In my opinion, this was one of the BEST shows to ever "grace the screen" from NETWORK TELEVISION. Of course, UPN was an infant back then primarily using syndication affiliates (we watched it on FOX), so I suppose it was inevitable that it would be tossed around between timeslots and days to find a "home" for it. Maybe in retrospect, TOUCHSTONE PICTURES should have pitched this one to "one of the good old boys", like NBC!!!!!!
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My name is Thomas Veil ...
or at least it was ...
"I'm a photographer. I had it all:
a wife, Alyson, friends, a career. And in one moment it was taken away.
All because of a single photograph.
I have it, they want it, and they will do anything to get the negative.
I'm keeping this diary as proof that these events are real.
I know they are, they have to be.
I find myself 1500 miles away from where my story began, when I sat in a county
mental hospital, wearing a strait jacket, facing Dr. Bellamy.
It's hard to say just where I'm headed. It might be easier to say away.
Away from them."
THE 25 EPISODES:
(please note- these are listed in order of airdate)
ABSOLUTE ZERO
Unknown forces conspire to erase Thomas Veil's identity and without warning, every aspect of his life is turned upside down - his wife acts as if he's a stranger, his credit cards are suddenly invalid, his keys no longer fit the door to his home and in one way or another, his family and friends are silenced. (personal note- I was "hooked" in the first 15 minutes. You couldn't help being drawn in as if this NIGHTMARE of unbelievable proportions was happening to you! BRILLIANT! "Edge of your seat" at it's best!)
TURNABOUT
Attempting to avert his unknown attackers, Veil uses Dr. Bellamy's driver's license and credit cards as he sets out on a desperate search for answers to who has stripped away his entire life. Before long, he's presumed to be the missing Bellamy, tracked down and taken to the enemy's headquarters for Western Operations. There, 'Dr. Bellamy' is instructed to make one of their subjects, Ellen Combs, comply with the same 'conditioning' procedure he administered to Tom Veil.
THE INCREDIBLE DEREK
In his search for reasons why someone wants the negative of his 'Hidden Agenda' photo, Tom Veil enlarges it and detects details which lead him to a remote Georgian town to hunt down more answers. There, he happens upon a traveling side show starring Derek, a 10-year-old blind child billed as 'The Boy Psychic', who reveals ominous news about Veil's pursuers.
SOMETHING ABOUT HER
Classified as the unknown enemy's first priority, the elusive Veil is apprehended and submitted into a chemically-induced hallucinatory state in which his attackers have complete control over his sense of time and space. While he's within their 'lab' setting, they employ actors and elaborate sets to convince Veil he's been in a loving relationship with a woman to whom he'll soon divulge the sought after information.
PARADISE ON YOUR DOORSTEP
After getting a job in a small town photo shop, Tom is stunned to glimpse a picture of his wife Alyson as he processes a customer's film. He frantically pursues that customer to question where she shot the picture, but the chase lands him in New Phoenix, a haven for the disenfranchised and community of people who have for one reason or another, lost their identity at the hands of the mysterious enemy.
THE SPIDER WEBB
While hiding out in a cheesy motel, Veil happens upon The Lenny Little Show, a public access television series in which the main character is uncannily depicting Veil's own frightening life. Struggling to understand, Veil watches as unknown forces pursue Lenny and attempt to erase his every trace. He sees the actors perform the exact same dialogue and reenact experiences he endured as recently as the previous day. Trying to grasp what's happening, Veil angrily pursues an explanation, which leads him to the strange offices of Max Webb Productions - and his tormentors.
A ROUGH WHIMPER OF INSANITY
Unsure if he's running towards something or away from it, an exhausted Veil happens upon a disabled, reclusive computer genius, Scott Hansen. The young 'hacker' is able to access Veil's deleted files - the only trace of his existence - and through an intricate virtual reality session, takes Veil back to his wife Alyson and also helps him get information about his pursuers.
THE ALPHA SPIKE
Searching for clues about Dr. Bellamy, Veil traces the beginnings of the mysterious man's research to a private school, The Sterling Academy. There, he gets a job as a groundskeeper and not only uncovers that the administration is programming the student body through elaborate subliminal persuasion, but exposes a murder and a conspiracy to cover it up.
YOU REALLY GOT A HOLD ME
As Veil's mysterious pursuers close in and are about to kill him, his life is saved by a peculiar stranger. He's thunderstruck when the man, a quirky drifter named Gus Shepard, seems to know all about his situation and, with or without Veil's cooperation, is intent on showing him the only way out of it.
Dean Stockwell stars as Gus Shepard, a man who has spent most of his life outrunning the same enemy as Veil.
FATHER
In need of anything that connects him to his former life, Veil risks returning to the house and town he grew up in and, while savoring this small but significant part of his past, he unexpectedly meets the man who betrayed him twenty years earlier - his father.
AN ENEMY WITHIN
While camping in Pennsylvania farm country, Veil is accidently shot by a guard for a powerful food conglomerate. Near death, he's discovered in the woods by a local woman, the beautiful Emily Noonan, who takes him to her remote farmhouse and nurses him back to health. Finally, Veil has found a safe place and someone he can trust.
IT'S NOT SUCH A WONDERFUL LIFE
At long last (and just in time for time holidays), Veil's torment comes to an end as federal agents locate him, reveal the identity of his enemy and disclose why 'The Organization', a well-funded group of political fanatics wreaking havoc with foreign policy, have been trying to destroy him. After Veil gives a sworn deposition to authenticate his 'Hidden Agenda' photograph, he's reunited with his wife Alyson and his mother and is on the way to having himself a merry little Christmas, until he gets a form of "coal" in his stocking. (personal note: this was my FAVORITE episode. If there was any question as to just what Tom was up against, there were absolutely no doubts when this episode concluded. You could feel EVERYTHING Tom felt! THERE IS NOTHING THIS ORGANIZATION WILL NOT DO!)
