When Aaron Spelling produces a TV show, viewers expect -- nay, they demand -- to see scads of nubile hotties vamping across the screen. Likewise, Steven Bochco's programs are looked to for their gritty, controversial portraits of life in the police precinct/courthouse/emergency room while Chris Carter can be counted on for creepy, rain-slicked gloom and doom. So when it came time for techno-showman James "Terminator" Cameron to try his hand at television, he clearly couldn't just deliver a Suddenly Susan spinoff and call it a day. The King of the World needed to live up to his reputation. Thus Dark Angel was born.

     "If Jim's name is going to be on it, you want it to fulfill the promise that you're making to your audience with his involvement," says Charles Eglee, who created the series with Cameron and also serves as an executive producer. "Dark Angel seemed to have elements that were well within his wheelhouse."

     Among the Cameron trademarks on display in the sci-fi drama: a futuristic setting, high-tech visuals and a lead heroine who makes Sarah Connor look like a Powerpuff Girl. The comely Jessica Alba plays Max, a deeply cynical, genetically engineered teen living in post-apocalyptic Seattle. Created in a nefarious government program that attempted to produce superwarriors, Max escaped from her military handlers as a child. Now on a quest to find her other escaped "siblings," she pays the bills by working as a bike messenger, indulging in grand larceny and reluctantly helping a wealthy guerrilla journalist (Michael Weatherly) aid the downtrodden. "Max is so cool and independent," says Alba. "She doesn't take any shit from anyone; she just does her own thing. And she doesn't compromise herself for anyone."

     Yet despite the science fiction trappings, Eglee insists that Dark Angel isn't a typical sci-fi spectacle: Both he and Cameron are far more interested in exploring Max's psychological and emotional growth than they are her extraordinary strength or lightning quickness. "Max is a fixer, yes, but I think she's a complicated person and conflict can come to her from anywhere -- it's not like she's waiting to see the bat signal up in the sky and is going to fly into action," Eglee says. "She's emblematic of somebody trying to fit into a world that seems to have gone mad. It's easier for her to adopt a veneer of detached, hip cool than being vulnerable, putting herself out there in order to take her place in the world. I think Max's narrative journey is kind of a grail quest for a person trying to find her wholeness, trying to put together different pieces in a life that doesn't seem to fit together."

     Dark Angel also dabbles in social critique. The story takes place several years after terrorists fired an "electromagnetic pulse" over the United States that wiped out computer hard drives and toppled the country's economy.

     "The cool thing about doing a show that's set in the future -- with the idea that everything grinds to a halt two or three years from our present day -- is that it kind of allows us to take a look at the society we're living in now," Eglee explains. "We're able to make some points about how the prosperity that we take for granted is cyclical and ephemeral and maybe there are other values that are more important than material well-being."

     But don't think that Dark Angel is just about high-minded subtexts: Max still spends plenty of time dodging bullets, beating up 300-pound men and tooling around town on her snazzy motorcycle. In fact, the series has already made history: Dark Angel's two-hour pilot, which cost nearly $10 million to produce, marked the first time a Cameron project came in under budget. "I felt good about that," Cameron says proudly. "Even Terminator -- which was done cheap -- still went over budget by a little bit." -- Annabelle Villanueva