Re: OT - Nikita
Winston
USENET group to revive for this new Nikita.]
"David Milligan" <david...@yahoo.com> writes:
> Watched the pilot ep last night -- not really disappointed. Lots of
> action, Maggie Q not too bad looking, kicks ass.
Having seen the _La Femme Nikita_ and _Point of No Return_ movies, and
the earlier Nikita TV series (Section 1, in Europe), I was curious about
this new version. I enjoyed it. I hope they can keep up this level of
writing, but doing that for more than a small number of seasons is hard.
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> How did Nikita know Alex would be recruited by The Division and not
> just thrown in jail for a few dozen years?
As a viewer, it's hard to be certain, but Nikita certainly knew what kind
of person Division would be interested in, and (I assume) created a
background for Alex that would make Division interested in recruiting her.
My real question is what's the connection between Alex and Nikita? Alex is
too old to be Nikita's daughter, probably isn't a younger sister, and
I find it hard to believe that anyone Alex's age is going to volunteer to
do something like this *and* be skilled enough to carry off the deception
inside Division for months. Nikita had the training forced on her, so
she could do it, but Alex?
> Also -- at the end, they were emailing/messaging each other.
Yeah, I found that unlikely, too. I hope the writers have a good
explanation/justification in a future episode for how they're able to do
that.
> Guess I'll keep watching since there is nothing on another channel
> that conflicts with it.
Note that the next episode will be next Thursday.
-WBE
Winston
Alex ...
Recall that one of the first things Michael said to Alex was that
Alex had killed someone Division had targeted before they could do it.
How that "coincidence" happened has not yet been explained. :)
-WBE
Martin Phipps
> > Also -- at the end, they were emailing/messaging each other.
>
> Yeah, I found that unlikely, too. I hope the writers have a good
> explanation/justification in a future episode for how they're able to do
> that.
The message said "encrypted content". It looked like Russian at first
but then magically became English.
That's not a good explanation though: sending an encrypted message is
more suspicious than, say, just going to a chat room.
Martin
J_Bourne
think we can assume that she did and he did not say anything about it
for fear of Percy's rath. Alex was being trained on computers.
Division wants her to be able to perform in the field. They can't know
that she has already been trained enough to break through their firewall
to the outside. Nikita was inside long enough that she probably knew of
some holes in the system too. I don't think it is too much of a stretch
that Alex was able to communicate with the outside. I think her
cockiness might get the better of her in the future. She is flawed and
I like that. The Russian characters were an early clue to Alex's
identity; I must say that I did not catch on. I'm going to be more
careful watching in the future for clues like this.
All in all, I thought it was a really good pilot. I was a huge fan of
the Peta Wilson / USA network version. We had some great times chatting
in IRC and on the newsgroups back then. I am looking forward to seeing
what they can do with this series. I hope that fans of the original
will give it a chance. There is no going back only forward. The
ratings were good from all reports and Nikita was a trending topic on
twitter for it's opening night. That's a good sign going forward.
Martin Phipps
> On 09/11/2010 11:00 AM, Martin Phipps wrote:> On Sep 11, 2:24 pm, w...@ubeblock.psr.com.invalid (Winston) wrote:
>
> >>> Also -- at the end, they were emailing/messaging each other.
>
> >> Yeah, I found that unlikely, too. I hope the writers have a good
> >> explanation/justification in a future episode for how they're able to do
> >> that.
>
> > The message said "encrypted content". It looked like Russian at first
> > but then magically became English.
>
> > That's not a good explanation though: sending an encrypted message is
> > more suspicious than, say, just going to a chat room.
>
> > Martin
>
> About the e-mails, we don't know whether Nikita broke Birkoff or not. I
> think we can assume that she did and he did not say anything about it
> for fear of Percy's rath. Alex was being trained on computers.
> Division wants her to be able to perform in the field. They can't know
> that she has already been trained enough to break through their firewall
> to the outside.
Well, nowadays there's no point teaching someone how to use a computer
without teaching them how to get online to download software, etc. So
it makes sense that she'd be able to contact the outside. What
doesn't make sense is that she wouldn't be monitored. You are, after
all, monitored at work, hence the phrase NSFW = Not Safe For Work to
refer to R rated material online. You'd think she'd also be monitored
just to make sure she was doing what she was supposed to be doing and
not playing games. Any message she sent out would look suspicious and
encrypting a message would be a way to say "Look everybody, I'm a
spy!" Then again, sending encrypted messages might be part of her
training... in which case they'd be monitoring them for evaluation
purposes.
> Nikita was inside long enough that she probably knew of
> some holes in the system too.
It has to be something like that. What if they never had deleted
Nikita's old account? Alex logs on as Nikita and they aren't
monitoring her because they're monitoring her account and not what she
types onto the screen.
Martin
Joshua
it's someone on the inside feeding NIkita intel. He was on the
outside and Nikita got to him. They'd never suspect a recovering drug
addicted recruit as the mole.
As far as the computer stuff goes, don't think to much about it.
There are always ways around security measures. For example, she
could have booted up a live OS that can not be monitored, but login to
their system using an emulated terminal or virtual machine, so they'd
think they were viewing her screen, but really they were only viewing
what she was doing through the virtual machine and not on the entire
system. Or if they monitor network traffic rather than what she's
actually doing on screen, which is more likely, because this requires
less human resources, then she could disguise her network activities
by using a permitted server as a proxy, or send information embedded
in normal network traffic. The most likely explanation is that the
user account and/or workstation she was accessing was not configured
to allow access to the outside world, so they didn't think to monitor
it and she was able to remotely access another machine and/or user
account via terminal to communicate. There are always ways to do
things on the computer. Obviously this requires skill or training.
If you think you really need someone's password to access their
account or machine, you've got a lot to learn about computers.
Joshua
Martin Phipps
I don't buy it. You can't do any of the things you've described
without being familiar with the system you're working on and/or
downloading software onto the computer from outside so we're back to
having the most likely explanation being that Nikita told Alex about
the system they had and/or left something on the system three years
ago that allowed her to contact the outside back then. Then you have
to assume that they hadn't done anything to change their system in
three years, which is unlikely, so Nikita probably suggested
alternative ways to contact her if this method didn't work.
Martin
Joshua
>
> - Show quoted text -
Not the case. The second and third possibilites I mentioned would not
require additional software. What I found more unbelievable about the
episode then the their electronic messaging was that Division doesn't
use infrared/thermal scanners. This was done in nearly every mission
on the original La Femme Nikita. If Birkoff had done an infrared scan
in this new show, he would not have been fooled by a manikin.
Martin Phipps
You missed the "and/or". The fact is that the computers Alex and her
friends were using were probably using standard Microsoft software for
educational purposes but the administrator could be -and probably was-
using a completely different operating system. The only way Alex
could be sure to get around whatever methods they would be using to
monitor her would be if she knew something about that system. Perhaps
she had been able to send messages to the outside herself without
getting caught. Again, she would have to assume that no changes would
be made to the system. Mind you, if Birkoff were the administrator
both when she worked there and now then there's a good chance he's
made no changes to his system because people get comfortable using the
system they are used to. This, of course, suggests the possibility
that there will be an explanation of sorts: it will be discovered that
somebody was sending messages to Nikita but if Alex WAS remotely
accessing Birkoff's machine then it will look as though he was the one
sending the messages.
Martin