'Alphas' takes human potential to the next level

Super strength. Wide spectrum perception. Heightened power of suggestion. Heightened awareness.

Assembled by what appears to be a mild-mannered neurologist, this team of Alphas fights crime and saves the world. From crime.

Syfy this week premiered "Alphas," a show that is too similar to "Heroes" not to mention it. Dr. Rosen, the neurologist, has spent his career studying brain disorders and has discovered various anomalies that in fact expand human potential.

One of the oldest members of the team is Bill Harken, a former FBI agent who seems able to harness an adrenaline rush for short bursts of super-strength. He's kind of a jerk to the other members of the team, and it was hard to know from the extended pilot episode in Monday's premiere why that was.

Other team members included Nina, who has incredible powers of persuasion. She convinced a police officer to eat the ticket he'd written when he pulled her over for speeding. That seemed a bit over the top - she could've just had him destroy it - but it did help illustrate how persuasive she was.

Also we have Gary, an autistic man who can see electromagnetic frequencies and, more to the point, interpret them. He seems capable of differentiating cell phone transmissions, television, the entire internet and calling it into view in the air around him.

And then there's Rachel, who can heighten her senses of sight or hearing at the expense of all others. So when she's calling upon her enhanced sight she can't hear anything, and vice versa.

Rosen's team seems to be operating in loose coordination with law enforcement. They were called in to investigate what seemed like a "locked room" murder. A suspect was being interrogated when he suddenly fell over dead, shot through the head by a sniper rifle, but with no windows or weapon in evidence.

In fact, Cameron Hicks, coerced by a man with extraordinary powers of suggestion (they called him The Ghost) had been drawn in the opening sequence from his job stocking produce at a grocery store to a rooftop where he found a sniper rifle. Hicks took improbably accurate aim through an air vent and made the shot.

Naturally if any variable had been different - the suspect had to be in that very room in exactly that spot at exactly that time for this to work, so the Ghost seems also to have had some extraordinary powers for prediction and probability.

Indeed, he would've made an excellent supervillain. Unfortunately, you can't create a world in which there are evil assassins with superpowers of persuasion and merely imprison them, because they would simply walk out the front door.

So in the end they killed the Ghost, who'd targeted Rosen through Rosen's investigation of Hicks. And they invited Hicks to join the team.

Pop culture is filled with superheroes and this seems like a show that will have to fight a little bit in order to take its place alongside them. The superpersuasive Nina has already talked her way out of a speeding ticket and discussed how she lives rent-free in a top-flight apartment.

That suggests she's at least a bit too casual as regards law enforcement, but it opens the potential for some good story development. The Ghost had highly developed powers of persuasion, so what happens if she decides to head down that path herself?

I guess we'll find out. New episodes of "Alphas" premiere Mondays at 10/9c on Syfy.