​ "Playback" – Stingray S02E03 Review

And while I'm going through my DVDs...

I reviewed Stingray the other day. And as I kind of noted there, one of the strengths of the show was that they could do practically anything. Biological outbreak? Check. Ancient Indian spirit? Check. Standard spy drama? Check. Mission: Impossible parody? Check. Over-the-top comedy? Check.

Which brings us to "Playback". An episode you'd be hard put to find on any regular series. Certainly not back in the 80s when Stingray aired. They could probably pull it off today on some Syfy show. But it has little or nothing to do with the series as a whole. There's no favor trading, there's no female love interest although our main character, Ray, does get in a kiss with a woman doctor. There's no references to Ray's mysterious past.

Oh, to recap the series. "Ray" is a mysterious ex-spy for the CIA. He left under unstated circumstances, and now travels the U.S. helping people. They call his " Corvette Stingray for barter" classified ad in the newspapers, and he contacts them if he thinks he can help. Ray does them a favor, and they promise to do a favor for him down the road. Sometimes it's helping Ray help someone else. Sometimes it seems to be letting Ray stay at their place. "Ray" is apparently Ray's name, although it may be taken from the name of his preferred car, a '65 Corvette Stingray. He does call himself "Stingray" on occasion, but most people just call him "Ray".

Got all that? Good. Now on with "Playback". "Playback" starts with a corporation tech team conducting a space mission simulation at Project Desert Dome. They emerge from a communication blackout and discover the six-person crew isn't on the monitors and no one is responding on the radio. A team goes in and finds five of the crew dead and the sixth guy ranting, raving, and covered in blood.

We cut to Ray at a house looking at photos of himself and the survivor, Captain Sam Stone. Sam is catatonic, and Sam's wife Nancy wants Ray to clear Sam's name because otherwise he's going to get sent away for murder. Ray agrees, and as I mentioned, there's no favor bartering. Ray is apparently helping out because Sam is an old friend. Nothing about their past comes up except for the photos.

The corporation then begins a "playback" (catchy title, eh?) of the first mission with a new crew. There's Captain Tim Greenwood, played by long-time screen veteran Eugene Roche. Sam is along, although still catatonic. There are three other disposable crew members. And Ray is the sixth member, posing as a "financial investigator". This seems to put him in charge of the crew for some reason, or so Captain Tim says.

The company techs then "playback" the first mission's events. Which include a simulated temperature drop, temperature rise, electrical fire, and a compressor switch over. What no one is aware of is this series of events caused a real fire in the compressor room. Which set pipe insulation on fire. The fumes leaked into the backup compressor, so when they switch over the fumes spread throughout the dome. And the fumes turn people into psychopaths.

For some reason, Sam regains the full use of his facilities about halfway through the episode. Yep, it's just that easy, boys and girls. It turns out he was doing a simulated EVA during the communications blackout just after the compressor switch-over, so Sam was on pure oxygen and not exposed until afterward. Ray cottons onto what happens when he accidentally sets a pipe in the lab on fire. He goes psycho early and picks a fight with Captain Tim, who eventually cold-cocks Ray. Ray goes back to the lab and discovers all of the lab animals are dead from the fumes.

Ray grabs some portable oxygen masks and catches up to Sam as he prepares to go EVA on the playback like he did the first time. They shut down the compressors and then get attacked by the four psycho crew people. The good guys win and when the corporation sends a new team, they find all six crew members have survived. The end.

"Playback" reads more like a backdoor pilot for some other show. What show, I have no idea. Nick Mancuso playing a financial investigator who looks into mysterious company shenanigans each week? That doesn't seem like much of a concept for a series. But it's hard to tell what writers Carol Mendelsohn and Lawrence Hertzog are trying to do. Other than do a "Stingray episode that demonstrates we can do any story we want" episode.

The episode basically plays out like a horror movie, where some people are infected with something or another and become psychos. That's what happens here, and the ominous music, somber mood, slow buildup of the tension, and a weird hallucination is very horror movie-like.

There are enough plot holes to drive a truck through. For one thing, why didn't anyone do a chemical analysis of Sam's bloodstream? Or an autopsy of the dead crew? Everyone died, for pete's sake. You'd think the investigation would be a little more thorough.

Why do the techs shut off the cameras at their end the first time, much less the second time when they know people died the first time? The "communications blackout" requires the techs can't even watch what's going on? That doesn't make sense.

Ray mentions at one point the original crew killed each other. But the lab animals die from what seems to be exposure to the fumes. They're in separate cages, so they couldn’t have killed each other. So did the original crew die from the fumes, or did they kill each other? And if they died because of the (presumably toxic) fumes, why didn't anyone discover that on an autopsy?

And finally, we're told repeatedly the second mission is a "playback" of the first one. They deliberately repeated everything that happened. Which means the fire burned the insulation originally. That means someone entered the compressor room, saw the burnt pipe insulation, replaced it, but didn't think to report it to their superiors. That's... weird.

Some of this is obvious enough that you think of it when you're watching the episode. But overall, the creepiness and general one-off nature of the plot tends to cover this up. Or at least help you overlook it. Lisa Hart Carroll plays the female doctor, and when she goes psycho, she goes all Harley Quinn, paints lipstick all over her face, and stabs another guy with a nail file. The other guy is actor Jack Blessing, who does a good job of acting all twitchy and psychotic, too.

Eugene Roche comes across as too much of a nice guy to be too psychopathic. The fourth crewman is played by HITG Julian Christopher. He has a creepy scene where he pounds a mirror with his fist, and then a weird scene where he drops into Worf/Next Gen-style martial arts to fight Ray. who himself uses the same martial arts style. So I suppose they put the scene in just to give Nick something exciting to do. As watching Nick Mancuso beat up on Eugene Roche just isn't that exciting.

Which brings us to the other weird point of the episode. Ray doesn't do much. He's pretty much a hapless bystander. Yeah, Ray accidentally exposes himself to the fumes early enough to work things out, although his knocking over a flaming Bunsen burner and not noticing is kind of awkward. But his buddy Sam (Charles Boswell) does more to move the plot forward. He plays the creepy catatonic guy early on, but then snaps out of it and pretty much saves the day. Ray tells him what's going on, but Sam is the one who knows how to switch the compressors back over and save everyone.

So "Playback" is a decent episode, and it's interesting as a Stingray one-off if nothing else. And it's nice and suspenseful, and about as close as the show ever got to doing a horror-movie ripoff. But in the end, it's just a little too far off the beaten track of the show's general concept, and has a few too many plot holes, to make it a great episode.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

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And yeah, I didn't think I was going to do another Stingray review. There's not enough to say about the majority of episodes to keep up a constant stream of reviews. So I hereby promise not to do any more Stingray reviews.

Until the next review. :)

Ciao.