For those of you who haven't seen the series, here are the basics. 4400 people who have disappeared over the last 50 years were returned to, well, Seattle. We're not sure why, but I think it was because the aliens who took them wanted to make sure that when a cable network told the story, they would be able to film in British Colombia for 12 the price and nobody would know the difference. Sorry, a little inside humor there.

Anyway, early on, we find that a lot of the people who returned have special powers. Some can see the future, some can cure disease, one can even create alternative universes with only her mind. But why were they taken and why would these aliens give them abilities? Well, the answer is that they weren't taken by aliens, but by future-humans, and these when these time traveleres returned, they said that these 4400 were the key to saving the future.

All of that may seem fine and dandy, but the cold reality is that there is a group of people out with special abilities and nobody is sure if these people will use their powers for good. That brings us to the government. Since the 4400 (or returnees as they are sometime called) landed on US soil, they were originally the problem of our government and like other proud moments in our history, when we couldn't figure out what to do with the outsiders, we threw them into quarantine.

Since it didn't seem like any were a threat, we sent them out into the world. It was only then that we learned of the abilities some of them had, but as long as they reported back to their local government their whereabotus, evertything was fine. What the government didn't tell them was that each time they came in, they were being experimented on. Government scientists discovered that the key to the 4400 abilities was a compound called promycin; humans barely have it, but the 4400 have it in gobs. So the governement started giving them a promycin inhibitor to make sure that nobody got too special.

The only problem with the promycin inhibitor was that it caused this disease among the people who took it. Several were killed, and the as the government conspiracy and coverup were discovered, it became apparent that somebody was going to have to explain themselves. That's where we start the third season, with Dennis Ryland, former head of NTAC (National Threat Asssessment Command - a fictional government agency) before Congress, explaining why it was that he allowed all of this stuff to go on and the Senators demanding that somebody take some accountability.