Alias/Time Will Tell

Time Will Tell
Season 1, Episode 8
Airdate	December 2, 2001
Production Number	E637
Written by	Jeff Pinkner
Directed by	Perry Lang
← 1x07 Color-Blind	1x09 → Mea Culpa
Alias — Season One

Time Will Tell is the eighth episode of the first season of Alias. An old Rambaldi artifact drives Anna and Sydney back into conflict.

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)

and Victor Garber (Jack Bristow)

Guest Starring: Tobin Bell (SD-6 Agent Dreyer), Gina Torres (Anna Espinosa), Robert Clendenin (Kostia Bergman), Peter Dennis (Professor Bloom), Keone Young (Professor Choy), Elaine Kagan (June Litvack), Jack Axelrod (Giovanni Donato)

Co-Starring: Michael Halsey (Professor Hoyt)

Featuring: Sam Ayers (Man On Phone)

Plot Overview

Sydney attends the Oxford conference in an attempt to collect the Rambaldi artifact. She is notified that K-Directorate is also there, specifically Anna. Spotting each other during the party, they each gather a keycard to provide access to the secured R&D labs. Sydney's method is much more elegant, scanning a keycard in a patron's pocket and having Dixon provide a duplicate, while Anna's is more straightforward, knocking out a member and taking his card. Using this as an opportunity, Sydney has security called and then gets into the vault while Anna is occupied with the guards. Disabling the electronic lock, she collects the Rambaldi artifact and escapes from Anna.

After returning home, Sydney finds she is being tailed by a Security Section tracker. Confronting Sloane about this, he says that it's part of the job. She tells her father who fills her in on Marshall's discovery of poor network performance. Deciding that SD-6 may likely have found the backdoor to their computers, he cautions her that Sloane will have Agent Dreyer administer a specialized lie detector test. Receiving coaching from Vaughn, Sydney learns how to control the telltale signals and in for the test. Although her results are not detailed, Dreyer tells Sloane that he may have found the mole.

The Rambaldi artifact is a mechanical clock, commissioned by Rambaldi from a master clockmaker named Donato. The clock has many unique functions and a conspicuous date on it. The clock doesn't work, so the operation is to go to meet with a descendant of Donato and have him repair the clock. Sydney goes and, based on the historical relevance of the clock to Donato, gets him to work on it. While working, Donato fills in some of the story behind the commissioning including the terms of it. Rambaldi had the clock made in exchange for telling Donato that he would live a long life and telling him the exact time he was going to die. He also tells of the Magnific Order of Rambaldi, a secret organization originally tasked with preserving Rambaldi's legacy but now populated by criminals. During the conversation, Donato lets slip the curious phrase, "He never did tell me what it (the specific date engraved on the clock) was." He finishes the clock, but is killed by agents from K-Directorate that have positioned snipers in a nearby building. After saying the prophetic words "Now it's over" he stands up in the path of a bullet meant for Sydney. Sydney evades Anna and her gunmen to return the fixed clock to SD-6.

Marshall demonstrates that the clock is actually a subcomponent of a larger scheme of Rambaldi and, when combined with the stained glass disk that Sydney retrieved previously, displays a specific star chart. Determining the position of the night sky at the time indicated on the clock, they find it pointing to a remote mountainous area of Argentina. Sydney and Dixon travel to Argentina and dig up an elaborate box concealing a long vertical shaft leading deep under ground. Sydney goes down and finds Rambaldi's journal in a sealed container. While down, she photographs several pages for the CIA before being warned by Dixon that Anna and K-Directorate have arrived at the dig location. Stopped by Anna at the exit to the tomb, they fight although Anna quickly climbs the ladder after incapacitating Sydney by shooting her (stopped by a bulletproof jacket). Sydney climbs after her in the darkness and is kicked back down by Anna and is seen falling into the pitch black tunnel below.

Will's ongoing investigation of Danny's death draws the attention of Sloane. Sloane had Eloise Kurtz, the SD6 junior agent who posed as Kate Rogers, killed and tells Jack Bristow privately that Will himself may need to be killed. Jack says he will continue to try and discover how Will obtained the Kate Jones name and will, if necessary, kill him as well. Back at the paper, his worry about printing what he knows about the killing will damage his relationship with Sydney causes him to ask his editor not to run the story. His editor, now a firm believer in the story, is going to run it with or without him. However, while fact checking it, she finds that many of the facts in it are no longer valid (such as her airline seat designation now showing a different person) - evidence that Jack and SD6 have covered the tracks. Following an innocuous call from a mechanic working on Eloise's car that she can pick it up. Will searches the car and finds a strange trinket that a friend identifies as a monitoring device, although more sophisticated than anything he has ever seen.

At home, Francie accidentally spilled lemonade on an old book of Sydney's mother. Reading it afterwards, she notices that the lemon has revealed hidden text in the margins. Finding the books to include secret KGB codes, she believes that it was a vehicle for secret communication between her father ad the KGB.

Notes

• Sydney fights with Anna and evades fire from Anna and two other K-Directorate agents as well as overpowering a Security Section tracker sent to spy on her. Anna beats a wealthy patron as well as two security guards, presumably FTL agents.

• Sydney uses a portable card scanner in her briefcase able to remotely document a keycard and make a duplicate of it. Vaughn gives her a portable camera with a direct uplink to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit.

Music

• Ivy - "Edge of the Ocean"

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Sydney's performance in school continues to suffer from her frequent travels.

Referbacks

• Sydney taunts Anna by killing glass separating the two of them, a gesture Anna first gave to Sydney when she beat her to a Rambaldi artifact in "Parity".