"It doesn't have to be this way." "Just listen to reason." "I have no use for reason... puny human!" "The Selbachian ship is almost within range." "And this vessel shall be the instrument of my revenge." "Turn your weapon systems over to me now, or I will kill one of your crew every 2.5 Earth minutes, beginning with the female." "Commander?" "It's going to be all right." "All stations secure from general quarters." "A pleasure working with you, Yeoman." "As always." "We're talking about a piece of television history." "The actual Spaceforce microprobe" "Commander Artemis Bishop used to subdue the alien Gorth in the season 2 finale of Astro Quest." "And it can all be yours for just $750." "750?" "Do I look like an idiot to you?" "That's nice!" "Welcome, Whatifitconners." "A special encore presentation of Astro Quest:" "Redux will begin in Room 21-B in just a few minutes." "Nice uniform." "Wendy?" "You're Yeoman Malloy." "You have a microprobe." "I can't believe this." "You're a Questor?" "I think Astro Quest is the greatest science fiction show of all time." "I'm a Commander Bishop fan myself." "Who isn't?" "Why Malloy?" "I loved her." "I mean, I know that she was completely underwritten, but she was the only female biochemist on TV and I liked her spunk." "Do you think that, um," "I got the collar right?" "'Cause I think on the show that it might've been a little more, um, swoopy." "You..." "It looks perfect." "Thanks." "Can I see that?" "That's great." "Jihw-CHOK chom-CHEM jag-eej BRYCE cichoki." "I don't speak Vellikon." "What did you say?" "Security to Room 21-B immediately." "Oh, my God, Jon?" " Security, 21-B immediately..." " Jon?" "!" " We need medical personnel in 21-B." " Jon?" "!" " Medical personnel in 21-B." " Jon?" "Jon?" "Wake up!" "What is the matter with you?" "Oh, my God." "Speak to me!" "Jon?" " Jon?" " Excuse me." "Excuse me." " Excuse me." "Excuse me." " Wake up!" "Wake up!" "Please, everyone stay calm and stay back." "We're with the Crime Lab." "Ma'am, don't touch anything." "Don't..." "Jon!" "Please, come with me." " Jon." " Come with me." "Come with me." "Brass." "Yeah, it's Hodges." " Who?" " From Trace, we have a situation at the Whatifitcon." "The Whatifit-what?" "How'd you get this number?" "I cloned Grissom's cell phone on a work-related matter." "That's not important now." "We have a situation." "It's one of the exhibitors." "Could you be more specific?" "He's dead, Jim." "Jonathan Danson, 36, from Chowchilla, California." "About 42 bucks and a couple of credit cards." "So, it probably wasn't a robbery." "Bloody nose, scratches on the face." "This guy's been in a fight or something." "You know, if there was a struggle it'd be really hard to tell on a set like this." "Liver temp was 89.7 degrees." "He probably died between midnight and 3:00 a.m." "So, between then and now there's probably been a few thousand people with access to this booth." "You're going to need a lot of tape lifts." "And swabs." "Or..." "I could run a vacuum cleaner over the whole scene, get exemplars from all these folks and keep you two knuckleheads busy for the next few months." "How'd that be?" "Do me a favor, beam yourselves back to the lab and let us do our job, please." "Okay." "Thank you." "Nice outfit." "I just can't believe it." "I mean, this-this project was Jonathan's dream." "We were so close." "So close to what?" "He spent five years on this pilot." "It's a remake of the original Astro Quest." "An executive from Paramount approached us about it- turning it into a full-on series for the CW." "Oh, yeah, really?" "No kidding." ""Produced by Jonathan Danson and Melinda Carver."" "So, do you have a financial interest in the project?" "Well, yeah, I financed it." "So, what happens to the rights with Jonathan out of the picture?" "They revert to me, I guess." "What are you getting at?" "Exactly what you think I am." "A guy in a red shirt dies at the beginning of most Astro Quest episodes." "I remember." "Come on in." "Thanks." "Take a look." "Perimortem bruise on the neck." "And a... right-angled laceration at the base of the nostrils." "The skin appears to be split, not cut." "There's metallic trace in the wound." "You and Wendy