CONTACT
A dissenter from the Organization surreptitously contacts Veil and supplies him with documentation that one of its highest ranking members, Richard Grace, is the one primarily responsible for the decision to erase his identity. This mysterious man also turns over photos of Veil's deceitful wife, Alyson, in compromising poses with Grace and then offers to furnish Veil with valuable information from the group's dossier on him if he reciprocates by killing Grace. Before long, Veil finds himself in a risky alliance with someone inside the enemy's camp.
HEART OF DARKNESS
Using information provided by his contact, a traitor within the enemy's ranks, Veil tracks down retired military man Cyrus Quinn, a renowned fanatic connected to the execution pictured in 'Hidden Agenda'. To gain access to the controversial and closely guarded Quinn, Veil must find a way to infiltrate the American Guard, the radical political action group he has founded.
FOREVER JUNG
A recurrent address in his electronic file leads Veil to a nursing home in Minnesota where he secures a job as an orderly. Initially, he finds no apparent connection to his unknown pursuers, but it turns out he's entered a covert and ominous operation, Advanced Biogenetics Lab. There, those in the 'twilight' of their life disappear without a trace to become part of a surreal, sophisticated experiment which provides them with a youthful appearance in exchange for something more valuable.
SHINE A LIGHT ON YOU
Veil makes his way to New Mexico hoping to locate John Myerson, a name he's linked to The Organization. He arrives in a small sesert town which is in a clamor over several UFO sightings and is told that Meyerson, a local scientist, mysteriously disappeared months earlier and is believed to have been abducted by aliens.
STAY TUNED
Veil's link, a traitor within 'The Organization', directs him to the idyllic town of Darby, New York, where a suspicious degree of cleaniness, incessant hospitality and unequivocal support for one local politican prevails. As he settles among the neighborly, strangely cheerful people there, he surmises that nothing in Darby is what it appears to be. After a local teenager, Michael, and his school teacher, Janet, caution Veil that something is terribly wrong in the town, he delves into the possibility that the Organization is employing a version of mind-control.
HIDDEN AGENDA
Carefully setting the trap, Alexander Hale, the informant from within The Organization, gains Veil s confidence and persuades him to divulge the details and events surrounding the execution in his "Hidden Agenda" photograph.
DOPPELGANGER
After Veil's only ally within The Organization is taken away from him, he suspects the information in the palmtop computer could have been deliberately compromised all along. He debates the options and weighs the fates before using one more tip from the compact computer - the name and address of Clare Hillard, a reporter who covered the same sector where he took the now sought after 'Hidden Agenda' photo. Arriving in Hillard's small Ohio town, Veil's met with a cold reception from her and soon discovers that there's a nearly identical man living there who has adopted his name, his profession and his photographs, including 'Hidden Agenda'. When Claire Hillard disappears, Veil is suspected of foul play and arrested.
THROUGH A LENS DARKLY
Veil is snatched away by the enemy's operatives and taken on a manufactured 'trip' down memory lane. Then, at the hand of one of The Organization's most twisted experts, he is subjected to an elaborate combination of chemicals and refracted light which triggers his advanced hypnosis. During the dreamlike state, he is haunted with altered memories, particularly a troublesome time when, accompanied his childhood sweetheart Laura, he was a photojournalist covering Nothern Ireland.
DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Tom Veil is mugged by a street gang and is stripped of his belongings and, for the first time, the 'Hidden Agenda' negatives are out of his possession. While Veil and the Organization both attempt to track down the gang member who stole the pack containing the coveted negatives, the thief winds up dead and Veil is a suspect in his murder. The stakes get higher when Veil is pursued not only by a dangerous and unknown enemy but a vengeful group of street hoodlums seeking his demise.
CALAWAY
Veil's twisted odyssey leads him back to Calaway, the Illinois psychiatric hospital where his ordeal began, and more revelations of what really happened to him while he was held there. Most astonishly, he discovers that former patient Joe "J.C." Carter has joined the medical staff and become one of "them".
ZERO MINUS TEN
Tom Veil wakes from a coma to hear the unsettling news that he was in a bad car accident months earlier and his ordeal of identity erasure was just a terrible nightmare. At his bedside is his ever-loving wife Alyson and his best friend Larry Levy, a man Veil swears he once saw dead and stuffed in a closet.
MARATHON
Just when he's at the end of his rope, Veil finds new meaning in the 'Hidden Agenda' negative when he enlarges a print of it and discovers a previously obscured section. The new clues lead him to Heritage House, a research facility in Washington D.C. and its foreboding Project Marathon. There, he stumbles upon an FBI investigation and is targeted for assassination by more than one enemy.
GEMINI
Veil is two moves away from checkmate when he retrieves the contents of the secret safe-deposit box kept by his FBI contact. Among the files is a report written by an undercover agent (code named Gemini) and amazingly, the original, un-retouched 'Hidden Agenda' photograph which shows the identity of the four hanging victims. Veil tracks down Senator William Wallace, the senior member of a Senate committee, to confront him with the truth behind the photograph, on the climactic season finale. (personal note: this was supposed to be the SEASON FINALE- of course, the show never returned to the airwaves that fall. I don't know what it was like where you live, but here, for the last 7 or 8 episodes, it was a weekly test just to see where and when the show was being aired 8PM? 10PM? MIDNITE? 1AM? MONDAY? WEDNESDAY? FRIDAY?-YOU NEVER KNEW!-what a bunch of idiots!!!)
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AN EXCELLENT SHOW WHICH WILL BE MISSED! ********************************
