Fusion Patrol

It’s time to add another Doctor Who “Missing Episode” to the not-so-missing pile of animated recreations.  Simon and Eugene discuss The Faceless Ones!

Synopsis:

The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie arrive on the runway at Gatwick airport in 1966.  It’s just an ordinary day as London recovers from yesterday’s War Machine attacks.  The travelers are forced to flee as first, a plane tries to land where they are and, second, a police officer wants to question them.  They scatter, never to be a team again.

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Polly enters the hanger of Chameleon Tours and witnesses the murder of a police inspector.  She is chased by the killer, but escapes, then rejoins the Doctor and Jamie.  The Doctor insists they return to investigate.  They find the body, but are observed by the killers.  Polly, who can identify the man who pulled the trigger, is quietly captured when they are heading to get official help.

On their way to find help, the Doctor and Jamie run afoul of Customs and Immigration because they don’t have passports. When they do manage to talk to the airport Commandant, it is as illegal immigration suspects, not helpful citizens trying to report a murder.

They convince the Commandant to check out the hanger, but the body is gone and Capt. Blade, pilot and head of Chameleon Tours let them check crates to search for the body, to no avail.

The Commandant takes the Doctor and Jamie back to be incarcerated, but they encounter Polly at the Immigration desk.  She claims her name is Michelle, she’s from Zurich, she’s never met them before and she has the proper passport documentation to prove it.

Elsewhere we witness a faceless alien being transformed into a duplicate of an abducted human.  The alien almost died because Earth’s atmosphere is not suitable for them.  This angle will play no further part in this story.

Knowing they’re going to be locked up, the Doctor and Jamie escape again, this time encountering Ben, who has avoided detection – and Immigrations, apparently.  They fill him in and he’s put to work investigating the Chameleon hangers.

Polly is now working the desk at Chameleon Tours.  The Doctor trips her up when she reveals she knows more about the murder than she’s pretending.  Later Capt. Blade says she’ll be sent back on the next flight for her failure.

Police Inspector Crossland arrives at the airport, searching for his missing colleague, the murdered man, and also investigating Chameleon Tours over a missing person’s report.

Jamie, watching Polly and the Chameleon Tours kiosk meets Samantha, who gives Polly the third degree about her missing brother.  It seems he went missing on one of these Chameleon Tours to Rome and their information about the tour doesn’t check out.  Jamie approaches her and says the Doctor might be able to help.

Ben, searching the hanger, finds Polly’s body in a crate, and then is captured when he tries to raise the alarm.  The Doctor comes to his rescue, but Ben and Polly are gone.  He finds the comatose body of Meadows, a flight traffic controller, just before he is lured into a freezing trap.

Which he escapes.

Inspector Crossland seems like a real police detective.  He is investigating Chameleon, and these strange intruders were claiming to have seen a murder in Chameleon Tours’ hanger – he should talk to them.  Unfortunately, they’ve been giving the airport police a merry chase the whole time.  Crossland just goes and finds Jamie like a pro.  They ally and he takes the Doctor and Jamie back to the Commandant’s office and makes him listen to them and let them investigate.

Crossland goes to talk to Capt. Blade and is taken prisoner.

The baddies at Chameleon Tours recognize the Doctor’s superior intelligence as a threat, so they engineer more overly-elaborate ways to kill him. All of which fail.

Samantha, impatient and headstrong, decides to get to the bottom of the mystery and buys a ticket on the next Chameleon Tours flight. Jamie steals her ticket and takes her place on the flight, unbeknownst to the Doctor.

The Commandant has the RAF chase the flight, but the fighter is destroyed and the Chameleon Tours jet flies straight up into space to an awaiting space station.

The passengers on the planes are being miniaturized.  Jamie escapes that fate by hiding and not eating the food.  He attempts to search the station, but meets Crossland, who is actually now the Director, head of the aliens.  Jamie is taken for processing.

The Doctor questions the duplicate Meadows and discovers that by turning off the device on their wrists, the aliens will die and the duplicated human will recover.  Under threat of death, Meadows tells all.  Their race have “lost their identities” in an explosion on their homeward and are stealing 50,000 young people to duplicate.  They’re almost done.

