Female-Led Sexy-Spy Show Comparison: Alias & Nikita

Some time after I watched (and adored) Nikita, I checked out Alias, based on my love of Victor Garber and a friend’s recommendation.  I enjoyed Alias, though not as much as Nikita.  However, that’s possibly in part because I’d already seen Nikita, and the two shows ring major bells with each other, to a fairly crazy degree in a few places.  Note:  I’m mainly just looking at the comparisons to be made here, not deciding whether Nikita (2010) cribbed plot elements from Alias (2001).  If nothing else, even though Alias came out a decade before Nikita, it was predated by La Femme Nikita – both the French film and the first TV series inspired by it – neither of which I’ve seen, so I can’t speak to who did what first.

There’s of course our main premise.  In both shows, the heroine, a highly-adept spy for a top-secret organization, comes to learn that the organization isn’t what it claims to be.  When the organization kills the man she loves, she turns absolutely against them and starts planning out to take them down.  Did I mention that in both shows, the dead fiancee’s name is Danny/Daniel, and that the heroine also has a deep but complicated relationship with a colleague named Michael (he goes more often by his last name, Vaughan, in Alias, but still)?

Just in case you’re starting to wonder if this is a shot-for-shot remake scenario a la Psycho, let’s get into the differences within these similarities.  In Alias, SD-6 masquerades as a specialized branch of the CIA when, in fact, it has no government affiliation whatsoever.  Only the higher-ups know what it really is and are aware of its more nefarious aims.  Most are like Sydney at the start of the show; they fully believe they’re CIA operatives, having been recruited and gone through vetting and training that seems perfectly official.  On the other hand, Division does have its origins in government, designed as an off-the-books black-ops group to do the jobs the government can’t own up to.  However, it has since veered from that path and become much more self-serving, doing similar opportunistic-but-immoral jobs as SD-6.  It is able to do so because its head has “little black boxes” storing electronic proof of all the government’s dirty secrets, which he uses to keep himself in power.  Division recruits, like Nikita, are mostly criminals who are removed from prison, have their deaths faked, and are trained in Division’s secret underground base for an indeterminate amount of time, knowing that they’ll be “canceled” if they don’t measure up.  Though they’re similarly lied to about what Division is really about, they realize from the start that it’s not about going through “official channels.”

Given their very different arrivals to their organizations, it’s understandable that Sydney and Nikita are very different people.  Nikita already knows how shady Division is, but when they kill Daniel, she breaks out and plots her revenge, interfering with Division missions and trying to track down Percy’s black boxes so he can be taken out without international repercussions.  Meanwhile, Sydney doesn’t learn the truth about SD-6 until after they kill Danny, at which point she marches straight to the real CIA and volunteers to share what she knows, ultimately becoming a double agent who works at sabotaging from the inside.  In this way, Sydney is more like Alex than Nikita; though she intentionally gets herself placed in Division knowing what it is, Alex serves as Nikita’s mole, feeding her encrypted intel and helping out where she can.

I incline way more towards Nikita as a character, because I feel she’s generally more complex from a writing standpoint and more competent from a spy standpoint (there are a lot of times in the first season of Alias when I want to shout, “You’re a double agent in the belly of the beast!  Work on your frickin’ poker face!”)  But to be fair to Sydney, she and Nikita start their shows in very differently.  Nikita begins three years after Daniel’s death, with Alex freshly imbedded and Nikita ready to take her plans to the next level.  Alias, on the other hand, all but opens with Danny’s death.  Within the pilot, Sydney is blindsided by the murder of her fiancée and the discovery that the “government organization” she works for is anything but.  She has a huge amount of stuff to process, on the fly, as she jumps right into being a double agent, while Nikita has already had years to process all that before we even meet her.  As such, it totally makes sense that Nikita holds it together better at the start and has a more steely resolve – she’s much further down her path than Sydney is down hers.

12 Monkeys (2015-Current)

Late update tonight, since I wanted to wait for this sci-fi series’ first-season finale to air.  Inspired by the Terry Gilliam film of the same name, 12 Monkeys first came on my radar due to its male lead, Aaron Stanford (Birkhoff from Nikita); after finishing Nikita, I was jonesing for more from its cast, and the prospect of Stanford was enough to overcome any presumptions about the quality of SyFy originals or apprehension about the show’s premise.  Lucky I got past both of these hurdles, because it’s a terrific show.

