The next project, taking a break from Xena, is to catch up on a bit of Nikita - the original TV series, starring Peta Wilson, which ran for a little over four series from 1997-2001. As with Xena, I'll cover a couple of episodes at a time, and these will be less formal reviews of each installment than notes, which I'll eventually pound into shape for a piece on the main site. That won't be until August at the earliest though, so don't hold your breath.

Episode 1: Nikita
This more or less romps through the original movie in 42 minutes, covering the heroine's capture, rebirth, transformation into an agent and departure from the training facility. Some elements are taken wholesale from the film, such as Nikita's dinner at a restaurant, which becomes her first mission - that's reproduced almost exactly, down to the blocked window and the subsequent dive down the laundry chute. However, there are a couple of major differences, notably that she is not actually a killer - it seems she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed, in the restaurant mission, she doesn't actually kill the target, and it seems her resistance to killing is a strong moral imperative.

There's something undeniably dated about the execution, especially the title sequence which for some reason reminds me of Max Headroom. I was also amused to be reminded that Madeline, Nikita's psychological trainer, is played by the same actress, Alberta Watson, who plays Madeline Pearce, the head of oversight, in the new Nikita. Nice. Also realized that Nikita's handler Michael, Roy Dupuis, starred in Monica La Mitraille, a film I reviewed last year. Wondered at the time why he had so many fan sites...

Wilson seems a good choice, though needs to decide whether or not she is trying to hide her Australian accent - it keeps popping out in a somewhat distracting fashion. This is slickly put-together, though it's clearly aimed at getting all that pesky back story out of the way, and getting past the movie. You can't help comparing it, and the series likely does come up short in most aspects, but at least it's out of the way.

Episode 2: Friend
Nikita is tasked with providing protection for a sleazy visiting diplomat against a terrorist group, but her meeting with a contact is thrown off when an old schoolfriend, Julie, recognizes her. That brings the friend to the attention of Section One, and she's targeted for disposal as a security risk, but Nikita won't allow that, and brings Julie under her protection.

As the first "original" episode, I was impressed with the writing - there's one huge twist in the middle that neither I not Chris saw coming, but it makes sense, and works well, helped immeasurably by a good performance from Marnie McPhail as Julie. The action seems a good deal more restrained, perhaps for budgetary: it seemed to be building to a big battle between Nikita and the head of the terrorist group, but that never materialized. Instead, there's a rather nasty torture sequence, which sees the heroine suspended and electrocuted in the same way as Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, prompting this exchange:
Torturer: "You have the courage of a man."
Nikita: "How would you know?"
Nice entrance by Michael for the save, if more than a tad showy. :)

What this story shows is that Section One, while nominally "good" [in a way Division barely even nods at in the reboot] is utterly ruthless when it feels it's threatened. It's never explicitly clear what will happen to Julie if they catch her, but it's not likely to be good. See also early episodes of Alias, when SD-6 took out Sydney's fiancee, thereby sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Interesting to note that Michael covers up Nikita's transgressions to Section One's head, though it doesn't seem entirely successful.

Episode 3: Simone

One of the problems with technology is it invariably becomes dated, and there are a couple of example of this in this week's batch of eps. For instance, we get Birkoff explaining what IRC is - probably necessary in 1997, and ironically, chat rooms have now fallen so much out of favour, an expanation is likely needed again in 2012.

The plot has Nikita going undercover as a hacker, infiltrating terrorist group Glass Curtain, who have begun bringing planes down after a long period of inactivity. That's a shock to Michael, because they abducted his wife, Simone, the last time they clashed. Once she gets inside, Nikita discovers that Simone is still alive, having been held captive by opera-loving Curtain leader Errol Sparks (Julian Richings, who plays Death in <i>Supernatural</i>).

The problem is, that twist comes so far out of left-field: if this had been a third-season stroy, with Michael and Simone's story having been set up now, it would have had a lot more impact. Instead, we really don't care about this woman, and the choice she makes at the end of the episode comes out of almost nowhere. Kinda dilutes the Michael/Nikita sexual tension thing too: "Oh, by the way, I'm married. Did I forget to mention this?" But there's some good tension too as Nikita has to pretend to be the hacker, withstanding a grilling by Sparks, with Birkoff feeding her the needed info.