Most of the captured humans are miniaturized and on the space station, awaiting the return to their planet, but the human bodies of the airport staff duplicates are hidden somewhere in the airport – he claims he doesn’t know where.  The search is on.

The Doctor and nurse Pinto, a human who had been duplicated, but now restored, go on the final Chameleon Tours flight, pretending to be duplicates.  That ruse fails and they are taken before the Director, who orders them to be used for duplication.

The Doctor bluffs that they have the bodies at the airport and they will deactivate the devices, killing the aliens currently holding him prisoner if they don’t negotiate a deal.  This threat carries no weight to the Director, whose human body, like Jamie’s, is stored on the space station and is at no risk.  

No deal.

This doesn’t set so well with Capt. Blade and the others who’s human bodies are stored at the airport.  The Doctor tries to play up that divide.

At the last moment, Samantha works out that the bodies are hidden in the car park and one of them is revived, killing a Chameleon back on the space station.  Now, the vulnerable Chameleons turn on the Director, kill him, and make a deal with the Doctor.  

They’ll have to give up the bodies and go back to the way they were, but perhaps the Doctor has a few ideas how to solve their identity problem.

Back at the airports it’s congratulations and all smiles as the Doctor and Jamie say goodbye to their companion for this adventure, Samantha, and all the other people who played an important part in this story, the Commandant and his staff, and the police.

As an afterthought, they go find Ben and Polly, only to say goodbye when they realize no time has elapsed since they first left earth with the Doctor.

No time to rest for the Doctor and Jamie, though.  The TARDIS has gone missing.

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We cover two episodes for the price of one as John and Eugene look at A Man of Influence a story of psychic chicanery and Eyes Only in which the fabulous Barbara Anderson gets in trouble because she’s got a good memory.

Man of Influence Synopsis:

Senator Hanover visits the California mansion of Ernest Sheed, psychic.  At a seance, he contacts the Senator’s late wife, Margaret who tells him that, with the ability to see what is beyond the veil of the future, the Senator’s current project is doomed to failure and he must change course.

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Unfortunately for the United States, this plan is a bill to invest heavily in alternative energy sources.  It had a comfortable majority in the Senate, but now passage seems uncertain.  The Energy Department thinks that Sheed is a fraud in the service of an unknown entity that has a vested interest in traditional energy sources.  Maybe domestic, maybe foreign.  The Energy Department wants the Klae Resource to find out the truth about Sheed.

Easy enough, says Dan, I’m the Invisible Man, I’ll go to Sheed’s house, slip in, look around, find out his secrets and if he’s a fraud and report back.

No, wait, that’s not his plan.  His plan is to have his wife masquerade as the Senator’s estranged daughter, who just happens to have died a few days earlier in the Andes, ask Sheed to speak to her mother and, when the mother “recognizes” her as her genuine daughter, they’ll have proof its a fake.

Just one problem: the “ghost” of Margaret Hanover doesn’t recognize the imposter and, to make matters worse, the ghost of the recently deceased daughter shows up and denounces her.  Oops. 

Thinking fast, Kate says they’re really from the American Center for Psychic Research and that Sheed may be eligible for a $100,000 prize for proving the existence of life after death.  Sheed is skeptical.  He doesn’t think Kate and Dan are researchers because usually psychic researchers are practitioners themselves.

Kate arranges a demonstration of telekinesis after she has Dan “leave the room” wink wink.  Sheed is impressed, and he invites them back for the next seance with the Senator.

He may be impressed, but he’s not fooled.  He knows the Westins work for the Klae Corporation and that they have a very impressive asset known as the Klae Resource.  They are dangerous and need to be dead.

On their way home, Williams, Sheed’s assistant, tries to kill them by running them off the road.  When that fails, later, he approaches their car, parked on the street, and sabotages the brakes.  Dan sees him and, invisible, watches what Williams does, later reversing the sabotage.

Sheed and Williams are surprised when Kate and Dan turn up at the seance, but Dan can’t stay.  He’s taking the car to the garage – there’s a problem with the brakes he needs to get fixed.  After he leaves, Dan drives the car off a cliff, faking his own death.

For some unknown reason, word of the accident finds its way back to Kate at Sheed’s place, and the entire entourage go to visit the scene of the accident.  Dan, invisible, catches a ride back with them to the mansion, where Kate has requested that Sheed contact Dan.  He is reluctant, until the Senator starts to get suspicious.

