The Sentinel

The Sentinel Premise

What makes the show a fantasy is Detective Jim Ellison (Richard Burgi), the aforementioned Sentinel. Five years before the series opens, Ellison, then an Army Special Forces officer, was the sole survivor of a helicopter crash in the jungles of Peru. The Army did not send a rescue team, believing all aboard were killed, so Ellison spent a year and a half in the Peruvian jungle with the native tribes before being discovered and returned to civilization.

Fast forward to today, and now Ellison is a policeman in Cascade Washington and working on a mad bomber case. But Ellison is afraid he's losing his mind. He is getting sensory flashes, apparently hearing things too faint to be heard, seeing things at a great distance. The flashes are dangerously distracting. Ellison sees a doctor, who tells him he's in perfect health.

Enter Blair Sandburg (Garrett Maggart). Hearing about Ellison from sources at the hospital, Sandburg, a graduate student in Anthropology, shows up uninvited to help out. Sandburg believes that Ellison is the living embodiment of his thesis topic, a Sentinel.

Ancient Guardians

Sentinels, he explains, were ancient tribal guardians with one or more heightened senses. Ellison appears to have a complete set - all five senses heightened. Theorizing that Ellison's extended stay in the jungle activated his latent abilities, Sandburg wants to study Ellison for his research.

Ellison at first angrily rejects Sandburg's help, but soon rethinks. Sandburg has warned him about the 'zone out factor', when a Sentinel gets too tuned in to one sense to the exclusion of others. When a sight zone-out occurs and Ellison is almost pasted by a garbage truck, he realizes that Sandburg is right that he needs someone to watch his back and bring him out of zone-outs.

Ellison just wants the heightened senses to go away, but Sandburg convinces him that the thing to do is to get them under control. "You're a walking crime lab, man!" So Sandburg is given permission to join Ellison's investigations as an observer. The only person who is aware of Ellison's new sensory powers is his boss, police captain Simon Banks (Bruce A. Young).

Rules of Evidence

It is important to remember that Ellison's heightened abilities don't give him super powers. He is no stronger or faster than the ordinary athletic male. So once he cracks a case using his senses, he still has to catch the perp like any other cop. He also needs to present evidence that doesn't reveal his powers; picture a cop on the stand testifying that he heard the incriminating phone call from outside the house and across the street!

Ellison and Sandburg make an intriguing team of crime fighters, being almost complete opposites. Ellison is former Army and acts like it, the strong silent type. Sandburg is a second-generation hippie, long-haired, academic, New Agey and very talkative.

But the unlikely team of Ellison and Sandburg become close friends and the bane of criminals throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Show History

The Sentinel aired on UPN from 1996 to 1999.