Heroes/Genesis

Genesis
Season 1, Episode 1
Airdate	September 25, 2006
Production Number	101
Written by	Tim Kring
Directed by	David Semel
Stream
← 1x00 Genesis (Unaired Premiere Episode)	1x02 → Don't Look Back
Heroes — Season One

Genesis is the first episode of the first season of Heroes.

Starring: Santiago Cabrera (Isaac Mendez), Tawny Cypress (Simone Deveaux), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah Sanders), Ali Larter (Niki Sanders), Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura), Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli)

Guest Starring: Cristine Rose (Angela Petrelli), Jack Coleman (Noah Bennet), Ashley Crow (Sandra Bennet), Thomas Dekker (Zach), Shishir Kurup (Nirad), James Kyson Lee (Ando Masahashi), John Prosky (Principal), Deirdre Quinn ("Texas" Tina), Brian Tarantina (Weasel)

And: Richard Roundtree (Charles Deveaux)

Co-Starring: Randall Bentley (Lyle Bennet), Max Amini (Cabbie), Claudia Difolco (Reporter), Milos Milicevic (Big Guy), David Ury (Super), Greg Wrangler (Fire Chief), Tohoru Masamune (Boss at Yamagato)

Plot Overview

With a total eclipse making its way across the globe, a professor, Mohinder Suresh, learns of his father's death. Upon hearing the news, Mohinder travels to New York where he begins to uncover a secret theory involving eight individuals, all different ages and all from different backgrounds, who discover that they each have been granted unique super powers. A young male nurse tries to convince his brother that he can fly; a struggling, single mother discovers she can be in two places at once; a high school cheerleader tests her indestructability; a drug-addicted artist paints events before they happen; and a Japanese man begins to develop his ability to stop time. Though all these heroes live in different parts of the globe and have unique abilities, they all have one thing in common -- their destiny is to save the world.

• Mohinder Suresh Voice-over: "Where does it come from? This quest, this need to solve life's mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered. Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. That's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."

• New York City, New York. Peter Petrelli dreams stepping off a tall building and plummeting toward the ground.

• Charles Deveaux's penthouse, Central Park West, New York. Peter is a hospice nurse tending to a Charles Deveaux, a dying man in a coma. The man's daughter, Simone Deveaux tells Peter that she appreciates his care. Peter is attracted to Simone, but she gently rebuffs his attention.

• Madras, India. Mohinder Suresh, a university professor, gives his class a lecture about evolution, destiny, human hubris. He also wryly comments that cockroaches have so many survival tricks that if god made anything in his image, god is a cockroach. He also touches on human evolution and the development of superhuman abilities, mentioning teleportation, levitation and tissue regeneration.

A man enters the room and Suresh dismisses his class. He thinks he knows what the man has come to say: Mohinder's father, was apparently fired for the university for his theories on superhuman abilities. Mohinder mentions that his father began looking for his "patient zero" in Queens, New York. The classroom visitor announces that Suresh's father died in an accident while driving a cab in New York City. Suresh believes he was killed because of his theories, and immediately goes to his father's apartment.

• Chandra Suresh's apartment, Madras. Suresh enters his father's apartment, hoping to find a clue. He finds a pair of glasses, which his father never wore, a box marked GENESIS, containing files labeled with abilities. He sees a large map of the world on one wall, studded with push pins connected by colored string. Suresh examines these as a cell-phone rings. On the other side of the wall, a strange man answers the phone, telling someone on the other end that everything is there except the old man's computer. Suresh realizes that he's not alone, so he snaps a picture of the map, steals the pin in New York City and quickly exits the apartment. The stranger comes around the wall and puts on the glasses Suresh found.

• Niki Sanders' Garage, Las Vegas, Nevada. Niki Sanders strips for a webcam in her garage. An alarm goes off; showtime is over. She walks past a mirror and her reflection behaves unnaturally. Niki calls for her son, Micah, and starts to panic when she can't find him in his room. Her reflection in a bedroom mirror leaves slightly after she does. Micah is in the living room, rebuilding his computer. Micah is seven or eight years old and a genius. He's planning to view the solar eclipse with a pinhole camera he has beside him. He's already gotten dressed and made his own lunch, and asks what she has been doing. It isn't clear if he knows what she does for a living. The doorbell rings and Nikki peers through a window. There are two thugs standing on her front step. She hurries Micah out the back door and the two of them drive off as the thugs break in.

• Abandoned building, Odessa, Texas. Claire Bennet, an 18 year-old cheerleader is videoed as she climbs some seventy or eighty feet up the outside of the building. When the cameraman is ready, she lets go and falls to the ground. The cameraman moves closer to the body. Then Claire stands up. Her shoulder is dislocated and she pops it back into place. She tells the camera that it's her 6th attempt, as a cut on her face heals and vanishes.