Episode 4: Charity

Here, the amusingly-retro tech is the floppy disk on which the villain's financial records can be stored. Ah, the nineties. The subtext here is Section One's willingness to keep their own agents in the dark, here keeping the true nature of Alec Chandler's business secret from Nikita. The theory is, if she knew exactly what he did, it might compromise her ability to get close to him. On the other hand, not knowing the truth might make her rather too sympathetic to the target.

While Simon MacCorkindale (Manimal!) does give Chandler some humanity, they should probably have gone with someone younger, as the 18-year age difference between him and Peta Wilson is too obvious to ignore. Yhe revelation is also more than a little cliched - he could hardly have been more villainous if he had taken Nikita's pet kitten and stomped on it. Mind you, given said cat never appears again, maybe that's exactly what he did.

There's not really too much memorable about the episode otherwise. Actionwise, it's kinda lame - Chris's comment was fairly on the money. She drifted in for the finale, which sees Nikita kick a lighter out of Chandler's hands as he stands near a trailer of petrol-soaked orphans (I'm exaggerating much less than you think...), and snorted, somewhat derisively, "The real Nikita would have done a lot more than that..." Can't really argue with her there.

I was trying to think of something to say about this series but still have whiplash realizing its been 15 years since it started, and I watched it when it first aired. Watched a couple music videos and had a "Am I losing my mind?" response like when told a word in a favorite song is a different word than you thought, even though you heard that word all hundred times you listened to the song. I remember it as being more cool and mysterious than the bleak and empty feel I get now.

Yeah, I see what you mean, it's certainly more downbeat. These two episodes were a good example. I never watched the show during its original run, and it's a very different tone to the Maggie Q version. Less physical, more psychological: I think, in terms of character, I prefer the latter incarnation, simply because she seems a good deal more in control of her world. Of course, it's a lot later in the character's development too, so hard to compare.

Episode 5: Mother

The targets here are John and Helen Wick, who have a stolen nuclear trigger and are preparing to sell it off to a terrorist group. The wife has been pining for a lost daughter, whom she was forced to give up at birth, because she was in prison. Section set Nikita up to play the role of that daughter, in a homeless shelter, and when word filters back to Helen, she (rather forcibly) "adopts" the waif, not knowing this brings a cuckoo in the nest, intent on locating the trigger - mind you, she doesn't even ask about the Aussie accent....

Particularly at the end, this really exposes Section's complete disregard for their agents' safety, as they torture Nikita in front of her "mother" to get the required information. And they're not faking it either: by the end of the episode, our heroine's face looks like it has gone through a meat-grinder. Witness also Madeleine's cold rejoinder to a captive, who says "I can't tell you what I don't know. You can torture me all day and that won't change." She replies simply, "It's a deal," and walks out

But Nikita is really no less ruthless: witness her cold-blooded slaying of someone who she believes was responsible for the death of a fellow agent. Quite a change from the very reluctant warrior we saw in the first couple of episodes. There's something slightly sadomasochistic about her relationship with Michael: he presides over her beating, but is also there by her bedside in hospital when she wakes up. In some ways, it's classic psyops. An interesting episode with plenty of depth, one of my favorites so far.

Episode 6: Love

Red Cell are preparing to launch a series of terrorist attack in the States, in an effort to coerce their government into concessions. They have hired Bauer [Tobin Bell, whom you'll recognize as Jigsaw from the Saw series] to carry out the mission, using the L-virus, a ferociously lethal biological weapon. Nikita infiltrates the group along with Michael, playing the taking the identity of a couple of freelancers intercepted on way to join Bauer. But Section show not only a willingness to let innocents die in pursuit of their objectives, they have some bedfellows who make Nikita distinctly uncomfortable.

This was apparently the first episode to be shot, and that may explain why some of the actors, including Wilson, appear less comfortable with their characters than they would later become. There is also an oddly-sleazy feel to one sequence, with Bauer orchestrating a Michael/Nikita lovemaking session: maybe it's knowing what Tobin would become best known for, that gives this an oddly-creepy atmosphere.

