7.9/10357 votesLoading...#1 - The Switchman
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 3/20/1996
The sole survivor of an Army plane crash in the Peruvian hinterlands, Jim Ellison subsisted for nearly two years on his raw animal instincts. When he returned to America and became a police lieutenant, Jim discovered that the abilities that had kept him alive in the jungle now gave him extraordinary senses of perception. With the help of Captain Simon Banks and a grad student Blair Sandburg, Jim now attempts to use these powers to apprehend a terrorist bomber called the Switchman.
Director: Danny Bilson
Writer: Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo
7.7/1048 votesLoading...#2 - Siege
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 3/27/1996
The town of Cascade is brought to its knees when Garrett Kincaid, a notorious criminal that Jim Ellison had arrested years before, seizes control of the town's police station with the help of his gang of felons.
Director: Danny Bilson
Writer: David Newman
7.7/1028 votesLoading...#3 - Sentinel Too (2)
Season 4 Episode 1 - Aired 2/1/1999
Blair, Banks, and Megan may be Jim's only hope of overcoming the superhuman stalemate and returning Cascade to a one sentinel town.
Director: Tony Westman
Writer: Gail Morgan Hickman, David H. Balkan
- 7.7/1030 votesLoading...
#4 - The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg
Season 4 Episode 8 - Aired 5/24/1999
When Blair's mother Naomi secretly submits her son's Sentinel thesis paper to a publisher, Jim discovers that being famous can be detrimental to your health. While Jim and Blair protect a local union leader named Jack Bartley from attempts on his life, information from Blair's paper is leaked to the press and Ellison is caught in the middle of a media frenzy.
Director: Danny Bilson
Writer: Bill Froehlich
7.6/1037 votesLoading...#5 - Night Train
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 5/1/1996
Jim and Blair are assigned to escort Derek Wilson, a key witness in a local homicide case, on his train ride from Oregon to the courthouse in Cascade. Wilson has essential information that will link his employer to charges of arson and murder.
Director: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Harold Apter
7.6/1032 votesLoading...#6 - Vow of Silence
Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 7/17/1996
Blair forces Jim to take a vacation at a remote monastery. Initially reluctant, Ellison begins to enjoy the solitude until one of the monks is found dead.
Director: Jeffrey Reiner
Writer: Bruce Kalish
7.6/1026 votesLoading...#7 - Storm Warning
Season 3 Episode 8 - Aired 11/12/1997
Visiting his cousin Rucker on a remote island, Jim learns that people on deserted islands don't always pursue the "natural life." While rescuing a woman named Monique from a storm-tossed boat, a huge bag of heroin surfaces.
Director: Oley Sassone
Writer: Peter Lance
7.5/1031 votesLoading...#8 - Flight
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 9/4/1996
During a flight to South America, Captain Banks and his son Daryl crash land in the Peruvian jungle and eventually stumble across a shady lumbering operation run by a man named Reischer.
Director: Danny Bilson
Writer: Gail Morgan Hickman
7.5/1023 votesLoading...#9 - Vendetta
Season 3 Episode 6 - Aired 10/29/1997
After a minor car accident and heated argument with the driver, Dan Freeman, Jim Ellison finds that this unbalanced man has targeted him for a full-blown vendetta.
Director: Tim Van Patten
Writer: David Thoreau
- 7.5/1022 votesLoading...
#10 - The Waiting Room
Season 4 Episode 5 - Aired 3/1/1999
A present day murder leads to a revelation that may be able to finally clear up a 45 year old murder, and vindicate the victim and the boy (now a troubled, haunted man) who saw it happen. And Jim discovers a new ability.
Director: Michael Lacoe
Writer: Harold Apter
7.4/1042 votesLoading...#11 - The Debt
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 4/10/1996
When Blair unknowingly moves into an apartment next to the drug lab of a local gang (dubbed the 357), Jim suddenly finds himself embroiled in the beginnings of an all-out gang war.
Director: Gus Trikonis
Writer: Steven Baum
7.4/1033 votesLoading...#12 - Rogue
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 5/8/1996
While guest-lecturing in Blair's anthropology class, Jim saves the entire building from a deadly gas leak only to discover that the leak was designed to distract the campus' attention while a canister of the Ebola virus was being stolen from the hazardous materials lab.
Director: Michael Vejar
Writer: Howard Chaykin
7.4/1027 votesLoading...#13 - Second Chance
Season 2 Episode 10 - Aired 11/20/1996
When Francisco Rivero, an ex-associate of Hector Carasco, kidnaps Carasco's daughter Maya and uses her as blackmail for the family fortune, Ellison and Sandburg join forces with her Uncle Gustavo to bring her safely home.
