"I had a suspicion," Eugene Glazer kicks into the "a funny thing happened on the way to Section this morning" voice that the show's fans know as that of Operations in a light-hearted mood. "It felt weird," when the show was wrapping late last spring, he says. "We were told there might be a couple of movies-of-the-week from the show. That's why, we were told, the sets weren't torn down.

"The studios" in an industrial park outside Toronto "were just locked and closed. They wouldn't let me buy any of my clothes" he'd worn on the show as the Armani-horse Operations, controller of Section One and the fates of many of its agents. "We dress very well in Section," he'd once quipped to a reporter on the set with him during a shoot.

"But I couldn't even leave with a tie," in May, he says. "There was one suit I wanted, a couple of ties and a shirt. They said, 'OK, it'll cost 740 bucks.'" This was a clue to Glazer that something was afoot. Used costume pieces shouldn't have cost so much. The company was making it hard to pull apart any aspect of the show.

"They did give me a Rolex-look-alike rip-off and a pair of reading glasses."

An option on most of the cast members' contracts, Glazer says, wasn't picked up on August 15. Glazer and his actor-wife, Briani, were in the process of renovating and moving into a new house in Los Angeles. "The building department lost all the plans" just to add to the festivities of the summer.

And Glazer also points out that when a show is made in Canada -- and its people paid in Canadian dollars -- the money is no windfall. The "loony," as the Canadian dollar sometimes is called, is worth about 67 U.S. cents right now. Add to that the agents' commissions that are deducted from actors' pay. Then pay taxes.

"What it means is that I've told my Canadian agent," says Glazer, a New York native, "that if I ever work in Canada again, I have to be paid in American dollars."

Much of the banter you get today with Glazer -- as witty a conversationalist as you may meet anywhere in Hollywood -- is about various scenarios that could be rigged up to generate even more "Nikita." This, for him and probably for most of the cast, is a kind of career gallows humor.

But laugh as he may, an unexpected extension like the new eight-episode season of the show is hard on an actor's career. Suddenly, you can't go out on audition calls for new roles. Suddenly, the role you'd consigned to your resumé as a done deal ... isn't.

His agent at LA's House of Representatives, he says, "told me, 'Well I've never had an actor say, "Don't send me out for anything."'" But that's just what Glazer ended up saying for a few months this fall as the new addendum season was being shot in Toronto. "It's been absolutely crazy."

One good thing to come out of this return engagement, however, Glazer says, was the chance to work with cast-mate DuPuis as a director. In the first four years, DuPuis, Glazer says, hadn't really felt ready to direct but was interested in trying it. This time he took on an episode.

"Roy was a joy to work with as a director," Glazer says. "A little behind schedule doing some artsy stuff" -- that Operations mischief is never far from Glazer's chat. "But I hope they keep a lot of what he did" when the show is edited. "Everybody was behind him 100 percent. It's good working with a director who's an actor."

'Their ends are just' So many things can't be told here. The show has thrived on surprises. A character thought dead in one episode returns in another. An entire base of operations is destroyed and immediately replaced with another.

We will tell you that there are some scissors and blond hair brought together very early on in the first of the new eight episodes. "Another episode, another hairstyle" might be a subtitle to the series -- many fans can tell you which year a rerun is from simply by glancing at the hairstyles on the actors.

"My agent asked me about going out for some work in Germany. I said nein. If I go off to Germany for a job, my wife is going to say, 'Get yourself another fräulein.'"
— Eugene Robert Glazer, "La Femme Nikita"

Many will be glued to their Sunday night televisions, as that bell-like show-opening music signals that "La Femme Nikita" is once again on the prowl, anxiety-ridden pauses and ruthless self interests all wrapped up in torso-hugging black operative-wear.

But the really cool stories to come are about these actors. And where their careers take them in that elusive "life outside Section."

Eugene Glazer says he has no major projects lined up yet, beyond getting that new house in LA under control and staying put for a while. "My agent asked me about going out for some work in Germany," he says. "I said nein. If I go off to Germany for a job , my wife is going to say, 'Get yourself another fräulein.'"

And maybe after this surprise recall, Peta Wilson is less willing to say "never." She sounds as if she's talking both herself and her fans into believing that the airlocks of Section One have been sealed for good.

"The new episodes totally do their job. I wouldn't know what else to do. The way it ends," she says, "there's a lot resolved. Everything she's been asking for years is answered -- why? how come? when? what was that? That's all there."

Wilson pauses.

"Nothing is left up in the air at the end."

There's another pause.

"But, I mean, there's always a question."

And the career lives of these actors now have come rather curiously to imitate those of their characters who live on such a short leash and listen for the digital to ring. Nikita answers. Section One is calling. That French-Canadian accent, unmistakably Roy DuPuis' baritone, is on the line:

"Josephine."

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