To Sheed’s surprise, Dan’s ghostly voice manifests at the seance and accused him of being a fake and having murdered him.  Dan exposes the ghost projector to the Senator, then recites nursery rhymes at Sheed until he confesses to the murder.

Soon thereafter, Dan turns up alive.  It’s a miracle!

Eyes Only Synopsis:

The Director of the NSA comes to visit the Klae Corporation.  They need help from the Klae Resource and they need it now.  The Director’s highly-trusted and highly-qualified personal assistant, Paula Simon is a traitor, leaking secrets to the enemy.  They just don’t know how.  Like everyone she is checked for documents, cameras and recording devices when she enters and leaves work everyday, and yet… not a hint that she’s sneaking things out.  An agent assigned to follow her was killed on a busy public street mysterious without a witness.

Their plan: Kate will pretend to be an applicant for the job for the Director’s Personal Assistant’s Personal Assistant.  This will give her the opportunity to walk Dan into the NSA building and he’ll follow Paula.  This he does.

She is fed a fake document which she must review, which Dan also reviews over her shoulder.  Then he follows her.  First she visits lounge singer Tony Bernard.  They’re in love, and she wants to get out of this dirty game.  He does too, but his boss, “The Contractor” is unlikely to be willing.  Paula demands that he barter with the secret document she just saw.  She’ll turn it over and they’re out.

Back at her apartment, Paula sits down at a typewriter and recreates the Eyes Only secret document verbatim using her photographic memory.  The Klae Resource, having revealed how she does it, turns the info over the Director of the NSA.  Job done.

Except… the next morning, Tony visits Jack Pierson, the meanest columnist in Washington.  Pierson is Tony’s go-between to The Contractor.  He demands that he pass along the ultimatum.  Later, Tony is almost killed by guns shots on a busy, crowded street.  He flees.

They see this as an opportunity to find out who is behind this ring.  While Dan reviews the news footage of the shooting, Kate returns to Paula, again posing as an interviewee and hops to get into Paula’s confidence.  It doesn’t take much.  Paula already knows about the link to Kate and the Klae Corporation and, potentially, the Kale Resource, so she confides in her.  She wants to be arrested and protected.

Dan figures out that there are construction workers at both the mystery murder scenes, so he investigate the contractor, who turns out to be The Contractor.  He learns that they commit the murders with a gun disguised as a surveyor’s theodolite.  The gunshot sounds being disguised by the sound of a jackhammer.  They know Paula is betraying them and plan to kill her, but before he can warn anyone, he’s locked onto a job site, patrolled by a guard dog that really doesn’t like him and then locked inside the foreman’s shack.  Can he escape in time to save Paula’s like.

Answer: Yes he can, and the day is saved.

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A military popsicle comes out of the Trans-Utopian’s surprise deep freeze just in time to liven up the Raider’s quadrennial team-building cotillion.

Kenneth and Eugene discuss Black Light.

Synopsis:

The crew of the good ship Trans-Utopian is transporting Electra, a 25-year-old raider child and gun runner to Ganymede for judicial processing.

Unbeknownst to the crew, somewhere in the bowels of the ship, on the unexplored level 48, a convenient power surge sets a chain of events into action that leads to Colonel Bramwell, 104th Cavalry officer, being thawed out from the hidden deep freeze after 50 years in suspended animation.  His two fellow officers are dead, and the military computer system is past its Best Used By date and expires almost immediately after providing the bare minimum of narrative exposition.

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The ship has been detecting considerable raider activity in the area, they’re all heading somewhere.  Dante thinks they’re running away from something and is questioning Electra about that… or pretending to ask about that.  He’s really just interested in finding his son, Travis.

About this time Caravaggio announces there’s an intruder and, by the time Dante gets there, the Colonel has already captured Lucretia and taken the ship – HIS ship.  50 years ago, the Trans-Utopian had been pressed into service as a troop carrier during the Martian-Raider wars. While the crew try to explain reality to him, he isn’t interested, he just babbles on about being betrayed.

He locks Dante and Lucretia in the brig, along with the key, so they immediately escape after the Colonel is out of sight.