The premise that gave me pause?  A worldwide pandemic that wipes out 7 billion people.  Brrr…  In a post-apocalyptic 2043, a single-minded scientist reignites a long-abandoned project to save the present by changing the past.  With the aid of a rickety, temperamental time machine, she sends world-weary survivor James Cole back to 2015 to prevent the virus.  His mission changes the life of Dr. Cassandra Railly, a dedicated virologist, in the process; initially, she’s his only lead on the virus’s origins, but shaky temporal tinkering throws them together too early in her timeline.  Despite her early skepticism, Cassie is soon converted to the cause, and she works with Cole to uncover the conspiracy behind the virus’s release.

No, it’s not a perfect show.  It sometimes gets tangled up in its own intricately-crossed timelines, it takes occasional detours that, while still entertaining, distract from the central story, and a few episodes suffer from separating Cole and Cassie for too-long stretches.  However, it’s pretty darn great – savvy sci-fi with a geeky eye for detail, strong characters at its core, and lots of stylish design elements.  There’s some terrific dialogue, weighty without being overwritten, and all the various character voices are distinct and engaging in their own ways.  The show takes full advantage of its time-travel framework and, so far, seems to be maintaining as reasonable an internal consistency as one can expect of a time travel show.  Best of all, thoughtful character work and themes remain at the heart of the story.  In the midst of all the action, conspiracies, and timeline shenanigans, we’re anchored by the growing connection between Cole and Cassie, and the show always takes time out to explore larger issues.  When nearly the entire world is dead, how far can one go to change the past?  If someone died of a virus anyway, is it wrong to kill them in the past?  Will creating a new future absolve the sins it took to get there?

Aaron Stanford is excellent as the brusque, obsessive Cole.  He conveys the weight of the ravaged life Cole has lived in 2043 while still bringing humor and heart to his lighter moments.  Amanda Schull does a fine job as Cassie, carrying us on her journey from disbeliever to crusader.  She’s intelligent, strong, and caring, and her scenes with Cole sparkle.  Other notable performances include Barbara Sukowa as Jones, the scientist desperate to change the past, and Emily Hampshire as Jennifer, an unstable young woman with secrets about the virus locked within her fractured mind.  A lot of Stanford’s friends from Nikita along for the ride as well.  Noah Bean (Ryan) plays another major character on the show, and Xander Berkley (Percy) and Peter Outerbridge (Ari) both make guest appearances.  How long before Maggie Q or Lyndsy Fonseca show up?  Season 2, please?

Warnings

Violence, swearing, sexual content, murky moral quandaries, and disturbing content.

Favorite Characters: Nikita Mears (Nikita)

Aaaand we might as well round off the set.  There’s a definite possibility of other Nikita-related posts in the future, but this is, I think, the last immediate entry in my must-write-about list.  Oh, Nikita, how much do you rock?  Let me count the ways.  (Usual Nikita spoilers warning applies.)

Like other characters I’ve loved and reviewed from this show, Nikita is a superb mix of fine assets and honest flaws.  She’s an action heroine, a smart cookie, a BAMF surrogate mother, a hard-decision maker, and a lost soul who’s scraped together some restitution for her past sins.  She’s one of those lucky people who need people, although she doesn’t always realize that and sometimes actively fights against it.  Where redemption is concerned, she puts her money where her mouth is, but at the same time, she often dances on the knife edge between light and darkness.  Most of all, she’s a woman who gets things done; she drives the story forward, and any time the plot tries to dictate her movements, she makes it clear she knows how to push back.

Nikita and Alex are both unique in that they’re female protagonists with pretty morally-murky origins.  Nikita came to Division as a drug addict and a cop-killer (committed under the influence, but still,) and before leaving it, she rose to become one of its top assets.  She killed for them spectacularly and without complaint.  When she does break from Division, her chief aim vacillates between justice and revenge.  She no longer turns a blind eye to Division’s crimes, and she seeks to put a stop to it, while simultaneously trying to atone for the unconscionable acts she did at its biddings, but she’s more than just a crusader.  She’s also a devastatingly wronged party looking to twist the knife – Division killed her fiancé, largely to display their power over her, and this lends a disquieting aspect to her mission.  She wants them to feel every particle of her rage and pain over Daniel’s death, and she wants them to pay for it, pound for pound, in flesh.

