TV shows may die, but their writers live on. This thought was uppermost in J.J. Abrams’ mind when he heard that The WB’s vampire melodrama "Angel" had been canceled after five seasons last spring.

The creator of "Alias," who was also working on a new pilot, "Lost," at the time ("Lost" is now a solid hit for ABC on Wednesdays, and "Alias" joins it there for its fourth season starting Jan. 5), saw an opportunity and put in a call to executive producer Joss Whedon, who had spun "Angel" off of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

"You desperately try to find the best people out there to work with," Abrams says. "I felt slightly like an ambulance chaser, but when I heard that ’Angel’ was sadly going down, the first thing was to call Joss to say ’My apologies,’ and ’I have to be pragmatic here and ask you, what do I do?’

"I know he has an amazing ability to find these great writers. As a fan of those shows, these are people I’ve wanted to work with before, and I’ve talked to. They were either unavailable or loving what they were doing.

"Obviously, as soon as ’Angel’ went down, we scrambled and were lucky enough to convince Jeff Bell and Drew Goddard to come to ’Alias,’ and David Fury on ’Lost.’ Also, not just as a writer, but director, because Jeff Bell directed an ’Alias’ episode called ’Ice,’ which is terrific. We scored."

Prefers genre stories

Asked what he hoped to bring to "Alias," Bell says, "A strong visual sense and emotion. I’m a genre geek, and I really like being around genre geeks. I’m calling Mr. Abrams a geek as I’m looking around at his robots and toys in his office here. But, to me, genre is the best because you tell stories in metaphor that you can’t tell otherwise.

" ’Alias’ isn’t real world, it’s hyper-real. It allows us to tell stories that you can’t tell other places. I have a history of working for shows that do that. I love that, and I feel real comfortable contributing in that world."

And that world is bigger than Bell ever imagined.

"One of the things I love about being here," he says, "is the writers’ room is really interesting and smart, and it’s a much larger room than I’m used to working with. They’re specialists. You can go into the room with any problem in the world, and somebody in there can solve it. Whether that’s, ’OK, we need a really cool action thing involving a Russian helicopter . . .,’ or it’s a heartfelt emotional thing, or it’s a tech thing, or it’s a location issue. It’s really amazing to watch the room solve problems," he said.

Writers on the move

"There’s really heartfelt stuff in ’Alias,’ and people are good at that; there’s tech stuff. We have a guy who could probably break into any secure compound in the world."

And aren’t we glad he’s working for us? Bell laughs. "I’m not sure he is."

Just as writers moved back and forth between "Buffy" and "Angel" in Whedon’s Mutant Enemy production stable, the same seems to be true in Abrams’ little corner of the Disney lot.

"It’s cool," Abrams says, "that the ’Lost’ writers’ building is right across the way from the ’Alias’ one. I’ll be looking for Fury, and Fury will be in Bell’s office, talking about an episode of ’Lost’ or ’Alias.’ I’ll go over and be at ’Lost,’ and Drew Goddard wrote an episode of ’Lost,’ so Drew will be over there — crying, I think."

"He’s a very weepy man," Bell says.

"He’s tall and weepy," Abrams says.

"Evidently," Bell says, "it’s not easy being tall and handsome. There’s a lot of weeping going on."

"I would know," Abrams says, "being as tall as I am and good-looking."