More effective is a tense sequence where Bauer's group launch an attack on he DeAnza Building. Nikita has already tipped off Section as to the time and place of the attack, but when she realizes they're not going to stop it, she has to make a difficult decision, about whether to risk blowing her cover by intervening. It probably doesn't fit with the cold-blooder killer we saw in the previous episode - and her face is miraculously healed (due to the out of order shooting, one imagines), but it does illustrate she does still have a strong moral compass with regard to protecting the innocent.

Jim, good thread! I enjoyed reading your comments, which filled me in on a lot of background information I didn't know; and they were sort of a nostalgic stroll down memory lane, since I was a big fan of the original series. (Since I've never watched more than a few minutes of the new series, I can't compare the two.) You're right that the series, and its various episodes, weren't completely unflawed, but I loved it! There weren't many action-oriented heroines on TV in those days, so Peta Wilson's Nikita filled a rather empty niche, and she'll always have a special place in my estimation. Next to my wife, I think she's pretty much the belle ideal of womanhood. :-)

Hyomil is right that the series does have a bleak feel to it, basically, I think, because of the chilling moral nihilism of Section One's leadership, who are totally ruthless and indifferent to individual human rights or well-being. For me as a viewer, the light in the bleakness was Nikita's character, because (as you noted), she did have a moral compass. It's true that, once she had to cross that line to save Michael's life, she did quickly learn to overcome her initial reluctance about killing, and before the first season was over, you're right that she could do it ruthlessly, when she felt it was justified. She could also, in a later season, break a guy's pinkie (and threaten to break more bones) to force lifesaving information out of him. But she never relished torture, never lost her humanity or her ability to feel, and always refused to take innocent life. ("I set certain parameters for myself, and I don't cross them," she once told Operations, after she'd stood up to him, at no small risk, to save an innocent.) That kind of moral rootedness, even in the milieu of living hell that she found herself trapped in, made her a true heroine in my estimation.

Episode 7: Treason

A former government asset, Suba, has gone rogue and is now embarking on a project to smuggle weapons-grade uranium out of the country. Section One's attempt to capture him goes badly wrong, and it becomes clear there's a mole in the organization funneling information to the target. Nikita discovers it's Roger (Peter Outerbridge, whom you might have seen as the lead in ReGenesis). But when she discovers he's only helping because his son has been kidnapped by Suba, opts to go off-mission and help Roger rescue his child.

It's ironic (deliberately?) that Nikita's decision to choose a barely-known colleague over her employers, comes the same episode Madeleine tells her she has successfully completed her probationary period and is now a fully-fledged agent. They might want to rethink that one... There are a lot of parallels between this episode and Friend, where Nikita similarly broke protocol in order to protect someone, only to discover exactly how ruthless Section One can be. There's a line at the end which sums up the thrust here, after Nikita asks Madeleine how they can be so ruthless. She replies, "Because the other side is ruthless. If we're not stronger, then they win and we lose," before cautioning Nikits, "Don't let your humanity get in the way."

Episode 8: Escape
Nikita has an encounter with Eric, a colleague in Section One who tells her he can get them both out of the organization, and destroy the data held on them, making it impossible for them to be followed. But is he for real? Or could this be simply a test of her loyalty? Her reluctance is enhanced by two other obvious factors: the realization that her work for Section One does sometimes benefit society (here, a mission to rescue a kidnapped soldier before he is executed), and the apparent growing affection Michael has for her. But is that real or illusory too?

I think this is probably my favourite episode to date, because of the complexities and uncertainties of what's going on. Nikita has an extraordinarily difficult choice to make - but does it matter if, in the end, you make the right choice for the wrong reasons? That's one of the many thought-provoking topics you'll find here. However, there are some major plot holes, not least the fact that Eric is apparently unknown to Nikita initially, but then is suddenly around almost every corner in Section One. And how long has the surveillance equipment he reveals in her apartment been there? Still. this worth it for the final scene alone, where Nikita returns the cameras (without the receipt...), but for a lot more beside.

Episode 9: Grey + Episode 10: Choice

These two probably can be considered as more or less a single entity, so it's lucky they fell together in one weekend's viewing. The center in both is the relationship between Nikita and architect Gray Wellman (Callum Keith Rennie, a Canadian actor you've probably seen in other things, such as Battlestar Galactica or Memento). It starts when Section One's computers are hacked, and a list of agents downloaded - the thief then stages an auction between Section One and terrorist Benko. Gray falls in to the middle of the plot, after the thief is killed and become part of a plan to convince Benko that the list is still in play, a plan which ends up with Nikita wearing a nasty explosive collar.