This dichotomy informs much of Nikita’s story.  She wants to thwart Division’s nefarious plans and save innocents, whether they’re directly in Division’s crosshairs or mere collateral damage.  However, her desire to see Division break and suffer as it falls sometimes gets in the way of her nobler intentions, and these two drives within her wrestle for pride of place among her motivations.  As such, she is never all good or all bad.  In her efforts to disrupt Division’s villainy, she kills agents who were abducted, blackmailed, and conditioned by Division just as she was.  When she has the means to end the life of one of her enemies, her hand is sometimes stayed by mercy, hope for the better angels of their nature, or a simple desire to end the violence.  It’s strong, thoughtful, character-driven storytelling that women get too rarely on television.

One of my favorite things about Nikita is her slow, gradual admission that she needs a family.  At first, she rebuffs anyone who wants to help her in her mission; Alex only makes the cut due to her sheer determination.  And even after Nikita lets in Alex, then Michael, then Birkhoff, and so forth, she’s prone to go off on her own, to insist she doesn’t need back-up in the field, or to spare others from doing what she thinks she has to do alone.  Her loved ones hate it when she does this, and rightly so, because they’re all highly capable adults who can make their own decisions, but really, when she pulls away on this end of the equation, it only expresses how much she needs them.  Whether she’s misguidedly keeping them at arm’s length to protect them from danger or drawing a curtain over her own darkness so they won’t see, it’s her way of saying how much she loves them. 

Favorite Characters: Alex Udinov (Nikita)

My Nikita love-fest continues with Alex.  Like Birkhoff, she’s a wonderful character even apart from her excellent relationship with Nikita.  While Nikita is a top-notch leading woman and Birkhoff is an entertaining personal favorite, Alex is probably the most intriguing character on the show.  Her intense backstory (chockfull of spoilers, by the way – consider yourself warned) gives us a rich, complicated character just begging to be explored.  This is Alex.

Right away in the pilot, we get tons of revelations about Alex and it only scratches the surface.  We see that, despite Division’s interest in her as a capable murder, she couldn’t actually pull the trigger in the crime she’s been imprisoned for.  Amanda’s sharp, probing assessment of her offers hints of her past.  There’s the drug use, of course, but also her roots; her flawless American accent only indicates how young she was when she left Russia, and Amanda points out that a 13-year-old eastern European girl with no family probably didn’t come to the States of her own free will.  And finally, the pilot ends with the reveal that, as a new recruit, Alex isn’t just our eyes into Division – she’s Nikita’s as well, serving as Nikita’s mole on the inside.

And that’s just the beginning.  More than a trafficked orphan, more than an escaped sex slave, more than a recovering addict, more than a spy infiltrating spies, the show is only getting started with Alex.  In the episodes to follow, it slowly rolls out her history as the daughter of a ruthless Russian industrialist, the presumed-dead heir to an empire built with unclean hands.  We learn of the death of her family, including Division’s involvement in it, and how Nikita, in sparing Alex’s life, inadvertently puts her on the path that leads to her exploitation, abuse, and addiction.  When Nikita reconnects with Alex years later, it’s only to help her and atone for her (Nikita’s) own mistakes in trying to help Alex the first time.  She doesn’t count on Alex’s resolution to avenge her family, her insistence on helping Nikita take down Division.

With such complex ground in which to cultivate a character, it’s no surprise that Alex is as messed-up as she is incredible.  She’s a survivor with an enormous well of courage who takes on her enemies and her demons with the same fierce determination.  More than any member of team Nikita, she’s a champion of the victimized – her past experiences make her especially attuned to the suffering of others, and her guilt at getting out when others haven’t fuels her need to rescue those who’ve been lost through the dark cracks of society.  When it comes to relationships, she’s a mixed bag.  Guarded doesn’t begin to cover her default setting; she’s been hurt, used, and lied to, and she doesn’t easily let people in.  However, once she does connect with someone, it means the world to her, and even though she can’t necessarily articulate that, she needs her few friends and confidantes so badly.  Put these two facets together, and you get someone who desperately needs the strong attachments she tentatively forms, but who has so little trust in the idea of herself as worthy of love or friendship that she’s vulnerable to emotional manipulation.  She’s quick to pull away because it’s so easy to convince her that she’ll be let down or betrayed, or that her loved ones will discard her as soon as they’re no longer in need of her.