Director: Bruce Bilson
Writer: John Vorhaus
7.4/1029 votesLoading...#14 - Sentinel Too (1)
Season 3 Episode 23 - Aired 5/20/1998
With Ellison having strange visions of jaguars and a series of superhumanly performed thefts occurring around the city, Blair and Jim suspect that he may not be the only sentinel in town.
Director: Richard Compton
Writer: Gail Morgan Hickman
7.3/1036 votesLoading...#15 - Attraction
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 5/22/1996
Jim's sentinel abilities detect something strange at the crime scenes of all the recent jewelry robberies but he's unable to figure out exactly what's causing the reaction.
Director: Scott Paulin
Writer: Harold Apter
7.2/1025 votesLoading...#16 - Dead Drop
Season 2 Episode 16 - Aired 2/19/1997
Sandburg becomes trapped between floors in a skyscraper elevator controlled by an extortionist, who threatens to send the elevator plummeting to its doom unless a hefty ransom is paid.
Director: Danny Bilson
Writer: Peter Lance
7.2/1026 votesLoading...#17 - Private Eyes
Season 2 Episode 19 - Aired 3/26/1997
During the search for a kidnapped little girl, the skeptical Ellison and Sandburg receive help from Charlie Spring, a "psychic."
Director: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Harold Apter
7.1/1042 votesLoading...#18 - The Killers
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 4/3/1996
After witnessing the death of undercover officer Danny Choi at the hands of a sniper named Tommy Juno, Jim uses his enhanced vision to identify and apprehend the killer. But the case against Juno is thrown out of court when its decided that no human could possibly have seen as far as Ellison had claimed.
Director: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Gail Morgan Hickman
7.1/1033 votesLoading...#19 - True Crime
Season 2 Episode 6 - Aired 10/9/1996
Ellison gets his fifteen minutes of fame when the police department invites TV producer Wendy Hawthorne and Conner, her cameraman, to do a piece on him for her show "True Crime."
Director: Tony Westman
Writer: Dan Levine
7.1/1029 votesLoading...#20 - Ice Man
Season 2 Episode 7 - Aired 10/30/1996
Ellison and Sandburg are called in to investigate an attack on a prostitute named Amber Larkin.
Director: Tim Van Patten
Writer: Paul B. Margolis
7.1/1024 votesLoading...#21 - Spare Parts
Season 2 Episode 9 - Aired 11/13/1996
Ellison and Sandburg get a chance to hone their driving skills when some high-end car thieves set up shop on the streets of Cascade.
Director: Paul Abascal
Writer: Harold Apter
7.1/1024 votesLoading...#22 - Blind Man's Bluff
Season 2 Episode 12 - Aired 1/8/1997
Ellison and Sandburg trace the distribution of Golden, Cascade's trendy new drug, to a local dive where the narcotic wreaks havoc with Ellison's enhanced senses.
Director: Tony Westman
Writer: Dan Levine
7.1/1026 votesLoading...#23 - Light My Fire
Season 2 Episode 14 - Aired 2/5/1997
An arsonist burns down a furniture warehouse, and Ellison rescues an unconscious guard from the building.
Director: Scott Brazil
Writer: David Thoreau
7.1/1026 votesLoading...#24 - Vanishing Act
Season 2 Episode 20 - Aired 4/9/1997
Ellison and Sandburg spot a man, a mob accountant, who they thought was dead. When they try to catch up to him, he nearly runs them over escaping in his car.
Director: William Gereghty
Writer: N/A
7.1/1025 votesLoading...#25 - His Brother's Keeper
Season 2 Episode 23 - Aired 5/14/1997
A construction foreman is murdered at a racetrack under renovation, and his body is hidden in a pillar. Weeks later, Banks attends the opening of the racetrack with friends, and Ellison attends a police benefit at the track's turf club. During the benefit event, one of Banks' friends is pushed from the roof, and falls to his death in what looks to the partygoers to be a suicide.
Director: Bruce Bilson
Writer: Harold Apter
The Best Episodes of The Sentinel
Every episode of The Sentinel ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of The Sentinel!
The Sentinel is a Canadian-produced television series. In the jungles of peru, the fight for survival heightened his senses. Now, Detective Jim Ellison is...
Genres:DramaCrimeAction & Adventure
Network:UPN
Best Episodes Summary
"The Switchman" is the best rated episode of "The Sentinel". It scored 7.9/10 based on 357 votes. Directed by Danny Bilson and written by Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, it aired on 3/20/1996. This episode scored 0.2 points higher than the second highest rated, "Siege".