I had no interest in Alphasat first. I’d been burned badly on Heroes with it’s neverending loop of returning characters to the same place and plot arcs that didn’t pay off and dropped storylines. I concluded television just didn’t know how to do superheroes right and, besides, Alphas was on the Syfy Channel, not exactly known for high-quality shows.

But when I was flipping channels, I caught a tense scene between David Strathairn and someone holding him at knifepoint. I thought, “this looks very good.” I DVR’d all the episodes and started watching and realized that while Heroes had gone in the ...