There's some interesting spycraft at work here, and its quite well put together - though the episode ends without the list falling in to anyone's hands, and given the fuss Section One makes over it, that's more than a little loose end. The main purpose, as it turns out, is to set up Gray as someone for whom Nikita can have feelings, but from whom she has to conceal just about everything true concerning her life. It really doesn't count as anything of a spoiler to say that this is never going to turn out well, and so it proves.

Choice brings this to the forefront, and the emotional aspects of the relationship are definitely the primary focus, though there is still a mission going on in the background - mainly, it seems to provide Grey something with which he can interfere. This does also allow the series to restage one of the most memorable scenes from the Luc Besson movie, where Nikita is in a Venetian hotel with her lover, and gets a phone-call revealing that it has actually been a set-up for a mission all along, and that a telescopic rifle may be found in the bathroom, awaiting her use. But Nikita's poor sense of priorities i.e. blowing off Section One, after she temporarily loses Grey's daughter, make the relationship doomed from the start.

As a result, despite all the agonizing Nikita does [Peta pulling some particularly agonized faces here], the result is never really in question, though there are a couple of twists in the final denouement, such as the way it's actually a Plan B, suggested by Michael, after Section One's original proposal proved rather more drastic. That makes him rather more sympathetic than Nikita's original perception, that he was simply jealous of Grey and arranged for the disposal of a rival. If that's her genuine feeling, hard to see how their relationship could naturally recover from that, but I've got a funny feeling that it probably will...

Episode 11: Rescue

Always enjoy action sequences played out wordlessly, and that's how this one starts, with a mission to destroy a Russian chemical weapons plant. It results in an injured Michael being left behind, though he's fortunate in that the hostage he takes turns out to be a) a nurse, and b) sympathetic to his cause. What are the odds? Nikita and, for some reason, Madeleine are sent in to try and rescue him, with Madeleine faking a heart attack, where Nikita bumps into the nurse in question. No, really: what are the odds?

That's the problem here. We're dealing with less an episode, than a selection of cliches from bad spy movies [more than once, Chris asked me if this was supposed to be a flashback to Communist times], and plotting that relies too much on the coincidental. Plus, I always thought the proverb, "The nail that stands up gets hammered down," was a Japanese proverb, not Russian, as claimed here. There's a good performance by Angie Beatty as the nurse, but for all the talk of a warm relationship between her and Michael, come the end of the film, when she puts her life on the line so he can escape, he doesn't even bother to check whether she lived or died. Would probably have been more interesting if the roles had been reversed, and Nikita had been left behind.

Episode 12: Innocent

There was something slightly chilling by coincidence here, as I watched this one on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and was wondering where the plot, initially about a plane with a nuclear device on it, was going to go. Probably fortunate that it diverged, with the main thrust concerning a simple-minded pizza delivery guy (veteran character actor Maury Chaykin), who by chance is present to witness the offloading of the device - but whom Section think is not as innocent as he appears to be, due to his lack of co-operation.

I enjoyed Chaykin's performance, which is quite touching in places - such as his devotion to his sister, who is even more simple-minded. However, it's difficult to believe that any security organization would basically take the word of a simpleton who accuses one of their number of treachery, without much in the way of corroborating evidence. Pleasantly surprised to hear classo-industrial band In The Nursery crop up on the soundtrack [remember a great weekend in Hamburg, back in about 1999, centered on seeing them in concert]. Nice to realize that Section are not entirely without humanity - which, in some ways, makes their other actions all the more chilling, because it's now clear they have the capacity to care. They just choose not to...

Episode 13: Recruit

This is one of those episodes where the main ingredient is deceit. Nikita is assigned to oversee the final stages of training for Karyn (Felicity Waterman, who was considered for the title role at one point), a recruit who had been accused of killing someone in the robbery of a pharmacy - a direct reference to the origin story of Nikita in the Besson film. That puts Karyn's fate directly in Nikita's hands, because it's made clear that if she doesn't think Karyn is up to scratch, she'll be canceled. However, is that truly the case, or is it a Section exercise to test Nikita? Is Karyn the psychopathic killer her actions seem to hint at? What of her claims about having been raped by her previous trainer? And is Michael's apparent interest in Karyn purely professional?