Caravaggio tries to alert Percy to the danger but…  Percy is Percy and the whole thing just succeeds in raising my blood pressure.  She goes to the bridge.  The Colonel arrives.  When confronted by Percy he realizes he really is living through this nightmare and gives up his will to live.

Completely understandable, it’s basically the same the reaction I have to Percy.  He wanders off to kill himself.

Dante and Lucretia stop him and lock him up in the same cage with Electra, for his own safety.

Dante suddenly has a hunch, maybe the Raiders aren’t running away, maybe they’re all heading somewhere.  Using the easily obtainable data on the Raider ships courses they’ve been spotting and using a simple plot, he concludes they’re all heading to one place.  Perhaps it’s a Raider cotillion?   

We don’t know if Dante really wonders that because, he’s tight-lipped and just changes the course to intercept the point where all the Raiders – his sworn enemy and dangerous military force – are congregating without bothering to tell anybody.  

This has Percy curious.

Dante tries to cut a deal with Electra.  Help me get my son back and you can go free.  What’s going on?

Oh, this, it’s just the strategically-dubious plan of holding a mandatory Raiders team-building retreat every four years.

Mandatory?  Then my son will be there!  If you can get me in, I’ll let you go free. He’d like Bramwell’s help, too.  He leaves them to consider the proposition.

In the cells, Electra is getting frisky with Colonel Bramwell – The Colonel Bramwell – brilliant military strategist Bramwell – the guy who staged the amazingly wonderful operation Black Light 50 years ago against the raiders – the plan so incredibly, strategically brilliant that he succeeded in being completely defeated by the Raiders and having his forces wiped out at their hands.

Naturally, the Raiders appreciate his strategic genius and have made him a bit of a rock star at their training academy.  Electra wants to have his babies, even.

But before she can ply him any further, Dante lets Bramwell out and gives him guest quarters.  Bramwell, having lost his own son in operation Black Light, feels Dante’s pain and agrees to help – alone.  Dante won’t let that happen and so the two of them decide to go on the suicide mission together.

Electra gets them in to the cotillion – or at least past the bouncers – and then Bramwell starts quoting Revelations, which should a warning to everyone that he’s going to go off the rails.  He uses a hidden ship to escape the Trans-Utopian and crashes into a tiny part of the Raiders resort venue, killing himself and possibly a dozen or more Raiders.

The party spoiled, the Raiders and the Trans-Utopian leave.

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In a dingy pet shop, a mad scientist experiments with lycanthropy.  Does the RSPCA have jurisdiction?

Simon and Eugene discuss What Big Eyes.

Synopsis:

Inspector Bob Curry of the RSPCA is playing hard with Mr. Jeeb, a local animal trader.  He doesn’t like the way he treats the animals in his care, and he’s come checking up on him after a cheetah died in transit the week prior.  He goes through his books looking for something suspicious and he thinks he finds it.  In the last 18 months 3 European wolves have been sold, supposedly, to a small pet shop on Westbury Rd.  It’s the kind of place that deals in kittens and hamsters, not wild animals.  Curry thinks this is a false paper trail to cover up something more nefarious.

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Visiting the pet shop he first meets the meek Florence Raymount, the shop keeper, and is surprised to learn that it’s true that this shop did take delivery of three European wolves.  She cannot, or will not, answer why and merely says, “You’ll have to talk to my father, the owner of the shop about that.”  He father, Leo Raymount, rarely talks to people, but Curry insists and is granted an audience.

Raymount isn’t particularly kind to him, and demonstrates clear contempt for his daughter’s intelligence.  He is a frail old man, but after admitting that he purchased the wolves, legally, for himself, he kicks Curry out.

Back at the station, Curry consults with his boss, Chief Inspector Nash.  He knows about Raymount, he’s a crackpot scientist with weird ideas about how Darwin got evolution wrong.  Curry, now more worried about the welfare of the animals than ever, rushes back to the shop, which has closed for the night.  Florence lets him in, but won’t let him talk to her father.  

Curry really upset him earlier.  She may be an idiot, she knows, but her father is a genius, and she can neither understand his work, nor is she willing to try to tell Curry what it is.

