Thanks to laney

NY Daily News

PASADENA, Calif.

ames Cameron vowed yesterday to shake up the plot lines and characters on his Fox series, "Dark Angel."

Cameron, best known as the director of "Titanic," declined to give storyline specifics about "Dark Angel," a series that revolves around Max (Jessica Alba), a genetically altered human who escaped from her military handlers and is living underground in the Pacific Northwest sometime in the future.

However, he did say that next season there would be other types of mutants, a need for Max to become more of a fugitive, and villains other than Lydecker (John Savage) and his Manticore superiors to propel the plots.

"We're going to see a whole bunch of new players on the game board — characters Max was unaware of, Lydecker was unaware of and, in fact, we as the creators of the show were unaware of at about this time last year," he said.

"But that's the beauty of television," Cameron added, chuckling. "You're constantly sort of painting yourself into a corner, and then painting a door and going through it."

New episodes of "Dark Angel" are scheduled to return to the air on Sept. 21.

Meanwhile, Alba and co-star Michael Weatherly shied away from discussing their offscreen romance.

"Everything was wonderful about last year," Alba told TV writers fishing for details about their engagement.

"This is like a deposition," Weatherly said, smiling. "I don't recall."

"Our relationship on set," Alba said, "has always been awesome."

Her fiance added, "We're very compartmentalized people."

"Not much has drastically changed," Alba said of her life in the year since "Dark Angel" launched.

"I have a lot more relatives than I thought I had, though."