Forged in fire, Alex is hands-down the most rewarding character to watch on Nikita.  It’s amazing to see her grow into a young woman wrestling to figure out who she is.  After one life was taken from her and another tried its best to ruin her, she creates a new life for a new Alex, one who doesn’t deny the tragedies in her past but doesn’t let them determine her future.

Favorite Characters: Seymour Birkhoff (Nikita)

I’ve already talked about Birkhoff’s relationship with Nikita, one of my favorites on the show, but I figured the man himself deserved a separate post.  There’s no doubt that Birkhoff is a well-trod archetype – the vast majority of genre shows have a tech genius, and Birkhoff’s mix of extreme nerdiness and unrelenting snark is particularly reminiscent of Topher from Dollhouse.  However, despite the familiar ground, he never feels generic.  Here’s a closer look at this supremely entertaining character (includes spoilers.)

As I’ve said before, I like that Birkhoff is relatively amoral, pretty selfish, and a more gradual convert to Team Nikita.  I like that there’s some bite to him; while his pre-Division crimes aren’t as lethal as those of most fellow agents, he’s still a criminal.  He was recruited by Division (presumably to escape life in prison) after hacking the Pentagon, and he uses his computer prowess for other unscrupulous purposes at different times in the series.  At the same time, though, at the start of the series, he’s not as outright ruthless as dyed-in-the-wool Division folk like Percy or Amanda and shows periodic misgivings about some of their less conscionable operations.  This more middle-of-the-fence approach to morality gives him ample opportunity to defy expectations.  When he’s at Division, he sometimes circumvents the nefarious marching orders, and when he joins Nikita and the good guys, he sometimes turns to his old wayward tricks.  Throw in his strong rebellious streak, and you have a character with lots of potential for shaking up the story.

Like most characters on the show, another big draw is his extreme capability.  Again, his skillset is different – less ultraviolence, more hacker-fu – but even though it’s not as visually satisfying to watch Birkhoff type as it is to watch Nikita lay an epic smackdown, he’s still remarkably impressive.  His unprincipled background gives him a knack for sniffing out technical traps, and he pulls off some crazy stuff both in and out of Division.  He has such a high opinion of his own skills that he’s generally the first to point out what an incredible job he’s done, and that’s always good for a laugh.  Additionally, while he’s more of a physical liability than the likes of Nikita, Alex, or Michael, he’s not just an incapable weakling.  His Division combat training doesn’t get as much regular use as the others’, but in a fight, he can at least keep himself alive and only occasionally needs saving.  (I always love it when the techies can look out for themselves.)  However, he’s not as accustomed to fighting and killing, and when he does get into the fray, it tends to affect him more than it does the other characters.

And really, you can’t go wrong with such a genuine geek on a TV show; Nikita doesn’t call him “Nerd” for nothing.  There’s his tech knowhow, of course, and his hyper-intelligent tendency to treat others like troglodytes, but more than that, he’s a huge, unabashed fanboy.  Throughout the series, he tosses out casual Star Wars references, he quotes Lord of the Rings non-ironically, and when he hacks into the control system of some serious weaponry, he does his best Dalek impression.  Not only is it super-fun, but it also helps ground the show, which can sometimes veer into awesome-yet-outlandish, in the real world.  When the show offers up triple agents, shadowy conspiracies, brainwashing, faked deaths, and organic prostheses, it’s good to come back to Earth with the thought of Birkhoff watching X-Men in his safe house.  Not to mention, few of the characters seem to have many hobbies outside of field missions and pondering their own tragic backstories, so Birkhoff’s cornucopia of geek interests rounds him out nicely.

Relationship Spotlight: Alex Udinov & Nikita Mears (Nikita)

Yep, more Nikita!  This time, we’re hearing it for the girls; the wonderfully complex relationship between Nikita and Alex was one of the first things that hooked me about the show.  As with most Nikita-related things, massive spoilers to follow.

