So, 40 or more days until Heroes allows us to bask once more in its radiance - time to look back on eighteen episodes of excellence.

It's often been said that it takes a while to start a show. To establish characters, plots and so on... in fact, Star Trek fans are used to giving a show three seasons to approach being good... a rule TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT ALL seem to adhere to and it's really not that uncommon for a show some time to hit its pace... naturally, there are exceptions. 24 - perhaps by its nature - had to hit the ground running... Lost, lost the plot before the end of the first season but still had a strong start and so on... but I don't think I've seen anything since Oz, that manage to so effectively propel itself.

It hit the ground at super speed... and it has yet to stop. With many shows, you can expect some lapses... Even 24 tends to have some more problematic episodes. Heroes hasn't had any "flat" episodes... there have been ones where we've had less action but they more than compensated with more revelations and the show so often delivers a gratifying cliffhanger... Something that has probably been absent from the screen since the hey day of Dr. Who.

Not only that but for a show which has so much in common with comic book superheroes, it has managed to - almost studiously avoid the generic cliches... Though, admittedly it's early days. For all we know, people could be donning spandex, going to alternate universes and people repeatedly being killed and coming back to life... just because they're too popular to die. The real risk though, is that Heroes has set the bar too high. That once the first storyline is wrapped up, that it will struggle to meet the high standards it set itself. This is, of course, a danger for any show of quality. That it will struggle to remain good. Let's just hope Heroes can continue to be one of the best shows - if not the best - on TV.