I have to say, I had largely worked out where this was going, quite some time before the end, but it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the episode very much. It's clearly a step forward in the development of Nikita as an agent, to the point where Section let her get involved in the next tier of their administration - or, at least, give that impression. I suspect that the Nikita we saw at the beginning of the series would have ended up making a different decision, and that shows to what an enormous degree her character has evolved over the first dozen episodes. Definitely one of the upper-echelon episodes in the series, but when you have two action-heroines for the price of one, it's never a bad thing...

Episode 14: Gambit

Terrorist Gregor Kessler has stolen a container of radioactive material and is threatening to dump it into a major city's water supply, a plot that can continue even after he has been captured. This master of disguise is prepared to go to any lengths to ensure his scheme succeeds, as is shown when Section bring in his estranged daughter, in an attempt to get him to reveal the location of the material - he rips her throat out with his bare teeth, Hannibal Lecter style. Can Section get the information needed to foil his attack?

This is much more a Madeleine episode than a Nikita one, and we get to learn a great deal about the Section second-in-command, including a backstory which involved her killing her own sister, in a fit of anger. There is something more than a little implausible about the way in which Madeleine opens up to Nikita (especially bearing in mind the previous episode, which shows Section still have doubt about here) and the final denouement feels almost like it was ripped wholesale from an episode of Scooby-Doo. There's also not much that sticks in the mind - to the point that, I just put the episode on again by mistake and it took me several minutes to realize that I'd actually seen it before!

Episode 15: Obsessed

The honey-trap is a tried and tested staple of the spy genre. But here, instead of Nikita being the obvious choice for the role, it's Michael who has to seduce the target, Lisa, the vulnerable wife of a hitman who possesses a sizable collection of incriminating information on his clients, that could be more than a little embarrassing if revealed. Naturally, Section want to get their hands on it, and after inserting Nikita as a fitness trainer, she introduces Lisa to Michael. Because her husband is not exactly kind, it doesn't take long before she has fallen for Michael. But can he convince her to turn, or will fear overpower her love?

Of course, it's not the first male honey-trap - how many times has 007 used sex as a weapon (most obviously in From Russia With Love. But it does provide a chance for Dupuis to add depth to Michael's character, rather than him just being Nikita's Unresolved Sexual Tension object [and it does dovetail nicely with the Madeleine-centric episode reviewed above]. The ending is particularly interesting, as the hard "bastard" shell we've come to expect shows an apparent crack, with Michael doing something that is certainly not officially sanctioned. Even if it's nowhere near as rebellious as some of Nikita's actions, could her subversion be having an impact on him?

Random factoid: this was director, T..J. Scott's first work on the show, but coincidentally, he also did a number of the most memorable eps of Xena, including my all-time favorite, Callisto. His filmography also lists a TV pilot with the fascinating title of Shotgun Love Dolls , which gave Rachel McAdams her first starring role. I think I'd like to see that...

Episode 16: Noise

Continuing our mid-season tour around Nikita's supporting cast, we get a Birkoff-oriented episode. He's taken out of HQ for a mission - an extreme rarity in itself - which goes wrong, and results in him having to shoot an opposing agent. This triggers an episode of post-traumatic stress, and the next operation goes wrong as a result, in a fashion that's almost lethal for Nikita and Michael. Birkoff is put in "abeyance" - that's one step short of being canceled - with his understudy promoted to the role of Section's chief geek. But after the plane carrying Nikita is shot down in enemy territory, her only hope involved Birkoff going back into the field, one more time...

I enjoyed this one, probably the most of the "secondary" episodes, because it strikes the best balance, with the heroine still being essential to the plot. I see a lot of a younger self in Birkoff, filled to the brim with self-confidence, even when it's entirely unjustified. Matthew Ferguson does a very good job of portraying the bravado of youth, coming into collision with hard reality for the first time ever, struggling, but eventually coming through - he definitely deserved the Canadian Gemini nomination he received. It's really quite heartwarming, and largely free of the cynical edge we've come to expect from the series. Creator Joel Surnow said it was about exploring the sister-brother relationship he has with Nikita, and it hits the spot.