Surprisingly, Raymount shows up and invites Curry in.  This time, he’s welcoming.  He wants to tell him about his work.  He is bitter that he is where he is instead of addressing the Royal Society with his theories.  He quizzes Curry a bit to see if he’s even intelligent enough to understand the work.  Apparently satisfied enough, he attempts to explain it to him, rather contemptuously.

Inside the genetics of every mammal is a history of everything that came before, all the way back to origins of mammals before they’d even decided what form they’d take.  Given that premise, Raymount thinks lycanthropy is possible. The turning of a man into a werewolf.

Werewolves are real, he argues, the legends are mistellings of the original facts.  The legend of Little Red Riding Hood isn’t about grandma being replaced by a wolf, it’s about grandma transforming into a wolf.

He shows Curry his lab, and his dissection table.  Yes, he bought the wolves, and he used them in his experiments.  He extracted some fluid samples and he humanely euthanized them and conducted work on the bodies, disposing of them afterwards. All in accordance with regulations.

Now, Raymount is close to the culmination of his experiments and his vindication when his hypotheses are confirmed.  He has been injecting himself with a series of serums derived from his blood mixed with material from the wolves.  Soon, he will transform into a wolf.

Curry thinks him mad, and when the old man collapses, he makes to call for an ambulance, convinced he’s given himself septicemia.  His daughter stops him, but Curry elicits a promise from her that she’ll call for a doctor, and he leaves, very disturbed by the madness he’s witnessed.

The next day at HQ, Curry is telling Chief Inspector Nash about Raymount when a tip comes in by phone.  That pet store took delivery of another Europoean wolf just this morning.  Curry rushes back there.

The shop is empty, but in the house, Raymount is laid out on the sofa, nearly incapacitated.  In the back, Curry finds a caged wolf, still alive.  Raymount, delirious, howling along with the wolf, threatens Curry not to interfere with the final stage of his experiment.   He’s also talking to himself as if he’s addressing the Royal Society, and re-telling the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.  He convulses and dies. Curry covers him with a sheet.

Looking at his lab notes, Curry sees that Raymount has injected the pregnant she-wolf with serum from himself as part of his process.  Horrified, Curry returns to the wolf and euthanizes it.  Nothing more he can do, he leaves Florence alone with her father’s corpse.

Later, Curry returns to retrieve the body of the wolf.  He finds the pet shop destroyed.  Continuing into the house, it’s trashed, too and he hears the sounds of destruction from the lab.  Inside, Florence is destroying everything.  She sacrificed her life to her father.  He was a genius and she was an idiot, and she wanted to see him achieve the greatness that he deserved, but now she sees that he was just a mad old man that kept her down, destroyed her self-confidence, belittled her and ruined her life in pursuit of his madness.

She shouts at the covered corpse, which is still lying there on the sofa, and then… the sheet covering the body starts to move.  Suddenly, she believes again.  Curry is dumbstruck.  Florence pulls the sheet back to reveal… the dead body of her mad father, exactly as they left it.

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In 1993 plucky writer J. Michael Straczynski attempted to take on the seemingly unassailable Star Trek for the mantle of best TV Space Opera not Intended for Children.  This, Babylon 5: The Gathering, is where it all begins.

Join Simon and Eugene on this special look at the Babylon 5 pilot.

If you’d like more of our take on Babylon 5, we’re releasing a special patron’s only podcast series where we take a look at every episode, one-by-one.  For more details check it out here at the Fusion Patrol Patreon Page.

Synopsis:

It is the year 2257 and Babylon 5 is an Earth Alliance space station deep in neutral space.  Designed as a meeting place for all races, it is the home to the Advisory Council – a council made up of the most powerful races in the known galaxy.  In addition to the Earth Alliance, the Minbari Federation, the Narn Regime and the Centauri Republic, the Council will soon be welcoming their fifth and final member, an ambassador from the mysterious and powerful Vorlon Empire.

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The station is commanded by Earth Force Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair and his second-in-command, Lt. Cmdr Laurel Takashima. 

The existing four Ambassadors represent various facets of conflict.  The Centauri Republic is represented by Lando Molari.  The Republic was once a powerful force in the galaxy, now waning.  The Narn, represented by G’Kar, are a young and vital people, having secured their freedom from the Centauri, they now seek power and revenge.  The Minbari ambassador, Delenn, is contemplative and enigmatic, like the Minbari.  Ten years ago they waged a devastating war against the Earth Alliance, only to surrender on the verge of victory, for no apparent reason.  

