Night in Question (NiQ)

(Not aired yet)

Week starting November 12th, 1995

Gary Stephen Rieck

Nicholas J. Gray

Melanie Nicholls-King as Dr. Turner

A patient with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head is quickly wheeled down a hospital corridor on a gurney. In the emergency room, medical staff work frantically to revive him. They are unsuccessful, and Dr. Turner identifies the deceased as our hero, "Metro Police Detective, Nicholas Knight."

In the hospital waiting-room, Reese comforts a sobbing Tracy. She and Nick had gone to the parade-float warehouse to meet an informant. While they were there, someone shot Nick in the head. Natalie rushes in. By the time she gets to him Nick has already started to revive. Everyone is amazed at Nick's recovery. Dr. Turner says Nick is a "miracle man." Tracy and Reese are puzzled, but relieved.

Later, Dr. Turner is looking at x-rays showing a bullet embedded in Nick's brain. She can't understand how he could be OK. Another doctor asks her if she needs a second opinion. It is Lacroix. He replaces the x-rays with ones that don't show a bullet and hypnotizes Dr. Turner into believing that Nick's injury is not as serious as it looked at first.

The next day, Natalie visits Nick in the hospital, and discovers that he doesn't remember her or anything about his past. At the precinct, officials question Tracy about the shooting. She doesn't know exactly what happened and can't identify the shooter. Reese tells her to be patient and it will come back to her.

Natalie takes Nick home in the hope familiar surroundings will jog his memory. While Natalie is at work, Lacroix visits Nick. Lacroix tells Nick he's a killer and suggests he go outside to rediscover himself. Natalie returns to the apartment. With barely concealed mutual hostility, she and Lacroix discuss Nick as if he wasn't there in the room with them, while he listens, confused, looking as if he had a mental age of about eight.

After Lacroix leaves, Nick follows Natalie around the apartment asking her questions which she deflects. When he asks her if they have a romantic relationship, she tells him they are just friends. They wander over to the fireplace, and exchange a few tender kisses. A bit later, it looks like Nick and Natalie have removed to his bedroom to engage in more serious lovemaking. Nick is just about to sink his fangs into her lovely neck when he wakes up with a start. It was just a dream! Recalling Lacroix's advice to go outside and rediscover himself, Nick leaves the apartment.

Nick goes over to the parade-float warehouse. Inside the warehouse, he has a few flashbacks to the shooting. A police woman stops him and he vamps out involuntarily, but she doesn't notice. After she leaves him, Nick wanders over to the exit, and starts to walk outside, but the sun is just coming up around a nearby building. (Sizzle!) Nick returns to the apartment. His face is burnt and he looks desperate. He demands that Natalie tell him what's wrong with him. She reluctantly tells him he's a vampire.

From the flashbacks he's had to the shooting, Nick is able to identify the man who shot him. It was a very ugly guy with a silver tooth, called Leon Sharp. Reese remembers that Sharp's brother was shot and killed by Tracy's father. Tracy, not Nick, was the target of the attack. Meantime, Tracy is meeting Sharp at the lakefront. Nick finds her sheltering behind some iron drums while Sharp shoots at her from a platform high above. Nick flies up to the platform and shows him what a vampire looks like. Sharp freaks out and falls off the platform to his death.

At the epilogue, Natalie is with Nick in his apartment, packing up her things. She wants Nick to stay home for a few days, but he has other plans. Nick goes over to the Raven to visit Lacroix and learn about his own past.

In the historical flashbacks Lacroix recalls how while feeding on dying soldiers, he was staked by one during the Napoleonic wars, and how Nick helped him by removing the stake, and letting Lacroix drink his own blood. There were also flashbacks Nick had as he recovered, which told the story of what happened while he and Tracy were at the parade-float warehouse. These scenes, which were partly shown from Tracy's viewpoint, were all black-and-white, and very fragmented, effectively simulating the kind of nightmarish memories one would have of a violent trauma.

The monologue reflects Lacroix's own disturbance over Nick's memory loss. As long as Nick is lost to himself, he is also lost to Lacroix. And Lacroix wants him back!

This is the ultimate Nick-is-an-idiot episode! He's usually a step or two behind everyone else as it is, but now he can't remember who he is, he's really in trouble. And poor long-suffering Natalie! She seizes the opportunity to test an hypothesis that Nick could be a normal man if he stopped living as a vampire. But she is disappointed in the end. Lacroix knows better � Nick's special nature and needs will win out! The major lesson of the episode was that we are not whole when we are separated from our true selves or from certain important others in our lives. This is a very good episode and fun to watch. But (as usual) some plot elements were left just a bit loose. Can we believe that Nick could spend a day in the hospital and no one except Natalie bother to take his vital signs? (And notice that he doesn't really have any!) And what actually happened to the bullet in his brain? Did it dissolve? Why were Natalie and Lacroix left in charge of blood transfusions? And what did Tracy think when Nick flew up to the platform where the shooter was? I guess she must not have noticed. Oh well, who cares about such details! There was plenty of good stuff in this episode to make up for these small flaws. The very best part of the episode had to be that marvelous scene in which Natalie and Lacroix wage a verbal war of intentions regarding the prize they both covet most � Nick. Here we see that age and wisdom really do go together! Anyway, this is a very amusing piece of fluff, worth watching over again!

Obviously, this is a major Nick&NatPacker episode. Nick and Natalie are together more in this episode than in any other that I have seen. And there was some ambiguity regarding exactly what happened between the kisses at the fireplace and Nick's dream sequence. Even though it didn't work out in the end, there is always still hope (not!) This should also be a good episode for Cousins. Lacroix was wonderful in the scene with Natalie and in the one with Dr. Turner. And those who like to see Nick and Lacroix together should be very pleased with the ending, where once again, Nick returns to his father-mentor-nemesis, from whom, we know he will never truly be free.

Natalie to an unconscious Nick:	"Oh boy, Nick. How are we going to talk our way out of this one?"
Dr. Turner to Dr. Lacroix:	"This is wrong. We should be talking about this guy in the past tense!"
Dr. Lacroix to Dr. Turner:	"The bullet glanced off the good detective's very thick skull, and caused minimal damage."
Lacroix to Nick:	"It's not so much who you are, Nicholas, as what you are."
Lacroix to Natalie:	"I trust that you will inform him of his special nature and needs, in my absence?"
Natalie to Lacroix:	"I think you had better leave. By the door!"
Nick and Natalie:	Nick: "Did you know this would happen?" Natalie: "I told you not to go out!" Nick: "But you didn't tell me why!"
Lacroix on the air at CERK:	"When you have a friend in the Nightcrawler, who needs enemies?"

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