• New York City. Peter dreams again during a cab ride, and sees his brother, Nathan, standing on the ground below him. Nathan Petrelli is in the middle of a campaign for Congress. Peter visits him at his campaign office and tells Nathan that he believes he can fly. Nathan dismisses this, but the conversation is interrupted by a phone call: their mother has been arrested for shoplifting.

• Gravel road, Odessa. Claire isn't happy. She's worried that people will think she's a freak if they find out about her special ability. Her videographer, Zach, is a nerdy friend she usually avoids speaking to in public. Zack points out that she's still bleeding - some ribs are sticking out of her. She pushes them in and the wound closes.

• An office, Tokyo, Japan. Hiro Nakamura's computer screen saver shows a comic-book illustration of some blue rock monster. Hiro, seemingly bored out of his skull, stares at a clock on his desk until the second hand stops, then slips backward a second before returning to normal. He runs down an aisle of cubicles shouting, "I did it!" until he reaches the cubicle of Ando Masahashi, his best friend. He tells Ando what he did. Hiro also claims to be responsible for the subway being fourteen seconds late that morning. Ando is skeptical and laughingly compares him to Spock from Star Trek. Their boss comes along to shoo Hiro back to his desk. Ando turns back to his computer, where he's been watching Niki Sanders strip on her webcam.

• A private school office, Las Vegas. Niki argues with the headmaster of Micah's school. Micah is waiting outside, reading a "9th Wonders" comic book. The headmaster is expelling him because Niki's tuition checks have been bouncing. Niki had already paid a $25,000 "donation" just to get Micah into the school, but the headmaster claimed it was a donation, already spent, and he can't put it toward tuition, and can't give it back. Niki leaves in a rage, but spots her reflection in the glass of the aquarium. Her reflection has a different expression. Niki tells her reflection to leave her alone.

• A Police station, New York. Peter and Nathan find their mother Angela in a waiting room. Nathan is ticked off and phones some contacts to attempt to keep her arrest secret. Peter makes sure she's okay. The store has dropped the charges, so after some minor paperwork, she's free to go. Mrs. Petrelli said that she'd been so depressed after her husband died that stole some socks to make herself feel alive again. Hearing this just makes Nathan angrier, so Peter pushes him out of the room. Peter and Angela talk on the way out of the station. She says that Nathan is selfish, like his father, and has taken advantage of Peter. Peter loves him anyway and he's sure that love is returned. Peter claims they're connected, and tells her about a time when he somehow knew Nathan had been in an accident, even though Nathan had been 300 miles away.

• Texas Tina's house, Las Vegas. Niki drops her Micah off at her friend Tina's house so she can get some things from her house. Niki tells Tina that she' borrowed 30 grand from Linderman, a local mobster, and people are looking for her to collect. Micah's father, D.L. Hawkins isn't around to help. Niki also confides in Tina that she's worried she's starting to hallucinate.

• Outskirts of Odessa. Claire and Zack arrive at the scene of a train derailment. Emergency crews are swarming all around. Claire wants to see if she's fireproof, and asks that Zack film her while she runs in. Claire finds a man trapped in one of the burning cars and helps him to safety. A fireman smothers the flames on Claire's shirt, and rips it open to check the burs. He's surprised that she isn't burned at all. When another fireman calls him, Claire takes off.

• Chandra Suresh's apartment, Brooklyn, New York. Mohinder Suresh, having secured employment as a taxi driver, rents his father's former apartment. It's been ransacked as well, with files similar to or the same as the ones from his Madras apartment. There's an audio cassette marked "Sylar". There is a map of the world in the apartment. Mohinder begins placing pins and strings to make it match the map from Chandra's Madras apartment.

• Isaac Mendez's studio, Lower Manhattan, New York. Isaac Mendez is an heroin addicted artist attempting to destroy some paintings. Simone Deveaux walks in and stops him. Isaac tells her that he can't remember painting the canvasses, since he's been high for a month. He shows her different paintings. One painting he did weeks ago matches a newspaper photograph of a bus bombing in Israel yesterday. Another painting shows the Odessa train wreck that is being shown on a nearby television. The paintings are all a lot older than the events they show. Simone tries to get him to enter a rehab program, but Isaac decides to try and quit cold turkey and drives her out.

• Nathan's HQ, Midtown Manhattan, New York. Nathan's contacts have successfully buried the shoplifting story about his mother. Nathan offers Peter a job, because Peter is better with people, while Nathan is, "a shark." He also thinks that Peter's a dreamer, stuck in a job going nowhere. Peter declines the job offer and leaves. He sees Simone Deveaux hailing a cab outside and hails his own. His cabdriver turns out to be Mohinder Suresh. They discuss the coming eclipse, and whether or not Peter is special.