There are still hard feelings between Earth and Minbar, but Delenn seems to have a friendly, if guarded, friendship with Sinclair.

The Vorlons are almost a complete unknown.  They jealously guard their secrecy and almost never interact with the other worlds.  The presence of a Vorlon Ambassador is indeed a rarity.

When the Vorlon ambassador Kosh arrives, Sinclair is momentarily trapped in an elevator, when he arrives to greet the ambassador, he is lying prone on the floor, his body entirely encased in an environmental suit.  Babylon 5’s Medical chief, Benjamin Kyle must try to find out what happened and save his life.  One problem, the Vorlons absolutely refuse to allow the Ambassador’s environment suit to be opened.  They prefer to keep their secrets than keep the Ambassador alive.

Sinclair disregards that and, trusting Dr. Kyle’s oath of patient confidentiality, he orders him to proceed and to never tell anyone what he has seen.  What he learns is that Ambassador Kosh has been poisoned.  If they could figure out how the poison was introduced, they might be able to synthesize an antidote.

With it seeming likely that the powerful Vorlons will extract violent revenge if Kosh dies, Kyle conspires with Takashima to save his live, bypassing Sinclair to protect him.  Their plan, to convince the station’s licensed telepath. Lyta Alexander, to illegally brain-scan Kosh, hoping to “witness” the poisoning.  She is convinced and discovers two things – how and where the poison was administered and who did it.  Jeffrey Sinclair.

The information does help them identify the poison and work begins on an antidote.  Meanwhile, although the nature of the “witness” is not disclosed, Earth removes Sinclair from his duties concerning the investigation and the Advisory Council.

In Council, G’Kar makes a surprise move: He recommends that Sinclair be turned over to the Vorlons for trial.  While it looks like the motion is deadlocked, 2 to 2, G’kar pulls another surprise:  He’s contacted the Vorlons and received their vote.  Sinclair is to be remanded to the Vorlons as soon as the Vorlon transport arrives.

Security Chief Michael Garlibaldi has been working on the case since the beginning and everyone has an alibi except Sinclair.  In fact, the elevator shows no sign of a malfunction, either.  Things are not looking good for Sinclair.

Garibaldi has some things that are still outstanding.  A small one-man boarding pod was found attached to the outside of the station.  A tech runner named Del Varner has been seen on the station, which is odd since he is wanted by Earth and is subject to arrest upon arrival.  When the search his room, they find his corpse.

Sinclair has all but given up, but his girlfriend Carolyn talks him into fighting, so he does.

In the Medical Center, Lyta has stopped by to inquire about Kosh’s condition.  Unseen to Dr. Kyle, Lyta is switching off things she probably shouldn’t.  When he becomes suspicious, she tries to kill him, but he fights her off with a medical laser.  Escaping the room she comes face to face with a very surprised Lyta Alexander and Cmdr. Sinclair.

They’ve worked in out.  Varner was supplying a Changeling Net, and Illegal piece of military gear that allows one to adopt the image of any other person.  They are illegal because of his dangerous they are to the wearer.  Someone, using the changeling net, was delivered to the station via the boarding pod and has framed Sinclair.

Using internal sensors, the track down the power emissions of the changeling net and Sinclair and Garibaldi chase him down.  He is revealed to be a Minbari who tells Sinclair, “there is a hole in your mind.” Just before he activates a personal self-destruct bomb.  Sinclair barely escapes before a section of the station is blow out.  In control, Takeshima and her team struggle to regain control of the station – which they eventually do.

Later, Kosh takes his place on the Council, and Delenn reveals to Sinclair that she was able to identify the culprit.  He was a member of a sect that broke away from the Minbari after the war with Earth.

Babylon 5 re-opens for business.

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If an invisible man stands naked in front of a work of fine art, does it spoil the view?