always go to Whatifitcon together?" "Actually, it was our first." "Pleasure working with you, Yeoman." "As always." "Tell me something, Commander." "Were you scared?" "I wasn't before." "But I am now." "But you're my commanding officer." "I'm also a man." "With a man's needs." "If you only knew how many nights I lay awake dreaming of a moment like this." "Oh..." "I can guess." "Hodges, you forgot this." "GCMS, chop-chop." "My name is Jonathan Danson, and I'm here to set you free." "Free from a vision of an antiseptic future filled with... with heroes and heroines who are always steadfast and well-adjusted and altruistic." "When was this taken?" "Last night, special preview event." "Anything interesting happens at a sci-fi convention, it's online somewhere about five seconds later." "Like most of you," "I grew up with Astro Quest." "Every Thursday night my dad would gather the family around our TV to watch the latest episode." "I loved it." "But the older I got, the more the mythology began to eat away at my soul." "I couldn't measure up to the brave crew of that perfect ship." "I wasn't handsome, courageous, strong." "I was weak, petty, self-destructive." "And I hated myself for it." "But then..." "One night... it hit me like a..." "like a bolt of lightning." "I looked around the bar at the other frightened, sad people and I... and I said to myself, "Do you see an Artemis Bishop here?"" ""Do you see one at work?"" " What's this?" " He's showing Redux." ""Uh, in your apartment building or on the street?"" "People, look around you." "Do you see an Artemis Bishop anywhere?" "Of course not." "Because he's a fictional construct." "A phantom who whispers, "You are not enough."" "Well, I am here to show you who we really are." "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you..." "Astro Quest:" "Redux." "I swear to God I'm gonna do her!" "Garth, you know me." "Just stand down." "I don't know anything anymore!" "I'm gonna do her." "I swear I'm gonna do her!" "Commander..." "Okay, Sally, everything's gonna be all right." "Nothing's ever gonna be all right again!" "Do you see that?" "!" "And now, you're gonna do what I want, too." "You suck." "You don't have the..." "Do you get it?" "We're not gonna watch that crap!" "Get outta here!" "So let me get this straight." "Some nerd takes a cheesy, '60s sci-fi show and turns it into something a little bit more realistic- minus the spaceship, of course- and the other nerds get pissed off enough that they beat him up and kill him over it?" "Well... people don't like it when you mess with their heroes." "You got something, Riley?" "No sign of blood." "I doubt it's the murder weapon." "Are we going to have to figure out how many Dumpsters 3,000 people can fill in three days?" "Boy, I hope not." "I got a... whole lot of geek love on the command chair." "Isn't that nice for them?" "I just found A/V central." "DVD player, sound gear." "And the vic's laptop." "There's a DVD in the player." "According to Article 13 of the Planetary Alliance Charter, we find Jonathan Danson guilty of high treason." "This wasn't part of the presentation." "And the penalty is..." "Please!" "No!" "I'm sorry!" "I won't ever do it again!" "Don't kill me, please!" "I got to start watching this show." "Sic Semper Tradi torae." "Death to traitors." "Yeah?" "Uh, Catherine, um, hypothetically, if I knew of someone in the lab having a relationship..." "What kind of a relationship?" "Um... personal." "Affectionate." "Romantic?" "Okay." "Um, hypothetically, if I knew of someone in the lab having a romantic relationship would I be obligated to report them?" "Yes." "To Ecklie." "And, hypothetically, would they suffer consequences?" "Are they hypothetically on the same shift?" "Yes." " Supervisor-subordinate?" " No." "Well, one of them would have to change shifts, but other than that, they should be fine." "Just tell them to report it to Ecklie and to go for it." "Life's too short, right?" "So what's a college professor doing taping the debut of Astro Quest:" "Redux in a science fiction convention?" "I was there with my crew." "I'm making a documentary on the gestalt constructs of sci-fi mytho-cultures." "Really?" " Have a