Techtite's Hardcopy: Book Reviews

"...An official companion that selflessly includes every single piece of data about the series that any fan would want."

---from the review

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I was a slow beginner to Alias, ABC's newest action series. Not unlike most shows premiering after 9-11, 2001, it began at the wrong time. My father had passed away from cancer at the start of the year, and no sooner did my family start to recover from that, then the infamous attack of 9-11 occurred. Then Alias premiered, on Sunday, September 30th, 2001. Good show? Sure! It just premiered at the wrong time to fully grasp my attention...as I'm sure, was the case for many others (hence why, admittedly, it's not as high on the ratings as it should be).

For such people, there are now a slew of Alias books, of various sorts. Among the best of them is Alias Declassified: The Official Companion, which is exactly what the title implies; a thorough beginner's guide to the entire first season of the series, right up to (and including!) season one's finale cliffhanger. Anyone who came to the party even slightly late (like myself, admittedly) should give this book a thorough read.

Here's a run-down of the series for those with "no Alias," a.k.a. those who never tuned in: Sydney Bristow is a UCLA college student who has been training to be in the CIA. She gets engaged and tells her fiancée about her secret "spy" lifestyle, only to see him dead in the bathtub for "knowing too much!" It turns out that she is in fact working for "SD-6"; the very sort of spies she thought she was fighting against. Desperate, she goes to the actual CIA, who make her into a double-agent. She will be working with their other double-agent in SD-6, who turns out to be her own estranged father. So began what is, to many, ABC network's most popular series currently on the air. Sure, that's a pretty wafer-thin synopsis of the overall series, though that's the whole point of "Official Companions" like these, isn't it? 

What really makes this official companion shine is, the authors do not waste precious pages to be "cutesy." This is not a mock secret dossier on Sydney Bristow, nor does it presume the show's events are "real" and you may die in a bathtub for reading it yadda yadda yadda. True, the largest chapter is a thorough synopsis of every season one episode, including the storyline, major plot developments, cliffhangers (if any), spy gadgetry used, and any pertinent plot developments. There's even a separate, 32 page chapter on the season finale alone! However, within the book's 210 pages is a ton of additional behind the scenes data, including actual blueprints of set designs, costume design sketches for some of Sydney's best disguises, original storyboards of classic scenes, anecdotes from the cast & crew, and quite frankly, more than I've ever seen offered in any of the "official companions" I've read for other series.

Of course, for fans who buy this book ASAP, there's an added bonus; one I've never seen so graciously offered before. Early books have a sticker on the cover mentioning a special, exclusive DVD on the inside back cover. Sadly, this DVD does not include the pilot episode --which would've been COOOOOL, wouldn't it?!?-- though does include short video interviews of every major cast member, a quickie recap of the pilot episode's opening story, on-screen bios of each character, separate bios of the actors playing those roles, and best of all, special software for those lucky dogs with a DVD drive on their computer! My favorite offering (PC and Mac compatible!) is the best, video-savvy screen saver I've ever seen, with short snippets of the show zooming in and out of view. Cool!

Admittedly, no book about a corresponding TV series is going to win the Pulitzer Prize. Regardless, this book is still worthy of a Deep Impact grade here at Techtite.com, due to it being everything a fan of the series would anticipate, and more. If there could possibly be anything more they added to this book, tell me, because I'd be interested what that is. There are many books (which sadly, I've yet to have the time to review) that made me feel like it was a chore to even read them. Alias Declassified is a pleasant exception.