There's been a lot of comparisons to "The Prisoner," and sometimes people take a negative tact on that, but to be really honest, I count that as a compliment, in the sense that what I felt "The Prisoner" was for the '60's, in how the individual triumphs over the state and authority, our show is really about how complacent we have become in our lives, which are scrutinized.

What we're really trying to tell, even though it's very much a genre show, is a very human story. Even in this heightened situation, it still comes down to people being people, and dealing with people as people. It really is about the seven people in that town.

And then, what I hope will happen at the end is that there will be a big enough springboard that, if we chose to go for a second season, we would have one. But, there will be none of those maddening teases that we're going to tell you the answers and then we don't tell you the answers. That gave NBC the idea of making it a mini-series.

It's not unheard of, in the course of life, that if there's enough interest in it, we could consider going a second season or doing another chapter. I keep looking at it as books in a series, and this season is the first book.

It was tough to write. We had the shadow of "Lost" hanging around and I just kept saying, "Guys, we need to take a really wide birth around 'Lost.' We're going to get lots of comparisons anyway, but we need to prove, within a couple episodes, that it's not 'Lost.'"

When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work.

I feel confident that it will always keep everybody guessing, and yet not in that weird, maddening way where it's like, "Oh, come on, guys!" I think you will be freaked out by the end. I really do. I don't think you'll see it coming at all.