal telepathy," if you will.

Then there is the professor. Dr. Mohinder Suresh has traveled to New York from India to learn what he can about his father's murder and continue his work in genetics. Dr. Chandra Suresh believed strongly that evolution sometimes happened in great leaps and bounds, and that is what was happening to the human race. He had a catalog of everyone who exhibited superhuman abilities, and the younger Dr. Suresh believes that is why he was killed.

It's quite an addictive television show. Part of that is due to its novelesque plot organization. It is a series of continuations. A plot doesn't resolve itself simply because the show has come to the end of the hour. Resolutions happen in their own time, after weeks of buildup, every episode ending in a cliffhanger. In this way, the plot is allowed to unfold naturally, holding the viewer's interest.

"Heroes" premiered in September 2006 and is coming to the end of its first season. Word on the 'net is that its creators have planned it out for five seasons, and that the second season is in the bag. Let's hope so. A show like "Heroes" is a great reason to look forward to September. ###