Sarah Caplan returned from a scouting mission, not entirely sure of what she would find upon returning to home base. Curiosity rapidly turned to shock as she discovered pure, unadultered chaos. The troops were doing their best, but it swiftly became apparent that this was one battle they weren't going to win. "I felt like I had arrived in the middle of Vietnam," said Caplan, the memory still haunting her. "They weren't even thinking about winning the battle; they were thinking about somehow getting through the night."

With no choice, she contacted her senior officer, who was awoken from a sound sleep, oblivious to what was happening to those under his charge, but instantly aware of just what had to be done; what changes would have be made. The suggested solution was put into play, and at that moment a single episode("The Box") was transformed into a two-parter. Producer Caplan let out a sigh of relief, and all was good in the world.

Such is the life on the set of Alias, the spy drama that has effectively hooked a cult audience and is expanding its popularity, both in America and increasingly here in the UK, where Channel 4 has moved it to a prominent slot on Sundays.

As series creator JJ Abrams (the screenwriter behind Forever Young, Regarding Henry, Armageddon, Joyride, and the new Superman) explains it, the concept of this show came during a writer's meeting for the show Felicity (seen over here on ITV2)--chronicling the lives, primarily, of a trio of college students -- which also happens to spring from his more-than-fertile imagination.

"I said 'You know what would just rock? If Felicity was recruited by the CIA because then she would have to go and do these missions internationally,'" says Abrams. "You know, kick ass, be in these incredibly high-stakes, life-and-death situations, and then come back. She couldn't tell Ben. She couldn't tell Noel.'"

The real question was whether or not such a concept could fly on modern telly. The answer was obvious: of course not--which is probably why he went ahead and created the show anyway.

"The premise of this show is ludicrous," Abrams admits good-naturedly about Alias. "You know the whole idea that there would be a young woman who is sort of in college, in grad school, who is a spy. On the face of it, when you say that, that's not necessarily a show that interests me from the outside. I really came to it from the inside and the idea: who is this woman and what is her loss and what are the relationships in her life? The thing that got me excited was the idea of telling the story of the world's most dysfunctional family and telling it through the spy/intelligence/action-adventure genre. It was a fun way to tell an emotional story, but at the end of the day it was a story I wanted to see, about a young woman living in Kansas who lost her fiance; whose father, though he's estranged, ends up being her only ally. It felt like the beginning of a story that was interesting to me, despite the genre and not because of it. I wanted to do a comic book and really commit to it and have the characters be real; people who are compelling, who you want to watch week-in and week-out. To me, that's my dream show."

On a surface level, Alias would seem like a direct descedent of such '60s spy adventures as 007 and The Man From UNCLE, mixed in with a large dose of La Femme Nikita for good measure.

"Unfortunately or fortunately," begins Abrams, "I am a fan of and influenced by almost everything. I'm as influenced by Preston Struges as I am David Fincher. I love so many different genres and so much is out there that, in a way, when I did Alias the fun was just taking everything that I love and making this melange and throwing it together into whatever the hell Alias is. That's the fun for me. I hope the show is never boring. It will never be everything all the time and when you do 22 hours of entertainment a year, you're going to have some that just won't work as well as others. My goal was always to tell a story that combined action-adventure, emotional stories, heartbreak, special effects, fight scenes, sexy outfits, stories of loss, anxiety, and joy - literally taking all the different elements and combining them into something that felt new. Personally, I'm always drawn to characters who, when we meet them or shortly thereafter, go through loss and who search for some truth and some meaning in who they are. I've attempted to do that a number of times, though I don't know if I've succeed with it. There's something about that idea that just interests me."

