The 4400: The Fourth Season starts off with a vision of Jordan Collier's future; a future where the world is Promicin positive and everyone has abilities. Namely, the future that is necessary to avoid whatever disaster befalls humankind. But let me back up some for those who are unfamiliar with the series up to this point. The first season introduced viewers to the sudden appearance of 4400 people who disappeared without reason over the past 50 years. They all appear at a lake and look as if they haven't aged a day. In fact, the only apparent difference is that each one of them has some strange and unique ability. The youngest of the group, Mia (now adopted by the series' female agent, Diana), has visions of the future. Another one (the nephew of the male agent, Tom Baldwin), can heal sickness with his hands. The first season pretty much introduced us to the concept and a few of these characters, but it wasn't until after that, that things really ramped up.
Across the second and third seasons, we realize that these 4400 people were actually abducted by the future and given specific abilities in order to cause ripple effects that would prevent some disaster. A government agency called NTAC is responsible for cataloging and keeping tabs on these returnees, and we learn that the cause of these abilities is a strange compound called Promicin. Throw in there an unexpected birth fathered by two of the 4400, who grows up overnight and is charged with killing anyone with abilities, and you have a very light version of what happened before Season Four's premiere.
The aforementioned Jordon Collier was a wealthy businessman before his abduction, and since his return has become a leader for the new race. He has taken Baldwin's nephew, Shawn, under his wing and together they fight for the rights of the 4400. That is, until Collier finds a way to spread Promicin to everyone. The problem is if you take it, you only have a 50/50 chance of surviving. Now Collier is in hiding for distributing the drug, Shawn is running The 4400 Center, and Baldwin and Diana now have a lot more people with abilities on their hands.
There are two major storylines in this season. One is that Collier establishes a city of P-Positives (aka Promicin Positives). Basically, he has claimed a section of Seattle as his very own, and as you would expect, this makes NTAC and the rest of the government very nervous. The other part of this series introduces the possibility that not everyone from the future wants the 4400 project to succeed. In fact, there are apparently 10 people who can take over key figures in society that are doing whatever they can to stop the 4400, and it is they who created Isabelle (the baby that grew up overnight), and they can only be identified by a mark behind their ear. These two themes collide a few times, especially when the NTAC agents start to question exactly where their orders are coming from, how they are supposed to respond to Promise City, and who might be a member of The Marked.
Unfortunately, I felt that The Marked portions of the season were a bit weak. Maybe if the series had more time to develop this other faction a bit more, it wouldn't seem to feel so disconnected from the rest of the events and while it is necessary to achieve certain plot points, it just doesn't seem to mesh as well with everything else.
As for special features, there are a couple of featurettes that are worth watching, like "Factions of War" where you get an idea of who all the players are, and "Jordan Collier: The Grey Man" where you get a good look at this character's perspective and see that he isn't the big bad guy everyone thinks him to be.
Now, what's funny is the best feature of this whole DVD is how the chapters are divided. It's a small thing, but when you are sitting down and planning on watching several episodes in a row, having a smart chapter selection is really good. Each episode starts off with a preamble, a brief 30 seconds or so, where the idea of the series is briefly run by the viewer. Then, you are presented with the "Previously on The 4400" segment, a bit of new content, the theme song and finally the rest of the episode. I don't know what it is, but other series that have all these parts (Battlestar Galactica in particular), just seem to mess things up. The 4400 puts a chapter break after the preamble, after the previously and then after the song. So, if you already know what happened before, you can hit the next chapter a couple of time to see the new stuff, and then when the song starts up, tap it again to get into the episode. It isn't hard people, but it seems to rarely be done right. Okay, I'm off my soap box now.
So while not really the series' best season, it is obvious that there were plans to go off into a new direction, especially when the last couple of episodes come to their dramatic and twist-filled end, but unless the studios can actually be convinced by the series' die-hard fans to create some sort of resolution, we will never really know what will become of Promise City and Collier's desire to spread Promicin to the populous, not to mention what cool new abilities we will see in the future. If you already have the first three seasons, then definitely pick up this one. While some issues get resolved, many more are left perpetually hanging, so be warned.
