There’s an elephant in the room that can’t be ignored in this week’s episode. Television hasn’t always been the place for the most enlightened views on people, and if you don’t laugh at it, you have to cry.

This week we look at In Warm Blood.

Episode Synopsis

Spacecraft Pluto 5 is returning to the moon on automatic, but the crew are not responding to moon traffic control. The Star Cops’ David Thereaux investigates and discovers an intact spacecraft and a completely dead crew. They have mummified in the months since their death.

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Pluto 5 is owned by Japanese pharmaceutical giant, Hanimed, and they’ve run interference, preventing Spring from sending a boarding team until they send a corporate doctor to lead the investigation. Having been delayed for 48 hours, Spring is not happy about the situation when Doctor Shoun arrives, and even less happy when the Moonbase commander, Alexi, asks Spring to personally go check on a dear friend of his: a research scientist named Kristina Janssen, who hasn’t responded to routine communication for two days. Janssen is a biochemist working along on an orbiting space research platform.

Spring must send Kenzy in his place, along with David, to board Pluto 5. What they find is a very hot spacecraft, over 41º, and the crew all dead, as if they died instantly. At first, it seems as if one of them is missing, but his body is soon found, too. He was attempting to repair a busted thermostat. Dr. Shoun doesn’t know what killed them, she is just a general doctor, not a forensic pathologist. It’s possible there is an invisible pathogen about the ship, and they treat it with full quarantine procedures.

Aboard the space platform, Spring finds the platform to be unusually hot. He also finds Dr. Janssen’s corpse, sitting in her chair. She hasn’t been dead long, but she intentionally stopped checking in two days ago. Spring suspects suicide, but it is unclear how she died.

Devis does a background check on Janssen and they learn that Janssen won a Noble prize for her research with space medicine, but later was the subject of controversy when it was learned that her human clinical trials had been on unwitting participants. Janssen worked for Hanimed.

Shoun reports back to Hanimed’s CEO, Richard Ho, that she recommends that the ship be destroyed with all aboard as a precaution. Ho seems pleased with that result.

The autopsy on Janssen shows that all her blood clotted at once and Spring has a working theory. Janssen learned of the fate of Pluto 5, knew something about it, destroyed all the information on her computer system, cut off communications and committed suicide. Spring suspects that Hanimed was testing medicines on the crew of Pluto 5 without their knowledge and Janssen, wracked with guilt, used whatever killed the crew on herself. He suspects it is the iron supplements supplied to the crew by Hanimed.

He confronts Shoun, trying to get her to betray her company, which is like her father and mother to her. She refuses and accuses Spring of using people. She leaves the moon and returns to Tokyo. This accusation hits Spring hard. Does he exploit people? Box thinks so.

On Earth, Shoun questions Ho, She wants to know if there is a connection between Pluto 5 and Janssen. He warns her to back off and calls on her unswerving Japanese cultural loyalty to the company to keep her in line.

Spring sends Devis to Earth to snoop around Hanimed, but he is immediately captured due to extreme incompetence.

Soon after this, Dr. Shoun also infiltrates Ho’s office, with considerably more success. She is able to use his computer to find the connection. The crew of Pluto 5 was used as an unwitting test group. She calls Spring to tell him what she found out, but he’s mostly asleep, and she’s got an accent, and then she’s captured by security, cutting off the call.

Ho gives Shoun a dressing down. She is fired, barred from the company, her career is ruined and, he reminds her, Janssen knew the right way out of the situation. Shoun should follow suit.

Spring returns to the space platform where he is conducting tests on the mice that were left behind. It is here that Kenzy reaches him with word about Devis’ capture, and the demands of the Japanese government that Spring travel to Earth and personally apologize to Ho in a humiliating way.

And then the mice die.

Spring goes to Tokyo and surprises Ho at his club, in the steam room. Before introducing himself, he gives Ho some tea, then he confronts him with his suspicions. Ho admits nothing, but reminds Spring that he has no proof and Pluto 5 was destroyed. Spring lays out his suspicion. The drug was a failure because, if the temperature gets over 41º, the blood in the patient instantly clots. The Pluto 5’s thermostat broke, condemning the crew to death. Janssen committed suicide by administering the drug to herself and turning up the heat on the platform.

Spring plays bad cop and beats up Ho a bit. He also turns the thermostat up in the steam room, bringing the temperature dangerously close to 41º. He tells Ho he put the drug in his tea and when the temperature goes over 41º, he’ll die. Ho breaks down and admits what he did. Spring admits that he lied about putting the drug in his tea.

Back on the moon, the Star Cops learn Spring has recruited a new Star Cop: Dr. Anna Shoun.[/expand]