seat." " Thank you." "I wanted to talk to you about your video." "The crowd didn't seem to like Danson's new take on their old mythology." "Danson was a provocateur." "I actually loved his boldness." "But he was playing with fire." "You believe one of these people killed him?" "Would you believe it?" "To its fans," "Astro Quest is more than just a television show." "It's a religion." "When he screened his Redux, that was the sci-fi equivalent of Martin Luther nailing his "95 Theses"" "to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg." "That's keeping it in perspective." "People kill each other all the time over belief systems, Mr. Sanders." "Or perhaps you're not familiar with the Middle East." "C.O.D. was cerebral hemorrhage due to blunt-force trauma." "Sharp blow to the nasal bone snapped the nasofrontal suture, driving it into the frontal sinus, where a secondary fracture penetrated the frontal lobe." "Instant unconsciousness." "He was dead within minutes." "Any idea what hit him?" "Something angular, silver-colored." "We haven't found the murder weapon yet." "Uh, David, would you finish stitching him up, please?" "I'm not a seamstress." "I'm a coroner's investigator, damn it." "He's been doing that all day." "He's riffing Corpsman Scully's one-liners from Astro Quest." "Didn't watch it much." "Because you're not a couch potato." "You're a medical examiner, damn it." "Well, he was obviously in some kind of struggle." "What do you make of this contusion here?" "It's on a pressure point." "Maybe someone attempted a sleeper hold." "You mean like a Sethlan submission claw?" "That's real?" "Well, you tell me." "Ah!" "Okay!" "There was something odd in the stomach contents." "Take a whiff." "Alcohol." "Curaçao, maybe." "What are these, um, vermiform chunks of meat?" "Those are Vellikon skullworms, which would of course explain the Tijillian ale." "It's Astro Quest food." "Some of the bars and restaurants around the convention do that sort of stuff for the conventioneers." "That hurt." "Good." "His name is Jonathan Danson." " You recognize him?" " Yeah." "Yeah, he was in here that night." "And he wasn't a happy camper." "He'd been alone at the bar knocking back drinks when this Astro Quest girl comes up." "Yeah, another Vapor, please." "He started jocking her pretty hard." " No, thank you." " No?" "Could you please let go of me now?" "Please." "Her friends didn't like that." "Sir, you just need to let go of my commander." "Everything will be okay." "Sir, please." "Let go!" "Just let go!" " Hey, stop that!" " You have no respect!" "Get him!" "First off, we abhor violence." "That's the first thing wrong with your entire show!" "Yeah, now- see how it feels?" "I'm not down with violence." "So I put an end to it." "Any of those people in these photos?" "Yeah, these three right here." "You didn't happen to get any names, did you?" "No." "Sorry." "After the fight they all split." "Well, there's nothing worse than a bunch of drunk conventioneers." "Must be hard enough to sling drinks without making you play dress-up." "I like this makeup." "Got it on my second tour of Afghanistan." "These Astro Questors, they believe in a future where human beings, they transcend their differences." "I wouldn't mind living in a world like that." "Yeah, me either." "You better be careful." "That thing gave me a nasty little shock." "Well, of course it did." "This is the..." "Compliance yoke from "The Slavers of Sirenodon."" "It's a classic." "I know, right?" "So, the commander and his crew are basically forced into hard labor, right?" "By the planet's..." " disembodied rulers." " Disembodied, yeah." "And they make everybody wear one of these things" " around their necks." " Yeah, and if they don't follow orders, then they get zapped with this paralyzing pain." "Hey!" "Hodges!" "You don't have gloves on." "It hasn't been processed." "Sorry." "Don't make me use this." "What, if anything else, did you do growing up?" "Sneer if you wish, but science fiction has been the inspiration for many great technological breakthroughs." "I'm not knocking it." "I love sci-fi." "You know, specially that talking horse show." "That was one of my favorites." "Mr. Ed?" " Yeah." " Yeah." "That's