Alias/Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger
Season 1, Episode 5
Airdate	October 28, 2001
Production Number	E634
Written by	Daniel Arkin
Directed by	Ken Olin
← 1x04 A Broken Heart	1x06 → Reckoning
Alias — Season One

Doppelgänger is the fifth episode of the first season of Alias. Sydney's undercover status is in jeopardy when she delivers an undercover CIA agent to SD-6. Will gets closer to the mystery of Danny's death by meeting Kate Jones.

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: Tom Everett (CIA Agent Paul Kelvin), Norbert Weisser (Jeroen Schiller), Lori Heuring (Kate Jones/Eloise Kurtz), Maurice Chasse (Jacqnoud)

Co-Starring: Kevin E. West (CIA Officer Logan), Yvonne Farrow (Diane Dixon), Robert Bailey, Jr. (Dixon's Son)

Featuring: Subash Kundanmal (Patel), Pablo Santos (Roy), Kenneth Ivan (UCO Host), Jeff Chase (Bodyguard), Clint Lilley (Patel's Bodyguard), Tristin Mays (Dixon's Daughter), Kevin Mitnick (Hacker)

Uncredited: Greg Grunberg (Eric Weiss)

Plot Overview

Sydney is discovered observing the surgical procedure on Dhiren Patel by the bodyguard she had run into before. Waking after being knocked unconscious, Sydney escapes by jumping down a blind tube. She wakes some distance away having come out of a drainage pipe. Quickly calling Dixon, she tells him the bomb is inside Patel and they must get him out of the conference. Acting quickly, Dixon punches Patel out and carries him out to an ambulance. While Sydney is driving erratically to evade the pursuing bombs, Dixon removes the implanted bomb and blows up the pursuers.

On returning, Vaughn gives Sydney the CIA's file on her father. Her father stops her in the hall and suggests that she shouldn't try arranging any more social visits between them, citing being 'too busy'. In reviewing the case file, Sydney notices references to the missing case 332L and references to Agent Calder of the FBI. She reads this to mean that perhaps her father was being investigated for selling secrets.

The primary operation concerns Hansel Corporation, a pharmaceutical development company in Germany which has ties stretching back to the Third Reich. A man working for them, Jeroen Schiller, is asking SD-6 for safe passage to the United States in exchange for a bio-weapons vaccine. Sydney and Dixon are to go to Germany and extract both Schiller and his vaccine data, slightly complicated by not having a recent photograph of him. Vaughn, believing that SD-6 would provide this vaccine abroad to terrorists who want to immunize their own people before using biological weapons, intends to exchange Schiller for lookalike CIA Agent Kelvin as well as providing fake vaccine data.

Going in undercover, Sydney meets Schiller and has him pass his data along to a remote FTP server. Dixon introduces a knockout gas to the ventilation while Sydney brings Schiller out through the alternate Parking Garage exit, citing worries that she is being followed. While in the parking garage, the CIA take Schiller and Kelvin follows her out. It is revealed to Sydney that in addition to being fake, the dummy vaccine data is also a Trojan allowing the CIA access to SD-6's computer systems.

While Francie is preparing for a Halloween party, Will tells her the truth about investigating into Danny's death. Knowing that Kate Jones and Danny were the only two people booked for the flight who didn't show, he knows there is some kind of connection. Francie tells him that he's risking his relationship with Sydney by pressing this and he agrees to drop it. In return, he tells her that she should stop playing games and call Charlie, who she clearly loves. Immediately afterwards, he makes contact by phone with 'Kate Jones'. Meeting her for a lunch, he asks the nature of her relationship to Danny. Not believing her story, Will confronts her with the fact that the Social Security Number he got for her was tied to a person who died back in 1973, after which she leaves the table.

A crisis arises when Sloane unexpectedly asks Kelvin for information on a manufacturing plant making an inhaler-based vaccine. Kelvin, obviously not possessing the information, stalls for time and Sloane becomes suspicious of both him and Sydney. He questions Dixon about the nature of the extraction and the reason for the alternate exit. The CIA can't get Schiller to talk as he doesn't believe that Sloane isn't really CIA and doesn't trust that they really are. Sydney makes an impassioned plea to him and he tells her the plant is in Badenweiler, Germany. Unable to pass the information to Kelvin because of Sloane's suspicions about her, she passes the information to her father. Her father has been asked by Sloane to get the information out of Kelvin, a talent Sloane has asked of him in the past. This is made more difficult because Jack is friends with Kelvin. In the process of beating him and breaking his arm, Jack whispers the information and Kelvin is able to confess the true location. Kelvin is released and returns to his former life and Schiller goes under witness protection with $200,000 of SD-6's money.

Following on this information, Sydney and Dixon are to travel to the Badenweiler plant to steal the inhalers and then destroy the plant. The CIA counter-op is to pass the inhalers to CIA agents waiting inside the plant and then to disable Dixon's bombs so that the CIA can investigate the plant more thoroughly for more clues as to Hansel Corporation's activities. Sydney and Dixon follow the plan, setting off an alarm to clear the building while they set up the bomb, and Sydney is able to break away and exchange the inhalers as well as double back to disable the remote for the bomb. While outside, the remote fails and Sydney presses Dixon to leave before they are found. However, Dixon has brought a secondary detonator in case the first one was jammed and blows up the building, killing all four CIA agents inside.

Notes

• Sydney beats and stabs one man, non-fatally, and evades fire from six men as well as falling unconscious twice. Dixon punches out both a bodyguard and a peace prize winner then blows up six men over two separate occasions.

• Sydney goes undercover as a fiber optic installation supervisor.

• Marhsall gives Sydney a business card that provides a remote firewall bypass system and grants sysadmin rights by placing it on the monitor of a computer. Dixon has a portable knockout gas delivery package and a small but powerful bomb with primary and backup remote detonator.

Music

• John Wesley Harding - "I'm Wrong About Everything"

• Freestylers - "Get Down Massive"

• Leroy - "Trans Am"

Trivia

The Show

• Oddly, the remote detonator isn't powerful enough to activate the bomb two car lengths away.

Quotes

• Sydney: Arvin Sloane is not affiliated with the United States government. He's just a man who used me, the same as he was going to use you. He made me think I was giving myself to God and Country, but it was all a lie. A lie that cost my fiancé his life. If I go back to SD-6 without the location of that plant, they will take the life of another innocent man. There is only person who can stop that, and I am talking to him right now.