Alcatraz – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Pilot”

Alcatraz – Season 1, Episode 1 – "Pilot"

The pilot episode of Alcatraz, begins with a voiceover from Emerson Hauser who tells the story of the closure of the Alcatraz prison facility on 21st March, 1963 and the relocation of the inmates. He then goes on to say that things didn’t actually go the way they were supposed to. In all 302 men disappeared and they were never seen or heard from again.

Now of course, nearly 50 years later, Alcatraz Island is a tourist destination and nature reserve. On one visit by tourists, a girl gets away from the organised tour and goes to look around on her own. Her screams bring the group running and they find a man lying on the floor in one of the cells. The man turns out to be Jack Sylvane and he gets up from the floor and heads outside. He joins the tour group on the boat back to the mainland seemingly on awe of the San Francisco skyline. As well, he would be, as Jack Sylvane was a prisoner on Alcatraz in the 1960′s and this is the first time he has seen San Francisco since then.

Somewhere in San Francisco, Detective Rebecca Madsen is thinking about the events leading up to the death of her partner and whether or not she could have done something different to prevent his death. Snapping back into the real World she hears her boss telling her that three months is long enough for anyone to be working solo and that it is about time she got herself a new partner.

Madsen says she will choose a partner before the end of the day. Later, she gets called to a murder scene but as she starts looking around, a government agent enters and says that because the victim was a federal employee that his agency will be taking over the case. The agent’s name is Emerson Hauser. One they way out, Madsen recovers a fingerprint from a broken photo frame and has it run through the database. It turns out that the fingerprint belongs to one Jack Sylvane and a short amount of searching later, she discovers that both the owner of the fingerprint and the victim have a connection to Alcatraz.

As Jack Sylvane’s criminal file is restricted, Rebecca decides to seek the help of an expert on Alcatraz. His name is Dr. Diego Soto and she finds him playing video games in a comic store. When she asks Dr. Soto about Sylvane, he says that Jack Sylvane was really quite and unlucky character. After he served in World War 2, Sylvane returned home but fell on hard times and through necessity robbed a grocery store, but because the store sold stamps, it effectively made it a goverment post office and so Sylvane was sent to Leavenworth. That was just the start of his problems though because while in Leavenworth, he was forced to defend himself against another prisoner and ended up killing him, and it was this that resulted in him being sent to Alcatraz. When Rebecca tells the Doc that Sylvane’s fingerprint had turned up in a murder investigation, she is told that it is impossible, as Jack Sylvane has been dead for thirty years.

Wanting to know more, Rebecca seeks the help of her surrogate Uncle, Ray Archer a former guard at Alcatraz and she asks him if he knows anything about the murder victim, a man called Tiller. Archer describes Tiller as being a hard case who rose up through the administrative ranks but left Alcatraz before the prison closed. The Doc then turns up and recognises Ray Archer as a former guard and shows Rebecca a transfer order signed by Robert Kennedy transferring Sylvane to San Quentin. He also shows her a death certificate. Ray advises Rebecca to walk away as she shouldn’t be investigating the case. After Ray leaves, the Doc says that he always used to listen to what advise people gave him but then he just did what he wanted to anyway. He reveals that when he had previously researched Alcatraz, he stumbled across a room containing files that he was obviously not supposed to see, and he suggests that they go on a field trip to the island. Once there, they slip away from the tour group and head over to the officers’ living quarters. Producing a key that he shouldn’t still have, they head into the room where the Doc had seen the files and he also reveals that some of the prisoners’ personal effects are also stored there.

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Alcatraz – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Pilot”

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