Is there room for miracles in Dr. Ian Hood, Scientist’s worldview?  No.  Simon and Eugene discuss Miracle.

Episode Synopsis

In Clayton, the police, acting on behalf of social services, take a child, Alfie, away from his father and proceed with emergency tumor removal surgery against the father’s wishes.  He’s been treating the boy with magic spring water and that should be good enough.  One minor setback, after cracking the boy open, no tumor can be found.  It’s a miracle.

At the Ministry, Hood is called into a meeting with MI6 by his superior (and perhaps friend) Alistair Drake.  They’ve got intel that a middle eastern country is building nuclear missile silos.  Hood takes one look and completely debunks their ludicrous “evidence” making no friends of the boys with licenses to kill; however, this is exactly why Drake called him into the meeting.

Debunking done, Hood got more debunking to be done.  He’s off to Clayton where dangerous rumors about a magical cancer-curing spring is in the news.

In an interview, much to management’s chagrin, Dr. Williams, the attending physician won’t categorically rule out that the water might have caused the remission.  Hood thinks she’s a quack, and he’s got to shut this nonsense down people will lose their lives pursuing nonsense instead of getting evidence-based medical treatment.  When they arrive at the spring, it is a madhouse, overrun with cancer patients hoping for a cure.  The father isn’t interested in what Hood has to say, and won’t let him investigate; however, Hood gets Rachel to surreptitiously obtain a bottle of the spring water for analysis – which she proceeds to drink, because they don’t hire cops for their brains, apparently.

Hood checks the pH level of the nearby stream and declares the water clean and pure, so… it’s all just bunk.  He doesn’t even bother to test the water sample from the spring itself.  They check the water near the local fertilizer plant, and the local reservoir.  pH checks out, so… pure and clean, obviously.  That night, Rachel has a bad night, puking and such.  Hood attributes it to a dodgy Shepard’s pie and not the same spring water Rachel continues to quaff down.  Still without testing it, apparently.

Hood visits Dr. Williams and determines that she’s not the quack he though she was.  She’s skeptical of the results, certain she didn’t misdiagnose, and simply won’t rule out the water because… it’s the only variable in the formula.  Further, the hospital’s cancer wards are being swamped by chemotherapy patients who’ve come to drink the spring water and have gotten sicker.  So that’s weird.

New tests of the water show that it’s got organophosphates in it, which is a by-product of fertilizer manufacturing.  Problem solved, but what caused Alfie’s tumor to disappear?

At a press conference, Dr. Williams draws attention to Dr. Hood, which makes all the papers.  Soon Drake arrives.  The public know where Hood is, and they’re received credible threats from teenage militants vegetarians are out to harm him.  He orders Rachel to take him home.

Dr. Williams is fired because she’s a liability to the credibility of the hospital.

— and the story is only halfway over —

Hood and Williams have a dinner date, and they decide that it would be possible to confirm that Alfie really did have a tumor because cancer markers will still be in his blood stream for another two weeks… and, apparently, they didn’t bother to run this test before or after they had Alfie removed from his father and operated upon.  Nor as part of their post-operation investigation – but just roll with it.

Drake puts more pressure on Rachel to get Hood out of there immediately by threatening her career.

Hood and Williams also decide that the problem might be radiation, and Williams even has a radiation detector, but, no joy.  It’s not radiation, so there’s no point checking the blood.

That night, Dr. Williams kills herself.  Hood changes his mind about the blood tests and asks Drake to have one run.  He hopes that the findings will help forestall conspiracy theories that Williams might have been killed to keep the miracle of the spring water quiet.

At a press conference, Daniel, Alfie’s dad, tells the world that it was all a fake.  He was paid by Dr. Williams to perpetrate the hoax.  When Hood confronts him, Daniel says people kidnapped Alfie and plan to keep him two weeks – or kill him, if Daniel didn’t claim it was all a fake.

Suspicion falls on the hydroelectric dam, but when they investigate, they’re intercepted by Drake’s men.

Hood gets an idea (and continues to resist going home) He finally does something with the spring water Rachel collected – he freezes it, and when the ice cubes sink in tap water, he knows the truth – it’s heavy water.  The answer must be at the disused fertilizer factory, so he (with Rachel) returns their to investigate, but there’s nothing.  He suspects someone is manufacturing heavy water, but the factory just doesn’t have the water capacity to produce it efficiently.

And he’s intercepted by Drake’s men again.  They’ve had this place under surveillance from months, suspecting an illegal heavy water operation and Hood is jeopardizing the investigation.  Go home already, Hood!

At their monitoring command center, Hood catches Drake in a lie.  Dr. Williams left him her Geiger counter in her suicide note, but she was very adverse to calling it a Geiger counter because Geiger was a rotten, filthy Nazi and she refused to dignify his memory by using that name.  She was murdered to keep her quiet.

Pretending to go home, Hood and Rachel head to the hydroelectric dam, where they discover a secret government heavy water plant.  Just the kind of place you could manufacture evidence to be used against rogue states that may not actually be pursuing nuclear weapons, but politically they really want people to believe they are.

So, Hood, trapped yet again by Drake’s armed men, deep inside a secret government installation, where no one knows he is, blackmails Drake into letting the boy go in exchange for his silence about this black government operation.

Drake and his men kill him and Rachel on the spot, then drop their bodies in the sea, 5,000 miles out.  No, sorry, strike that, Drake let’s them go.

Father and son are reunited.  Hood explains to the father that it’s all science, not eastern mystic bull crap.  Heavy water was killing Alfie, but, just like chemotherapy, it managed to kill the cancer cells first, hence his “miraculous” recovery.  The chemo patients that came to sample the spring water, were already in a dangerously weakened state and the heavy water was just killing them even faster.  Rachel will be fine because she didn’t drink enough heavy water to do permanent damage.

And so, Dr. Hood and Rachel ride off into the sunset.