John and Eugene discuss The Fine Art of Diplomacy.

n the run-up to the American Bicentennial, Diego Devega, Ambassador to a small, strategically important country, and also brother to the ruler of the country, has arranged for priceless paintings to be stolen from the US Capitol building and replaced with fakes. He is keeping the stolen paintings in a specially-designed room in his embassy.  His plan, to get them out of the country, then ransom them back to the Americans so they can avoid the embarrassment.   When the Americans discover, by accident, that the paintings are missing, the Secretary of State calls in the Klae Resource, Dan Westin, The Invisible Man!

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First, they must snoop around the embassy to see if the paintings are there.  Kate pretends to be a reporter doing a piece on Devega.  She visits him during a party held at the embassy, and while she flirts with him, Dan pokes around until he discovers the paintings.  Unfortunately, he gets locked in the airtight room.  In fact, the room is more than airtight, it has all the oxygen pumped out.  As Dan is about to die, he breaks the air-pumpy-outy nozzle, returning air to the room and triggering an alarm that allows him to escape when they come to investigate.

Kate overhears at the party that Devega has a deal with an art dealer, Gregorio, to get the paintings out of the country in two days time.

With photos of the stolen pictures and a known deadline, Dan and Kate turn the info over to the Secretary of State’s office; unfortunately, two days just isn’t enough time to get a search warrant and raid the place, and they cannot go to the ruler of the country and expose his brother’s criminal activity until after they get him to sign a deal for a NATO base.

There’s only one thing for it:  Dan will have to steal the pictures and replace them the counterfeits.  It would be easy for the Invisible Man save for one thing.  If the paintings were seen floating into the embassy by themselves, it might raise suspicions.

Kate must go back to an art party being held at the embassy the next day and really put the moves on Devega, then drugging him, using his unconscious body as a prop and a key to allay suspicions and then Dan, disguised as a Russian caterer will bring, swap, and remove the painting on his catering cart.

The plan goes well, with the paintings swapped without Devega realizing, but not without him realizing that Kate drugged him and managed to get into the secure room.  She is held hostage.  She buys time by implicating Gregario, who was actually completely unaware of the provenance of the art he was smuggling out of the country.  But,moments before Kate and Gregario are killed, Dan Westin, the Invisible Man subdues their would-be killer and they escape.

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Percy is finally right where we knew she’d end up: jail.  Will Dante try to get her out?

Synopsis:

Dante is giving Percy some much needed time away from the ship by allowing her to come along on a routine prisoner pickup.  What fun!  Dante really is in the running for Uncle of the Year.  There’s even more fun because Rex, a rival bounty hunter, is there to ambush them under the pretext of poaching his prisoner.  Its a Who’s the baddest bounty hunter bad off as each side takes turns getting the upper hand on each other until Percy shoots of them.  For the record, she does shoot one of Rex’s crew and immediately, the Oberon police, who have been waiting patiently off screen for their cue, step in and arrest her.

Oberon justice is not just swift, its corrupt to the core.  Percy is taken to the Nereid prison, the worst prison in the known universe – and that’s saying a lot.

The Oberon justice system works as follows:  Police arrest and sentence people, no courts required.  All police and prisoner officials can be bribed.  It’s a system that works for them and keeps everyone happy, except the prisoners.

Dante’s attempts to bribe someone to let Percy out fail because Rex has already bribed them and so she makes Dante an offer he can’t refuse.  She’ll let Percy out of the maximum security Nereid prison, if Dante will just break into that exact same Nereid prison and break out a prisoner, her brother Goran.

Backed into a corner, and against Lucretia’s advice, but with her support, Dante poses as a prisoner and gets in and close to Goran.

Meanwhile Percy is getting a taste of life with the mean girls from high schools is like, when they’re not being taken out and raped by the guards.  She concocts a plan to escape, which is reasonably successful until it isn’t.

Dante is cozying up to Goran and convincing him to escape with him, when he finally agrees the plan goes into action.  Lucretia comes back with a cockamamie story about Dante having highly contagious hepatitis, and then bribing the prisoner commander to let him he taken for medical research.  Goran pretends to be infected, too, and with the promise of another bribe, he’s sent with Lucretia, too.

At the meet up with Rex, Percy is turned over and, when it’s obvious she’s going to double-cross Dante again, the corrupt police arrive and arrest Rex and gang, because Dante has effectively bribed them with information that Goran has millions in hidden loot, which they presumably will somehow now get.

It’s a happy family once again eating food that may or may not be worse than prison food.

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