There are a lot of layers to Nikita-Alex, so I’ll try to unpack them one at a time.  The most obvious is the mentor/mentee angle, with Nikita initially training and prepping Alex to infiltrate Division and then guiding her through life on the inside.  She helps Alex to be strong – physically, mentally, and emotionally – and Alex proves herself time and again to be a worthy apprentice, working as Nikita’s mole within Division.  Many of the significant ties between these two begin here.  Alex often idealizes Nikita’s skills and strategies and wants to emulate her/do right by her, and Nikita is proud of Alex’s growing proficiency.

As the connection between them deepens, we see a more personal mother/daughter bond develop; Nikita especially looks out for Alex’s well-being.  As much as she respects Alex’s abilities, there’s a sense of wanting to keep Alex close to the nest and protect her.  This means physical danger, of course, but Nikita watches out for Alex in other ways, too.  A former addict herself, Nikita is the one who first helps Alex get clean, and when Alex is deep inside the belly of the Division beast, Nikita does whatever she can to spare Alex from having to go down the same dark paths that Nikita once did.  Alex, meanwhile, understands on one level that Nikita is trying to look out for her, but at the same time, she wants to prove to Nikita than she can stand on her own and doesn’t need protecting.

As time goes by, this dynamic never disappears, but it does soften as Alex matures as an operative.  Their relationship becomes one of slightly more equal footing, with Alex recognizing that Nikita isn’t perfect and Nikita more often trusting Alex to handle herself.  In this way, we’re able to see them as friends and comrades.  Both Nikita and Alex are understandably closed-off and guarded due to their past experiences, but they can open up to one another and provide support.  They can be vulnerable with one another, admitting to fears or confusion and seeking the other’s advice.  They work well in the field together and regularly have each other’s backs. 

None of this means that things always copasetic between them.  Both women come into the relationship with enormous amounts of baggage, some of it mutual, and it causes major rifts between them at different times.  Nikita’s tendencies toward keeping secrets, making decisions for other people “for their own good,” and only listening to outside input on her own terms get her in trouble with most of the cast at some point or another, and the conflicts born out of these issues are usually the most substantial with Alex.  I imagine it’s because these two are both the strongest-willed characters on the show as well as the most damaged.  As Alex gains confidence in her own instincts, she becomes less likely to be dictated to, so her stubbornness clashes with Nikita’s.  And because both have been through so much, every relationship they have is incredibly hard-earned, and any divide between them is sorely felt.  They need one another, a lot, and even though their relationship takes a number of hits along the way, they always return to each other with a greater understanding for the other’s needs and considerations.

Relationship Spotlight: Seymour Birkhoff & Nikita Mears (Nikita)

I knew I’d like Nikita’s relationship with Birkhoff as far back as the pilot.  When she abducts him for mission-related reasons, I love that he still calls her “Niki.”  True, Birkhoff is a bit of a nicknamer in general – he often calls Michael “Mikey” – but “Niki” has such a ring of endearment to it.  Although they’re on opposing sides at the time, there’s clearly affection between them.  They don’t have much screentime together in season 1, since Nikita’s war against Division mostly happens during field operations and Birkhoff doesn’t get topside often, but the interactions they do have are stuffed with potential that more than pays off later.  (Since Nikita’s arcs are so dynamic, any discussion of a series-long element comes with spoilers.)

At the outset, it’s clear that neither wants any real harm to come to the other, despite the fact that they’re technically enemies.  Birkhoff doesn’t hide his admiration for Nikita’s skills when she foils Division operations, and whenever he comes into direct contact with her, she usually lets him off (relatively) unscathed.  The really good stuff, however, doesn’t start until Birkhoff joins the resistance in season 2, so I’ll skip ahead.

It’s an interesting, opposites-attract sort of friendship.  Nikita’s all action and lethal efficiency, driven by a need for justice.  She wrestles frequently with her demons, and the years she regrets are never far from the surface.  Birkhoff, on the other hand, is essential to most operations but usually avoids the fray, preferring to stay behind his computer.  He doesn’t have many moral qualms, and when it comes to his motivations, self-preservation, personal gain, and a strong sense of superiority are major players.  Even his decision to join Nikita and Michael is as much about 1) saving his own skin, 2) boredom, and 3) sticking it to Division, as it is anything nobler.  He’s not a crusader like Nikita – he starts doing good long before he starts being good, if that makes sense, and this gives Nikita plenty of reasons to clash with him, to bolster him when he’s skittish about the risks, and to smack some priorities into him when he’s too opportunistic.