not science fiction." "Sure, it is." "It postulates an alternate universe" " in which horses evolve a larynx." " No." "See, that's fantasy." "No, fantasy is anything that travels faster than the speed of light, Hodges." "Which is why if Albert Einstein were alive today, he'd slap your face." "I wasn't born to be a slave." "Is this what we're supposed to do" " for the rest of our lives?" " Yes." "The supervisors assign us the tasks we are to perform." "Yours is to collect carbonite rocks." "Mine is to ensure that you collect carbonite rocks." "I'm sick of picking up rocks!" "Rest if you wish." "What I wish... is to be free." "On my planet we choose where we go, what to do, who to love." "What is... love?" "On my planet, love is the single most important thing that can happen between sentient beings." "Oh, you mean mating." "When the time comes to increase the staff, my supervisor will approve a mate for me." "Wouldn't you like to choose your own mate?" "Wouldn't you like that?" "Such talk is not permitted in the workplace." "Wouldn't you like... just once... to choose for yourself?" "No!" "No!" "Catherine said it would be all right." "That Ecklie wouldn't have any problem with it." "Hey, Hodges." "No!" " Hodges!" " Yes?" "I got work hits off both sets of those prints from that DVD, and they are locals." "Well, sort of." "They're from Pahrump." "How do you do, ma'am?" "I'm Detective Jim Brass, Las Vegas Police." "We're looking for Lionel Rose and Steuben Lorenz." "They're upstairs." "Where else?" "Identification?" "Mom, not now." "I told you we're debriefing." "Red alert." "Yeah, we made it." "It was a joke." "Of course, humor is subjective." "So, when Jonathan Danson found you sabotaging his life's work, did he subjectively kick your ass?" "Hey!" "Hey!" "What the hell are you guys doing here?" "Don't touch that!" "No, no, that's not true." "He kicked our asses before, at the bar." "You see, I adopted a Gandhi-esque strategy of passive resistance to force the aggressor to recognize the immorality of his actions, while Lionel attempted to avoid confrontation like an inferior male baboon who presents his rump for the dominant male to mount." "Unfortunately..." "Danson proved ignorant of baboon body language." "We-we didn't even go to the convention hall that night." "We sent her:" "Risa." "Risa Parvess." "P" " A-R-V-E-S-S." "I didn't think it was a good idea." "I mean, she's always been really unstable." "Did you deliver the payload?" "Yeah, I guess, but there were... complications." "Complications, like what?" "Did someone see you?" "If you did anything to compromise the safety of this crew..." "There is no crew!" "This isn't a spaceship!" "I'm done playing your stupid games." "Where do we find her?" "I have no idea." "She's always been quite unstable." " Hey." " Hey." "I just got the results back from the command chair, and it's the victim, plus an unknown female, so we're closing in." "Great." "Hey, also, I was thinking that maybe after shift, it would be kind of fun to have a little Astro Quest mini-marathon." "Like maybe "Yesterday's Tomorrow,"" "parts 1, 2, and 3?" "You mean the time travel trilogy from season 4?" " Oh, yes." " It's great." "Yeah, count me in." " Good." " Yeah." "Hey, uh, I'll even spring for pizza if it's not too much of a crowd." "Well, two is not much of a crowd, really, so..." "You mean just you and me?" "Yeah." "You, me, the Blu-Ray DVD box set and a brand-new plasma TV." "Over at your place?" "Yeah." "That's where I keep my TV." "Okay, sounds good." "Yeah, it will be." "Have you ever actually seen one?" "I mean, have you ever actually seen one... in the flesh?" "A Tijillian concubine." "Feral... carnal... voracious." "I'd say she was worth a change in shift." "Wouldn't you?" "You're on fire." "Hodges, you're on fire!" "What happened?" "I was checking the unknown's solubility in acetone, when I guess it caught on fire." "My mind wandered." "That's been happening a lot lately, Hodges." "What's going on with you?" "There's nothing going on." "This is a crime lab, not some Tijillian casbah." " Excuse me?" " You, me, a DVD..." "I don't think it's going to help us catch a killer." "Are you actually