24 (2001) - 38 questions

Question: What exactly are District and Division?

Answer: A division is within a district, much like a city is within a county, or a state is within a nation.

Question: How is Jude Ciccolella's, who played Mike Novick, last name pronounced?

Answer: Chick-o-lell-a.

Question: What is the budget of season 3?

Answer: According to Amazon.com, $35 million.

Question: I was trying to find online who plays Chloe, the girl that worked at CTU. She looked very familiar. Does anyone know?

Answer: Her name is Mary Lynn Rajskub. This info can be found on IMDB.com. See this link: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707476/.

Question: I seem to remember in Season 1 when the show starts, Jack would say as he always does "The following takes place between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m." and then says "Events occur in real time." When season 2 started however, I haven't heard that last line since. Is there a reason known why this line is no longer said at the beginning of each episode?

Answer: This is because by the second series people were now well aware that the whole uniqueness was that the show was shown in real time, and therefore the line was no longer required.

Question: What are they injecting people with at CTU to make them talk?

Answer: It is probably Sodium Thiopental, know by the trademarked name, Sodium Pentothal, or Truth Serum. Thiopental is still used in some places as a truth serum. The barbiturate drugs as a class decrease higher cortical brain functioning. Since lying is more complex than the truth, suppression of the higher cortical functions may lead to the divulgement of the "truth."

Question: How many times did they use a silent clock to end an episode and why?

Answer: A silent clock has been used 5 times thusfar: After Teri's death (Season 1), after George exited CTU for the last time (Season 2), after President Palmer was poisoned and fell to the floor (Season 2; Palmer's heavy breathing and heart beat are heard in the background), after Jack executed Chappelle (Season 3; a train whistle is heard in the background), and after Edgar was killed by the nerve gas (Season 5). The silent clock has traditionally been used during extremely emotional moments, and most often after a character has died.

Question: Whenever the agents are interrogating somebody at SCT, they sometimes torture them. By doing so they sometimes stick a needle into somebody and injects something into their bloodstream. This causes severe pain in the person as you can see them either scream or see the pain etched on their face as they try to hold it in. What is it they are injecting into people and how does it work that it causes so much pain?

Answer: It's a fictional drug called hyoscine-penothal. I don't know if why it causes so much pain has been explained, but it's been described as a neural inflammatory; it gives the feeling of "every nerve ending in your body on fire." It's a useful tool because if one doesn't yield soon enough, at 8 cc's, one can go into cardiac arrest and die before giving up any useful information.

Question: Did the actress who plays Nina know the entire time that she was supposed to be bad, or was this written into the show mid-season?

Answer: Nobody knew, not even the writers, until at least halfway through the season when they were writing the end. They wanted to keep all options open.

Question: Does the main twist at the end actually make any sense? Could Nina really have been working against Jack and is there any subtle evidence of this earlier on? It seemed to me like the ending was chosen because it was the most shocking, but the least logical. Some examples of Nina trying to hinder Jack or just acting suspiciously would be appreciated.

Answer: The producers actually decided on this twist half way through the season. I'm unsure about the upcoming season five, but in the past, the writing team have only written six or seven episodes at a time and then deciding where to go next whilst filming. An example of Nina acting suspiciously would be when she left Kim and Teri at the safehouse fairly soon before it was attacked. Although it seemed that she left due to Teri's realisation that it was Nina who was seeing Jack during their separation, this has been cited as a red herring - more likely is that she left them and told the bad guys where they were.

Question: Why was Carlos Bernard credited as a "Special Guest Star"?

Answer: Without talking to the producers, it's impossible to be sure, but it's possible he was gonna be killed off early, or only appear in a few episodes. As the show developed he developed into a more stable character and became a regular cast member.

Question: Was Nina recruited as a spy before she joined CTU or after? Also, as she wasn't working just for the Drazens, what was her primary mission?

Answer: According to Jack in season 5, Nina was "deep cover" before the pair ever met, so it's safe to assume she was recruited before she joined CTU. As for what her primary mission was, who knows? Perhaps it was to gather sensitive intel and pass it on to her superiors. Given that she worked for an intelligence agency, it's not a stretch. Or perhaps we may find out in season seven.

Question: Who are the people Kingsley are reporting to on the phone? I understand he works for them but was there ever any indication as to who they were or what their roll in all this was?

Answer: As revealed in 24: The Game, Max was a weapons dealer with ties to terrorist organizations. It is further revealed in the game that his weapons dealings with terrorists were interfered with by American authorites. which caused the deals to go sour. His terrorist clients retaliated by murdering his family before his eyes. Presumably, he was primarily motivated by revenge against the American Government, with a secondary goal of driving up oil prices to make himself rich. To this end, he masterminded the plot to start a war between the US and three Middle Eastern countries.