490 – Star Cops – A Double Life

What will cloning mean for crime in the future?  A fascinating subject… will they touch on it here?  John and Eugene discuss a Double Life. Episode Synopsis On Earth, famous concert pianist James Bannerman plays live before an appreciative audience. On the moon, an unfinished medical area, an unseen interloper breaks into and steals fertilized embryos. [expand title=”More…” swaptitle=”Less” tag=”strong”] The crime is discovered almost immediately and the Star Cops are called in and the base locked down. Spring learns that this is a political hot potato. The embryo’s belong to Madame Assadi, a rich and powerful Saudi widow of a notorious arms dealer. They are being held to ransom for $50,000,000. These embryos are her only chance to bear an heir to her late husband. She is a major donor to the medical area on moonbase, and is likely to both pull her funding, and cause other funding to dry up. But there’s more, base Commander Alexi let’s Spring know, if this crime goes unsolved, he and Spring will be most likely be have to take the fall for it. New Star Cop Anna Shoun is on guard duty at one of the remaining base entry/exist points and she is attacked and overwhelmed, while the assailant escapes. With the assailant now presumed to have escaped the base, Madame Assadi, against Spring’s recommendation, returns to Earth where her “authorities” can look into the matter. When she’s there, she gets a call from the embryonapper who, to prove he’s serious, burns one of the three embryos in acid. Anna is taking a lot of shit from Devis. She’s new, inexperienced, frail and he doesn’t feel she belongs on the force; however, she persevers and is able to put together a reconstructive image of her assailant. The funny thing is: He looks just like famous concert pianist James Bannerman. The lead seems doubtful, at best, but then they turn up a motive. Bannerman is the illegitimate son of genetic researcher, Dr. Teal. Teal was doing private research into a new branch of genetics and had accepted large sums of money for his research, including money from Madame Assadi’s late husband. When the research was banned internationally, Teal had already spent the money. The European courts held that he was not required to return the money. Assadi, not bound by European law or basic morality, had Teal murdered. David Thoreau is dispatched to the Earth to conduct a genetic matching of Bannerman to the material found at the scene of the crime. Bannerman is incensed. He’s being confined by the police and he’s got an airtight alibi for the time of the crime and yet, he is an exact genetic match for the evidence at the crime scene. Alexi caves to political expediency and lets Madame Assadi know that they have a suspect. She immediately dispatches her agents to Britain to kidnap Bannerman and bring him to her justice. The kidnapper contacts Assasdi and, having still not received the ransom, burns a second embryo. In London, David is injured and Bannerman taken by Assadi’s agents. Spring begins to put the clues together. Teal, was estranged from Bannerman’s mother and his son, but he cloned Bannerman and raised him as his son elsewhere, unknown to Bannerman. This child, Albi Teal, must be the embryonapper. He goes to Earth, along with Kenzy, to convince her that Bannerman is innocent and should be set free, if he isn’t dead already. She is unmoved by his pleas, but Kenzy manages to get her to let them see Bannerman. He never met his father and knows absolutely nothing about the matter. Assadi doubts any of this is true, but it doesn’t matter, because, in her “culture” if you cannot punish the criminal directly, you just punish his family in their place. Bannerman remains a prisoner, awaiting punishment for the crime. On the moon, the team figure out that the kidnapper is still on the moon, in an abandoned mineshaft. With David injured, Devis must take Anna along as backup on the armed mission to capture the villain. On Earth, the Embryonapper has called again for the third and final time. Confronted now with the truth that Bannerman is not the criminal, Assadi lets him go. Who am I kidding? Of Course she doesn’t let him go, she’s an evil, nasty person from a nasty, barbaric culture. Albi seems positively pleased that his brother, who cared nothing for their father, is going to suffer. With Anna in the moon buggy on standby, Devis enters the mine and is immediately incapacitated by Albi. As he prepares to destroy the final embryo, Anna arrives and threatens to shoot him. When Albi calls her bluff, it turns out she wasn’t bluffing, and kills him. The embryo is saved and Bannerman is let free. On the flight back to the moon, Kenzy contemplates the difficulties they’ll have with clones in the future, as she spies a dead ringer for Spring in a another row of seats. [/expand]