When this concept came to him, Abrams felt compelled to flesh it out and see what journey it would take him on. "This just felt so exciting," he enthuses, "the idea of a show where there was this woman going through what I just talked about, and also got to experience some of things that I think, on a purely sort of visceral, visual level, are incredibily fun to shoot. It just felt, to me, like this was an opportunity to do a show that was at the same incredibily emotional and complex in terms of the relationships of the characters in a genre where you typically don't find that. Usually it's either no characters whatsoever or banter or stuff that feels a little bit empty. I was really interested in the idea of a young woman who not only had this loss, but has basically a non-relationship with her father and the idea that little by little this young woman and this man begin to connect. That, to me, is something that, again, I'd watch in any genre.

"So," smiles Abrams, "I'm a fan of movies made here and abroad, and movies that are recent and old and movies of any genre. Unfortunately, I'm influenced and appreciative of so many genres that I can't point to one and say, 'That's what I'd do.'"

One thing that this media savant has done is offer up a television series that is so intertwined in its storytelling and character arcs from episode to episode, that it has created a rich tapestry that is quite unlike virtually any other show on television. If you were to look for shows that offered the same type of complexity, you would probably have to turn to late '80s undercover crime series, Wise Guy, in which story arcs would span 4 to 10 episodes; or the last several seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which represents some of the most satisfyingly intricate storytelling in the franchise's 37-year history. Even then, though, Alias stands apart.

"To me," Abram offers, "if you do Alias simplistically, it's [the Pammy Anderson series] VIP. The good news and bad news about Alias is that you really have to watch it and go with it a couple of times before it grasps you or you grasps it. It's not something you immediately understand, like, 'Oh, it's about a young woman who is a lawyer in Boston.' It doesn't happen that quickly. There is a complexity to it. But the fun of the show is that there is ambiguity all around, and at the end of the day, it's a show about a young woman who's trying to live a normal life. She has to defeat some enemies before she can do that, and unfortunately, given the situation, she's working for the enemy. If you look at it as a show about a double agent who just wants to get out of the game, it's the easiest way to put it. What's fun about the show for me is that even with the bad guy for whom she works, we start to realise that he is not simply a bad guy. The father who she starts to feel, 'Oh, he's sort of a sweetheart,' you start to realise has a dark side. There's a real ambiguity to the show and I feel like it's something that people who watch it just love and grasp on to. I think they're really invested in it because it isn't so simple.

Writer-turned-co-story editor Erica Messer adds, "Something that makes us different, sure, there's good guys and bad guys, but sometimes within an episode, the bad guy, Arvin Sloane, you can end up feeling sorry for. I don't know how many tv series kind of blur those lines between, 'You should hate this guy because he is bad and make you hate him more.' We've been able to make him human. Within two scenes back to back, Sydney because his wife, Emily, is ill; and [CIA Contact] Vaughn will say, in overlapping dialogue, 'I hope you're not feeling sorry for Arvin Sloane. He wouldn't hesitate to kill you if he knew we were having this conversation.' So it kind of brings you back saying, 'Hey, audience, stop feeling sorry for him, because he's bad.' And it works."

Even the summary of Alias makes it sound like a complex show, yet it's that same complexity that has drawn such an incredible mix of talent both in front of and behind the camera. And believe us - there ain't one person working on Alias that ain't thrilled to be there. Yes, they're exhausted, but thrilled nonetheless.

Series composer Michael Gicchino nicely sums up the overall feeling. "What's amazing," he laughs, "you get another episode and you think, 'Oh God, not another one. I just finished one, but you start working on it and you start having fun on it again. It's kind of a unique experience, because you're constantly having fun. That thing that always sticks in my mind is that I get about three days to do a show. That's regardless of how we're doing it. I get three days to do 20 to 25 minutes of music. Which is a lot. I end up working night and day doing it, but it never bothers me because I know the guys who have handed off the tape to me have been doing exactly the same thing. Everybody is working just as hard. You never feel 'God, I can't believe I have to do this.' You feel like you have something to live up to, because people behind you just handed something that's great and you have to do something that's worthy of that product. And I'm the last one in line, so I have everyone else's work to support there. But that's what makes it challenging and fun. JJ sets a great tone for the working environment. You don't come away from anyone saying 'Man, I hate that guy' Which is so great. It's a unique situation."

