When you’ve watched as much TV as I have (probably way too much) every once in a while you come across an amazing coincidence. Like one time, my wife and I were watching VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA once a week on Sundays in order. One Sunday fell on March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, and the episode began with Chief Sharkey telling the XO “Don’t you know what today is? It’s March 17th, Saint Patrick’s Day.” That blew us both away.
Now, this week we were catching up on our shows and saw a MACGYVER episode where he pursues a criminal into Chernobyl, only to find men in hazmat suits loading barrels in the abandoned nuclear plant. Turned out they were trying to steal radioactive waste from the facility where no one would even know it was missing to sell on the black market as dirty bomb material. The next morning I got up and watched this episode of STAR COPS. Once again, someone was trying to sell radioactive waste from someplace where no one would even know it was missing in order to sell it on the black market. Two similar plots spaced almost 31 years apart seen within a matter of hours of each other – you just can’t make this stuff up.
So that gave a nice boost to this week’s proceedings, which involved smuggling uranium waste, an attempt to frame and kill Nathan, undercover work from Pal, and strange behavior from Theroux – thankfully explained. I’m still getting used to my Smartcast. I have the ability to rewind clumsily now by sweeping the little red dot on my phone backward, but usually that knocks it back about 2 minutes which I then have to watch repeat in full – so I’m doing it sparingly. Sometimes the show is loud, like when the alarms went off early on and everyone was yelling over them. Other times, the participants talk in such quiet tones, I can barely hear them – and in those scenes they usually talk quickly as well. But I think I’m getting most of it. I try not to hold these things against the show; it’s not their fault I can’t watch it with closed captioning turned on. Though the picture quality is excellent, it was still over 30 years ago.
Rather than rehash the story, I’ll just go with strengths and weakness. Strengths: Pal Kenzy. I just like her a lot – she lively and tough. This week she got to go undercover, with her shady past working as an asset to her. Fortunately, she left a recorded message of what she was doing so that Colin could come to her rescue in the nick of time. I liked how Marla was calling her a bitch once she was caught. Then, when Pal slammed her against the wall and led her off in cuffs, a smiling Colin agreed with her.
Nathan’s story was also interesting. He’s forced to take a 7 day leave since he’s spent too much time in one-sixth gravity. Wasn’t that long ago that he went to Earth after Lee died, but who knows how long a space there is between episodes? While still mourning Lee, he meets a pretty Italian woman who insists he must see Italy and meet her on a tour of the catacombs. She made Italy sound so great, I wanted to go see it as well. He gets to Italy only to have it rain incessantly. He tries to call off the date only to find that Lina didn’t work at the Moonbase as she claimed. He tries to meet her at the Catacombs anyway but is the victim of an assassination attempt instead. He is able to stab the attacker with his own lethal dose, but is then a murder suspect himself. Worse, someone plants money in his account and drugs in his hotel room. He tries to test the drugs to see what they are by rubbing his tongue against it – only to be knocked for a loop by the effect and left in a drugged stupor for hours. That last bit was actually refreshing. How many times on detective shows does a person take a taste of a drug to test it without ever any kind of ill effect? Even Nathan later admits how foolhardy doing that was.
And I kept wondering what was up with Theroux. He seemed happy to just let the case on the moon go as a simple accident even though all the evidence he had came from the company doing the launch. We finally learn late in the program that his father died of radiation poisoning and he had to watch him slowly die from it, so he was hesitant to go near the area. Fortunately, he musters up the strength to go into what he believes to be an exposed area in time to rescue Nathan.
And I loved the title: “This Case to be Opened in a Million Years.” Clever
Weaknesses: The attempted assassination was a bit of a stretch. Did they find some way to nudge the personnel lady into insisting that he take a vacation? Or did they just find out he was going and then send Lina on his shuttle flight to tempt him to going to both Italy and the catacomb tour? Seems like they were going to a lot of trouble on the vain whim that he would actually go to Italy and on the catacomb tour. They really should have sent the man they used to plan the drugs to kill Nathan instead. First, he knocks Nathan out with a good karate chop. He could have easily stabbed him with a fatal drug dose after that. And later, when Nathan tests the drugs he is in a stupor for hours and could easily have been killed. But by then, their actual would-be assassin was already dead.
A bit of stereotyping too. The Italians are members of the Mafia, and that police inspector seemed to be either incompetent or on the take. Still, not quite as thickly laid on as last week’s character.
Strengths far outweigh the weaknesses this week. I’ll give this one 8 mini-torches used in lieu of a gun.