• Odessa. New York. Tokyo. Las Vegas. People watches the solar eclipse.

• Niki's house. Niki returns to her house, but Linderman's thugs are there waiting. She gets captured, but the thugs offer to let her work off some of her debt by stripping for them. With little choice, she agrees. One of the thugs films the action. Niki sees herself in the mirror and stops. One of the thugs hits her, and she blacks out.

• A bar. Tokyo, Japan. Hiro tells Ando that he thinks he can bend space and time, and that possibly even teleport himself. They go to a lounge and drink while Hiro tries in vain to convince Ando. Ando goes to get more drinks, an challenges Hiro to teleport himself into the ladies washroom. Hiro concentrates.

• Niki's garage. Niki wakes up to a phone ringing. Her answering machine picks up. Micah is calling, wanting to know when Niki is coming to get him. She gets up and discover the room is a shambles and both thugs are lying on the floor rather gruesomely dead. One has been torn in half. She grabs the camera and sees her reflection in the mirror. The reflection is covered in blood and raises a finger to its lips in a "shh." motion.

• Mohinder's cab, New York. Peter gets a call from Simone asking him to meet her at her fathers house, and leaves Suresh's cab. The horn-rimmed glasses man, the same one from Chandra Suresh's Madras apartment. He comments that the name seems familiar, and name-drops Mohinder's father's name. Mohinder gets a bad feeling and bolts from the cab. The Horn-rimmed Glasses man just watches him go.

• Bennet house, Odessa. Claire has dinner with her mother, who is a dog breeder, and her younger brother. She tells her mother she walked through fire without getting burned, but her mother thinks she's being metaphoric.

• A lounge, Tokyo. Ando returns from the bar in time to see a happy Hiro being carried out of the women's washroom by bouncers and thrown into the street. Ando follows and they argue about why Hiro wants so much to be different.

• Simone's father's apartment, New York.. Simone is searching through her father's night table until she finds an ampule of morphine Peter asks what she's doing. Simone asks him to do her a favor and give someone a shot of morphine.

• Bennet house. Claire's doing the dishes and trying to talk with her mother, but they're just not connecting. Claire's class ring falls into the garbage disposal and she reaches in after it, mangling her hand. She hides it while it's healing. She knows she's adopted and tells her mother that she thinks it's time she knew who her real parents are. At this point, Mr. Bennet arrives home and turns out to be the Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man from India and Mohinder's cab.

• Subway, Tokyo. Hiro rides, looking almost catatonic with boredom. He sees a poster of New York and concentrates. A nearby digital clock starts speeding through the digits. It stops, Hiro opens his eyes and suddenly he's standing in Times Square.

• Isaac's studio. Simone and Peter find Isaac on the floor of his studio, overdosed on heroin. Simone calls 911, and Peter wanders through the paintings until he finds one of himself falling or flying, like the image from his dream. Isaac mutters "we have to stop it," and we see his newest painting covering the floor. It's New York city under a massive nuclear mushroom cloud.

• An alley in New York. Nathan steps out of a cab, talking to Peter on a cell phone. "Alright," he says, "I'm here. What do you want?" A cell phone falls from above and smashes on the pavement at his feet. He looks up and sees Peter standing on the edge of a roof 15 stories above. Peter's been up there all night, thinking about his destiny. In a replay of Peter's dream, Peter steps off the roof and falls. Nathan flys up and catches Peter. They're both surprised. But Nathan can't hold Peter, and the younger Petrelli slips from his grasp...

• Mohinder Suresh Voice-over: "This quest, this need to solve life's mysteries. In the end, what does it matter when the human heart can only find meaning in the smallest of moments. They're here, among us. In the shadows. In the light. Everywhere. Do they even know yet?"

Notes

• Originally this episode and the second episode, Don't Look Back, were written as a single two-hour pilot that ended in the same way as this episode. This led to some odd timeline issues that necessitated repeating parts of some scenes in the second episode to limit confusion.
• The original edit of this episode sent out to reviewers and placed on iTunes was called In His Own Image and had a number of differences to the final aired version. The main difference being that when Peter and Simone find Isaac he had cut off his hand instead of just overdosing. A few other minor changes are that the first scene with Isaac and Simone is longer and moved later in the episode and the final scene was much less of a cliffhanger with Nathan's flying depicted differently. This version was different then the unaired version of Genesis that is available on the Season 1 DVDs which was longer and included parts of episode 2 and a subplot involving a superpowered terrorist that was not part of the aired show.

Trivia

The Show

• The alternate title for this episode was "In His Own Image"