It's precisely the uniqueness of the situation that has drawn in people like director/actor/co-excutive producer Ken Olin. Certainly no stranger to quality drama having starred in thirtysomething, Breaking News, and the amazing - albeit short-lived (two episodes before being yanked) EZ streets, and directed such shows as The West Wing and Abrams' Felicity. Olin, franklym couldn't believe the opportunity that fell into his lap when Alias was presented to him. In fact so impress was he with the pilot that he refused to helm the first regular episode.

"When they were looking for someone to direct the first episode of Alias, they sent the pilot to me," Olin reflects. "In my mind, that's one of the best pilots I've ever seen. I thought JJ just had such a specific vision of what he wanted it to be. It was funny, it had action to it, it was moving at times, it was very vivid and very specific, and in a certain way, wasn't easily defined. You could say 'It's this meets this meets this' but then that wouldn't even do it justice. It was just JJ's vision of something. Normally I don't see things that are that specific, for me, it was fun. It was pop."

"I was getting tired of doing more versions of sincere TV," he continues. "I think it's passe. There was an energy to this, it wasn't so serious, yet there was room for it to be intimate. And there was room for moments of connections and human relationships. He was exploring his vision of a dysfunctional family by way of a comic book. So I said, 'No, I don't want to direct the first episode.' To me, it was a completely no-win proposition after that pilot. The pilot was extraordinary and there was no way the show was being brought in on an 8-day schedule. Then JJ came back to me and said, 'Would you do the first episode if we made you a producer/director on the show?' I couldn't believe it, because it was the one pilot that I had seen that I thought was really extraordinary. So I said yes. I had done some action before, not a lot, but I understood how to do it. More than anything, I was just in sync with what JJ's point of view is; how you get from the humor to the serious scenes; how you go from scenes of personal life to scenes of the most extreme kind of action/Mission Impossible/comic book drama. I understood it."

Understanding didn't make it any less challenging for Olin, particularly in conveying the show to other people, as it's not formulaic in nature. In fact, he says probably the most difficult thing for him upon joining the crew was just having the stamina to work on the show on a weekly basis.

"Particulary," he notes, "in moving from these scenes of heightened action and humor, these fight scenes and then move to these scenes that take place in her house between her and Francine. There's something very taxing emotionally about shifting gears like that. If you're in the gear of doing these quick shots and these fight scenes and trying to find the humour in it and trying to find a vivid angle, heightened shot or whatever to something that has to that has to feel very intimate and very grounded, that's a difficult thing. And we do that. We move from one to the other - that's the next scene up. It's taxing. It's very difficult to shift gears that way as a director. You get into this mode of getting a lot of shots and getting the hitting right and jumping off the table and doing a swift kick and grabbing this and turning that and then you're like, 'Now we're going to try and stage this scene where the two women sit on the couch and talk about relationships that have failed.' That's a difficult thing. It's always this balance in the show between what's real and maintaining a sense of humor. I think both JJ and I loathe to take this show too seriously. We take the relationships seriously, but the show is not meant to be taken so seriously. And that's been a difficult balance."

Production designer Scott Chambliss that part of Alias' appeal is that there is something particularly "ballsy" about having to work so fast and produce everything in a vivid short-hand that the crew hopes is going to work. "That's a specific skill of its own," he says, "when you don't have the time to noodle like crazy and change your mind three times. You have to trust your instincts and I really kind of like that. There's this slavish quality about features where the director always has so much time to change his mind - let alone someone like me - and when you've invested six months into something and you change it at the last minute, the impact is much different than if you've invested a day and a half.

As Olin sees it, Alias represents JJ's version of the evolution of such spy efforts as Mission Impossible and La Femme Nikita, and that film buffs will notice certain reference points from other movies. But, he points out, those moments are in no way intended to copy the original.