Lest we make Nikita the saint to Birkhoff’s sinner, I should note that theirs is definitely a two-way street.  Nikita’s flaws are numerous, and Birkhoff doesn’t keep quiet when he feels she’s in the wrong (which she sometimes is.)  She can be reckless, obsessive, and stubborn, and she tends to shut people out.  Birkhoff’s not the only person who confronts her on these fronts, but he’s usually the most effective.  With Michael and Alex, the ties are too deep, too complicated, and it’s easy for emotions to run too high on both sides.  Birkhoff, though, can reach her.  I’d love know what their relationship was like before Nikita escaped Division, because they both know and understand each other remarkably well.  I wonder how they got that way.

Much of the time, they have a bit of a big sister-kid brother dynamic.  They squabble, they hang out, and they rib each other – it’s a lot of fun, and a nice chance for Nikita to unwind a little.  As I said, however, this also allows for more serious interactions – honest arguments, sympathetic advice, and shared personal moments.  I love that, when Nikita gets back in touch with the group after going off on her own at the end of season 3, Birkhoff has it out with her over the comms, emphasizing that he has just as much right as Michael to be upset about her leaving.  And, when things get intense, you see just how much they mean to one another.  Nikita first beats herself up and then goes on the warpath when her actions lead to Birkhoff being endangered, and though he doesn’t always see eye to eye with her, there’s no question he’d follow her into hell.

Nikita (2010-2014)

I’ve been working on building up the number of shows I’ve seen with strong female leads, and Nikita is an admirable addition to the collection.  With complex characters, excellent acting, taut storytelling, and coolness through the roof, I really love this series.  Expect a bumper crop of Nikita-related posts in the coming weeks.

Inspired the 1990 French film that already spawned one previous TV series, Nikita centers around Division, an elite group of top-secret government agents.  Division takes criminals who show “promise” in one area or another, fakes their executions, erases all evidence of their past lives, and trains them to carry out operations the White House needs to keep off the books.  The titular Nikita is a former Division agent who broke out after they killed the man she loved, a man who was only supposed to be part of her “cover.”  The series opens on Nikita’s mission to avenge her lover and take down Division.

It’s hard to talk too much about the plot.  First, this show has a number of delicious, well-earned twists that it would be a crime to spoil.  Second, it’s a show whose trajectory changes multiple times over the seasons.  It mixes episodic mission-of-the-week outings with more arc-based episodes, and the overall framework is a dynamic one.  Several game-changers are introduced during the series, allowing it to evolve and take it to ever-unexpected places.  Some threads are more successful than others, of course, but by and large, it’s bold storytelling that pushes itself and its audience, never content to maintain the status quo for long.

Nikita is a tremendous character, a tactical, supremely-competent woman on a crusade.  She’s by turns cold, emotional, damaged, heroic, brave, overwhelmed, brilliant, and reckless.  I like that she’s an antihero who goes to some really dark places and sometimes struggles with doing the right thing – she fights “on the side of the angels,” as it were, but when you see everything she’s capable of, it’s a bit chilling.  Almost as engaging and well-written are the folks back at Division:  Alex, a young recruit with a bombshell in her past, Birkhoff, a snarky hacker extraordinaire, Michael, a conflicted agent with whom Nikita has a complex history, Amanda, the second-in-command with a sadistic streak, and Percy, the ruthlessly pragmatic man in charge.  Other interesting characters are added as the series goes along, and the show cultivates a number of rich relationships that make the stakes so much more compelling and personal.

I’ll be honest, it gets a little “sexy spy” at times – there’s no way that heels are practical footwear for a gun fight, and I find it hard to believe that so many undercover operations require bikinis or dresses with necklines halfway down the sternum.  However, the titillation is largely forgivable, since we also get highly-proficient women who are written as complex people, drive their own narratives, are survivors rather than victims, have amazing relationships with one another, and are all-around BAMF.  Yes, please.

Warnings

Violence (including torture and other intense scenes,) swearing, substance abuse, sexual content (including sex scenes,) and strong thematic elements.