"Devolution"

Episode 206
(aired the week of 11/3/1997)
Case # 56-7212

Log line: A woman in a stroke-induced coma appears to be growing younger.

Synopsis: Having spent the last 27 years of her life in prison for a botched bank robbery that led to a police murder, Grey Callwood has lost everything, including Mary, her daughter, who was forced to become a ward of the state. Now 60 years old, Grey has been taken from prison to a hospital, where she lies in a stroke-induced coma. Mary, now an adult full of resentment, has signed the donor consent forms authorizing that her mother now be taken off life support, so that her organs can be harvested for transplant.

The only person who cares for Grey is Lucy, an eccentric night-shift nurse who befriended the inmate before the debilitating stroke hit. The night before Grey's last day on life support, Lucy says goodbye to her patient, as a guard waits by the door. As Lucy exits, a blinding light emanates from the room. As the guard bursts in to investigate, a gory, blood-covered figure throws him out into the hall, then makes a quick exit. In a moment, nothing but a charred "husk" remains where Grey Callwood's body had been.

The Office of Scientific and Investigative Research (O.S.I.R.) is brought in to investigate the suspicious crime scene. When Case Manager Matt Praeger attempts to gain insight by questioning Mary, the woman refuses to help. In the meantime, Praeger puts Senior Analyst Lindsay Donner on nurse Lucy's trail, since he suspects her unconventional "Goth" lifestyle may be connected to the incident. Dressed in typical Goth style - tight, black patent leather dress, thigh-high boots, black lipstick and a jet black wig - Donner sneaks into Lucy's hangout, The Pentagram Club and discovers that blood rituals are part of Lucy's unusual after-hours activities. Finding two bags of blood with hospital labels on them, Donner moves Lucy to the top of the suspect list and goes undercover again at the club with Praeger. There, they're shocked to find Grey Callwood alive - but 28 years younger than she was before she "died."

Chief Science Analyst Peter Axon and Dr. Anton Hendricks unearth information that Grey was part of a secret hospital study with an experimental drug called Xaldex, designed to accelerate cell repair in human tissue. In her case, however, it has caused reverse aging, or "devolution." When Praeger confronts hospital administrator Edward Baines about unethical experiments with Xaldex, the Case Manager learns that Grey's daughter actually approved using her mother as a human guinea pig.

Back at the Pentagram Club, Grey has another Episode and devolves to a 21-year-old version of herself. Worried about what further devolutions could do to the woman, the O.S.I.R. rushes her to the hospital, where she's injected with a protein supplement that - they hope - will slow down the reverse-aging process.

Grey's youthful version of herself attempts to reunite with daughter Mary, but is callously rejected. She escapes from the hospital, only to be located by the O.S.I.R. team back at the Pentagram Club. But it is too late to prevent another regression: Praeger and Donner discover that the 21-year-old has now been transformed into a six-year-old. With virtually no other options, Hendricks comes up with a risky possible solution to reversing the devolution. But their potential cure makes two terrifying demands of Mary: donate one of her organs for a radical surgical procedure and, if Grey survives, spend the rest of her life mothering her own mother, in the perpetual form of a six-year-old girl.

Starring:
Matt Frewer - Case Manager Matt Praeger
Barclay Hope - Peter Axon
Nancy Anne Sakovich - Lindsay Donner
Colin Fox - Dr. Anton Hendricks
Dan Aykroyd - Host

Guest Stars:
Marni Thompson - Grey Callwood
Lisa Ryder - Mary Callwood
Nicole Oliver - Lucy Westenra
Michael J. Reynolds - Edward Baines

Written by: John Dolin
Directed by: Clay Borris