At the end of Season One our heroes were able – seemingly – to save the world from an apocalypse; but they weren’t able to save it from the Hollywood writers’ strike. The severely truncated Season 2 runs to half the length of the first. Beginning with the aftermath of the last episode’s climactic events of Season 1, new characters are introduced, entangling their offshoots around the already existing twists and turns that embrace the main story arc. Given what happens, it could just as readily be entitled Resurrections as Heroes. When the initial episodes of Season 2 aired there were complaints of slow pacing and confusing new story threads. I didn’t find the first criticism to be true; perhaps watching episodes back to back might have something to do with that. As to the second – what’s new? Part of the maddening strength of Heroes is the deus ex machina of time travel, the flashbacks and flash-forwards and the potential for multiple outcomes for characters and plots which, when handled well, entertain the audience’s expectations. But when handled not so well, these merely allow the creators to have their cake and force feed us it. Given that this is very much a story about the best laid plans gone awry, the irony may not have escaped writers penning a story about potentially fatal predictions being changed or coming true when one strikes out into the world on the strength of one’s personal convictions. It is an irony and a dilemma worthy of ultra-geeky time-travelling Hiro (Masi Oka), who finds himself transported to Feudal Japan only to learn that the not so pristine reality behind the legends we use to sustain us is sometimes best left in the fantastic past. Every victory has its cost.

The series makes frequent reference to other heroes and heroic stories which have entered popular culture; these heroes are supposed to be us after all, and the tales are of how we become the comic book or screen heroes we aspire to be, or even the villains most would battle against. Two of the iconic cast of Star Trek are present and there are skilfully woven references and in-jokes throughout, from The Lord of the Rings’ Sauron, The-X-Files, Bruce Lee and Superman, to name but a few. One new hero even learns special, and often dangerous, powers from the endless miasma of stuff she absorbs, osmosis-like, while channel surfing the TV. Don’t try this one at home, kids.

What The X-Files was able to do – for a certain number of seasons, anyway – was give it and us a break with a standalone episode or two, allowing Carter and Spotnitz (and the viewers) to take a break and regain their bearings with the trajectory of the main arc. Tim Kring doesn’t have this luxury, so the series partly stands or falls, like Lost, by its ability to hold our interest in the individual characters and, crucially, to make us care about what happens to them. We could be forgiven for thinking that ‘Claire Bear’ (Hayden Pannetiere) had entered the cast of Smallville, or that the storyline called for her to become a cheerleader once more just so she can wear even shorter skirts. But her apple-pie teenage rebel with a cause comes good at the end, finding a worthy foil in the sadistic sociopath of lightning-wielding dominatrix Elle Bishop (Kristen Bell) and giving rise to some neat ironies concerning pain. Mohinder’s (Sendhil Ramamurthy) even greater bungling incompetence this time round is still waiting to be met with one of the Rs of any well-schooled heroic tale: Revelation, Redemption or plain Revenge on the viewer’s behalf for his ongoing hapless stupidity. David Anders (the duplicitous Julian Sark in Alias) is well- cast as Adam Monroe, his good or bad intentions never quite clear-cut; unlike Zachary Quinto, all flesh crawling cockroach-eyebrows as smiling serial killer Sylar.

And then there is The Company and its harbouring and experimentation of a deadly virus and the small matter of 93% of the Earth’s population signalled for future wipe-out. The Company is overseen by the avuncular, bespectacled Bob of Stephen Tobolowsky, who makes Jack Coleman’s Noah – there’s-always-a-plan - Bennet appear as transparent and as unequivocal in his actions as Mahatma Ghandi. Not to mention Parkman’s and the Sanders’ and the Petrellis’ ongoing family travails, or the weeping-eyed belladonna Madonna of new girl Maya (Dania Ramirez) all the way from El Mexico.

The fourth disc of the 4-disc set is taken up with special features of tantalising ideas of perhaps what might have been with a full season of episodes and indeed what may well be, as well as audio commentaries and deleted scenes.

We keep watching – well, I keep watching, because I live in hope of that final, orgasmic Liebestod moment, that climactic Big Bang, and I’m willing to see it through for a season or two more to get there. I’m not even bothered much if I still don’t understand what the hell it was all about by the end of it all, I just want the feeling that the journey was worth it. For, as in any tale of heroism, what happens on the journey is often just as important as what is achieved at its end. But you do need to find out you were Daredevil all long and not Don Quixote, faced with the cruel discovery that you have been retracing your steps, deluded gullible romantic fool that you are, caught tipping at some monstrous, circular ratings money windmill; that, when all’s said and done, it was fun and what remains is the satisfying feeling that you were indeed going somewhere. So far, Heroes is still doing that.