Alias/Salvation

Salvation
Season 2, Episode 6
Airdate	November 10, 2002
Production Number	E657
Written by	Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman-Counter
Directed by	Perry Lang
← 2x05 The Indicator	2x07 → The Counteragent
Alias — Season Two

Salvation is the sixth episode of the second season of Alias, and the twenty-eighth episode overall. Sydney must take action to control the fate of her mother and father.

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) (credit only), Kevin Weisman (Marshall Flinkman), David Anders (Julian Sark) (picture only)

with Lena Olin (Irina Derevko) (credit only)

and Victor Garber (Jack Bristow)

Guest Starring: James Handy (CIA Director Devlin), Stephen Markle (Senator Douglas), Austin Tichenor (Dr. Nichols)

Special Guest Star (end credits): Amy Irving (Emily Sloane)

Co-Starring: Daniel Faltus (Jan Spinnaker), Kevin Sutherland (Agent)

Featuring: Hope Allen (Waitress), Glenda Morgan Brown (Flight Attendant), John Patrick Clerkin (Priest), Timothy De Haas (Doctor #2), Ira Heiden (Rick, CIA Techie), Mette Holt (Nurse), John Koyama (Patient Zero), Alex Morris (CIA Homeless Man), Cliff Olin (Cliff), Robert Martin Robinson (Doctor)

Plot Overview

Irina Dervko is scheduled to go on trial for 86 counts of espionage but the trial is cut short when she enters a plea agreement and is quickly delivered a guilty verdict and a sentence of lethal injection. Sydney makes a plea for her mother's case by telling officials that Jack orchestrated the bombing in Madagascar, the key action that broke Derevko's immunity agreement. Jack intercepts this and attempts to convince Sydney that Derevko is playing with her emotions but Sydney is unwilling to trust her father.

The CIA acts on the information that Sydney provides by opening an inquiry on Jack. Finding him as loose cannon and rogue agent, they sentence him to a prison term. Irina Dervko's sentence is unchanged as the commission, led by Senator Douglas, finds that her original immunity agreement was invalid entirely. Sydney non-violently kidnaps the Senator in him limousine to plea for her parent's fate. She creates a story that she is pursuing a lead that the Alliance of Twelve has a US Senator in their employ and that Jack and Irina are key to her investigation. This false story is credible enough to release Jack and return Derevko to her previous FBI custody.

SD-6 is following a lead that Sark is researching the virus that infected Klaus Richter and is currently shipping several of his infected employees aboard a medical airplane to a secure research hospital in Geneva. Jack and Sydney go undercover to recover the medical information and get a sample from one of the infected patients. Going as an ailing father and the daughter who will provide him with a replacement kidney, they get access to the hospital. Under the pretense of needing to keep a secure briefcase at hand, they are able to release an anesthetic gas to disable the medical staff.

Jack and Sydney collect the information and Sydney extracts blood from an Asian patient in an advanced stage of the virus. The patient becomes semi-lucid during this and grabs Sydney's arm, calling her "Irina". Jack informs Sydney that Irina had purposefully exposed her personnel to the virus with the intent of studying the effects. The patient's status alerts the medical staff which forces Jack and Sydney to fight off several hospital guards and engage in a firefight to escape while Jack rewires a locked down elevator.

The CIA are convinced the large Rambaldi device that Sydney destroyed is in some way the source of the virus, and that both she and Vaughn are potentially infected. They are both held in medical quarantine for a time, with Sydney being cleared very early and Vaughn being kept for extended observation because of heightened counts of antibodies. Vaughn is later cleared as it is determined he was fighting off a cold, but he later sees bleeding from his fingertips, the first sign of viral infection.

Notes

• Sydney and Jack beat eight guards while Sydney trades gunfire with several of them.

• Marshall gives Jack a custom briefcase that emits large quantities of Halothane. He also gives Sydney and Jack an anti-anesthetic to allow them to remain conscious.

• The testing and training program for young children, including Sydney, is identified as Project Christmas and was developed simultaneously by Jack as well as and equivalent program by the Russian KGB.

Music

• Kim Richey - "A Place Called Home"

• Violent Femmes - "Blister In The Sun"

• Andy Hunter - "Go"

• Gus - "Violent Rain"

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Sloane believes that he's seen Emily Sloane on a city street and chases someone he believes to be her to an empty church. He also exhumes her coffin and finds it empty. After confiding in Jack, Jack tells him that either Emily is truly alive or someone is attempting to make it appear that way to undermine Sloane's position with the Alliance.

• Will is in dire financial straits, unable to get a job because of his publicized drug scandal and forced to sell his car. Unwilling to take money from Sydney, he asks Vaughn for a job with the CIA. Unable to give him an "on the books" job, Vaughn pays Will to research the presence of questions on US standardized tests for indications that the KGB sleeper program is really a threat.

• It's revealed that Vaughn is experiencing symptoms of a virus that he contracted via the Rambaldi device that Sydney destroyed in Taipei.

Referbacks

• Klaus Richter is recovered from Sark in "Dead Drop"

Trivia

The Show

• While Irina Derevko appears in this episode, she is played by a stand-in.