Alias/The Indicator

The Indicator
Season 2, Episode 5
Airdate	November 3, 2002
Production Number	E656
Written by	Jeff Pinkner
Directed by	Ken Olin
← 2x04 Dead Drop	2x06 → Salvation
Alias — Season Two

The Indicator is the fifth episode of the second season of Alias, and the twenty-seventh episode overall. A disturbing project gives clues as to Sydney's early life.

Starring: Jennifer Garner (Sydney Bristow), Ron Rifkin (Arvin Sloane), Michael Vartan (Michael Vaughn), Bradley Cooper (Will Tippin), Merrin Dungey (Francie Calfo), Carl Lumbly (Marcus Dixon), Kevin Weisman (Marshall Flinkman), David Anders (Julian Sark) (credit only)

with Lena Olin (Irina Derevko) (credit only)

and Victor Garber (Jack Bristow)

Guest Starring: Amy Aquino (Agent Virginia Kerr), James Lesure (Agent Craig Blair), Stephen Markle (Senator Douglas), Kevin West (SD-6 Agent Kelsey), Daniel Faraldo (Manolo)

Co-Starring: Newell Alexander (Congressman), Dan Istrate (Public Employee), Vladimir Skomarovsky (Kholokov), Kevin Sutherland (CIA Agent)

Featuring: Loren Haynes (CIA Strike Team Leader), Sarah K. Peterson (Sydney at 6 Years Old)

Plot Overview

An SD-6 informant, Niels Hebar, is killed by the Triad. The Triad, an up and coming organization expanding into weapons, discovered that he had been providing SD-6 intel and kills him in a very visible way. His last communication suggested that Triad were planning to deploy some form of next generation weapon, so the operation is to penetrate the Triad's R&D building to copy their server files and photograph their weapons. The CIA prepares a false server to provide SD-6 with false weapons data.

Sydney enters the building posing as an American researcher and fires small cameras to capture the secure door password and provide observation for Dixon to warn her of upcoming guards. When she enters the server room, she establishes a connection for the CIA to download the information and provides Dixon the CIA-provided IP address. The task completed, she heads to photograph the weapons themselves. She is surprised to find the weapons room is a small room filled with 16 children. The six year old children are running through a drill, reassembling pistols while blindfolded, under the watch of an older man.

The server data the CIA downloaded identifies the weapons project as an elaborate sleeper agent training program where children are screened for exceptional attributes and their parents invited to send their children to a brief unrelated training program. During the short period, the impressionable children are taught spy-related skills, implanted with the suggestion to recontact the Triad later in life, and removed of memory of the experience. Included in the data is video of children assembling weapons and building a tower out of irregularly shaped blocks. The older man Sydney photographed is identified as Valerie Kolakov, formerly of the KGB psych ops and now living in Buenos Aires. The CIA prepares a team to capture Kolakov and Sydney insists on leading it despite her father's objections.

Vaughn is suspicious of Jack's involvement in Madagascar, specifically that he tasked the only satellite capable of detecting the bombs hidden under the house despite the satellite retasking being inconvenient. Sydney does not believe his suspicions but Vaughn is able to get proof when the man Jack used to set the bombs is caught transporting explosives and confesses Jack's role when pressed. He gives Jack an ultimatum to tell Sydney the truth about Irina Derevko's innocent role in the Madagascar bombing or he will tell her.

In Buenos Aires, Sydney and her team are able to capture Kolakov alive. While in his house, Sydney observes the same type of irregular block tower she observed in the Triad weapons videos and reassembles it as though from memory. Shaken by the feel that she was not thinking her way through the puzzle but rather doing it from familiarity, she asks the CIA therapist who put Will through hypno-regression to send her back to her childhood. While under regression, Sydney recalls assembling the same kind of tower puzzle and assembling a pistol while under the guidance of her father. Knowing now that she has been programmed nearly her entire life to be a spy, she angrily confronts her father and tells him she may never forgive him. She tearfully turns to Vaughn for consolation.

Notes

• Sydney anesthetizes two guards and forces Kolakov to stun himself with his portable taser.

• Marshall gives Sydney a tube of fresh mint lip gloss that conceals a set of three minature cameras and a compressed air projector to shoot them a short distance. The CIA gives Sydney a communication device in a necklace and a briefcase shaped jump pad.

• Sydney goes undercover as an American uncovering her Hungarian parent's genealogy records.

Music

• Zero 7 - "This World"

• Cornershop - "Brimful Of Asha"

• Robin Thicke - "When I Get You Alone"

• Miriam Gauci/BRT Philharmonic Orchestra - "Verdi's Canzone del Salce - Ave Maria"

• Beck - "The Golden Age"

• Joni Mitchell - "River"

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Sloane confesses to Jack that he poisoned Emily Sloane, providing justification that her doctor had said the cancer remission was temporary and would lead to a protracted and painful death.

• Sloane is surprised to find an ominous glass of wine in his residence and the security system shut off. SD-6's lab analyzes the wine and finds traces of VTX, a counteragent that would null the effects of the Sodium Morphate he used to poison her and would leave her in a death-like state for 12 hours.

• Francie successfully opens her club.

Referbacks

• When trying to convince Sydney that her father would sacrifice people for his own goals, Vaughn refers to him planting evidence portraying SD-6 Agent Anthony Russek as a K-Directorate double agent and leading to his death in "Spirit".

Trivia

The Show

• This episode jettisons the title sequence and simply displays these credits in the first scene immediately after the recap.