trying to blame all this on me?" "Not in so many words." "Okay, you know what?" "I asked you to come over and watch a DVD- that's it- so if you're having some fantasies about me dressed up in a tinfoil bikini, dancing around in a casbah on a strange alien planet, then... good." "Good?" "Yes, good, 'cause it means you're not as oblivious as everyone around here seems to think you are." "But the fact is, if you can't handle the way... if you can't handle the way that those fantasies make you feel, don't turn all that around and blame me" " when you screw up." " Don't worry about it." "It's not gonna happen again." "Well, that's not the only thing that's not gonna happen." " Fine." " Fine." "Yeah, she, uh, wandered into the bar a couple hours ago." " Totally strung out." " Right." "Put a little caffeine in her, a little conversation, and she was willing to come in and do the right thing." "Okay... thanks." "No problem." "Hey, you know, um... they were giving these away at the convention." "You should check it out." "You might like it." "Thanks." "Miss Parvess?" "My name is Nick Stokes." "I'm with the crime lab." "I really appreciate you... coming down here to talk with me." "Okay, I'm going to make this real easy for you." "I know that Jonathan Danson harassed you in the bar." "And I know you were in the booth that night planting your pals' DVD." "I also found evidence of sexual activity on the command chair." "Now, listen." "If he assaulted you in any way and you fought back, that's self-defense." "You know that, right?" "It wasn't self-defense." "I liked his show." "I think he must have been able to sense that when he saw me at the bar." "I used to be just like you." "Tormented by impulses I thought were dirty." "Desires that have no place in a squeaky-clean universe." "Let go of me." "Let go of yourself." "Stop trying to be something you're not, and the guilt that's eating you alive will fall away." "Let me set you free." "He took me... to an incredible place." "No preconceptions or judgments." "Just... pure impulse and... raw instincts." "He showed me who I really was." "He even gave me his cell phone number." "He said he was going to take me to Cabo." "Well, I'd say that confirms at least part of her story." "Where did you get this?" "Found it on the vic's laptop." "He has quite a collection." "And that's Melinda Carver, his producer." "That's about seven hours before Risa, just before the VIP premiere of his show." "It's good to be the commander." "So, what's the point?" "The point is that you didn't tell me that you were banging the dead guy." "That had nothing to do with this." "And you didn't tell me you emptied out your 401 and gave all the money to Danson." "We checked his bank records." "He needed it to complete the project." "Right." "He's been completing a lot of projects lately." "And according to the GPS tags on those photographs, he's been working his mojo at most major sci-fi conventions in America." "He's a busy guy." "I knew about the other women, because Jon told me about them." "We had, uh, an open relationship." "Look..." "Jon was an extremely... complicated human being." "He was trying to expose the hypocrisy of a sick society." "He was a real artist, and that's all that mattered to me, not who he was poking in that chair." "That's a nice speech." "I'm done talking to you." "And that's a nice purse." "I'm gonna have to hang on to that." "Check it for blood." "Be my guest." "The weird thing about these photos is the camera angle and the background never change." "Which means there must be a hidden camera on the set somewhere?" " May I?" " Yeah." "Every shot, the victim's hand is on that button." " It must be some kind of trigger." " Mm-hmm." "You didn't notice a camera?" "No, I didn't, but, I mean, they make them pretty small these days." "Some of them even have built-in memory." "In other words, if we find it, we may have a photo of our killer." "The background in the photo is this point here." "The beam needs to line up with the left arm of the chair." "Bring it up a bit." "A little bit more." "Perfect." "The camera should be somewhere along this beam." "I don't see any camera here." "Maybe Danson had a voyeur buddy take the sex pics." "Hmm, from the same exact angle every time?" "Wendy." "I think I've got it." "Got what?" "The metallic trace from the victim's wound." "Okay, give me a second." "Does this remind you of anything?" "Yes." " Right?" " Yes." "Langston." "It's Hodges and Wendy." "What do you got?" "Yeah, uh, we know what killed Danson." "It's in the helm." "Okay, I'm going to put you on speaker." "Now, it's, it's in the what?" "It's the console that's directly opposite the command chair." "There's a retractable viewer inside." "It's from the show." "Looks like some kind of piston system." "Yeah, th-there should be a control for it someplace." "It's called a targeting scanner." "I think we have it." "We also have a digital sex camera." "And blood, 90-degree angle." "Silver metal paint and a bloody fingerprint." "Nice work, people." "See you back at the lab." "Nice work, Hodges." "You, too, Simms." "Is she mad at you again?" "Why don't you two just get it over with?" "You've been dancing around it for years." "Just tell her how you feel." "Tell her what, M. Andrews?" "That I'd never be able to give myself to her fully?" "Because I've made a commitment... to this lab." "The pursuit of justice." "Do you think it's easy?" "In the dead of night, I can't help but wonder what it'd be like to savor the pleasures of ordinary men." "Moonlit dinners." "Murmured endearments." "The caress of a woman's soft skin." "Long, languid walks on the beach." "But you hate the beach." "It's understandable," "I guess, considering your complexion." "What?" "It's good that you're politically active because if you weren't, you wouldn't have been arrested at that sit-in at Global Media six years ago." "Caught in the web of the combine." "That's a reference to One Fl..." "Yeah, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." "I know." "And I also know that you didn't mean to kill Jonathan Danson." "I know that." "It happened." "But this is your one chance to get out in front of it, so tell me what happened." "Just tell me the truth, and I promise I'll do everything I can to help you." "I will." "Jonathan Danson took my media semiotics course." "He was a good student." "I heard about his project and thought it would be perfect material for my documentary." "But then I saw Redux." "I'm gonna do her!" "I swear I'm gonna do her!" "I gave a lecture once, deconstructing Astro Quest as an example." "Jonathan had integrated all of my conceits into his fictional construct." "He stole your idea." "He didn't ask for permission." "He, he didn't even acknowledge me in the credits." "You want credit?" "Now, why would I give you that?" "Because they're my ideas." "Whatever happened to "Nobody can own an idea"?" "Let me tell you something." "Ideas are a dime a dozen." "If you want to make them into art, it takes drive, vision, creativity." "Hey, I have created..." "What?" "Hyperintellectual diarrhea?" "Go back to writing theory papers for the six other people in your department who read them." "I've got a TV show to make." "You!" "Let me go!" "Not until you cool down." "You gonna be cool?" "Yes." "20 years devoted to media theory." "Talk about a wasted life." "You see the irony, don't you?" "Jon attempted to deconstruct Astro Quest's iconography, and he was killed by one of the signifiers he sought to subvert." "Derrida, Derrida would have called that..." "An epistemological dichotomy?" "I just call it second-degree murder." "Anybody up for a little Astro Quest?" "Oh, no, not tonight." "Thanks, though." "All right." "Break room in five." "Let's go." "Uh, no, thanks." "Enjoy." ""A Dollop of Apocalypse."" "Oh, that's the one where they find this planet where, um, amphibians are the dominant species, and they worship Peyton Place as a sacred text." "It's classic." "Wait, the amphibians can read and they choose that?" "There's a reason for it." "You'll see." "Jihw-CHOK chom-CHEM jag-eej BRYCE cichoki." "I don't speak Vellikon." "What'd you say?" "We were made for each over." "Anytime you're ready, Ecklie." "You will leave me... now?" "The lab needs me." "You have needs of your own, as do I." "Maybe someday our needs will coincide." "I hope so." "Until then..." "Someday."