"The Grey Men"

Episode 208
(aired the week of 11/17/1997)
Case # 66-9207

Log line: Aliens abduct Praeger and replace him with a clone; Elsinger warns Kelly away from O.S.I.R.

Synopsis: After a UFO is allegedly spotted at an abandoned power plant, the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research (O.S.I.R.) is assigned to investigate. When Case Manager Matt Praeger slips around a corner to investigate the supposed landing site, he finds the ground scorched in the classic "crop circle" pattern associated with alien aircraft. At that exact moment, Chief Science Analyst Peter Axon and Security Coordinator Ray Donahue hear a strange noise emanating from Praeger's direction...and, suddenly, he's gone.

With the investigation now personal, the team desperately searches for any trace of Praeger's whereabouts. But as the team doubles their efforts to find their friend and leader, Director of Operations Frank Elsinger has another agenda. He pays a not-so-friendly visit to the apartment of Michael Kelly, the mysterious outsider and unofficial advisor to the team, to warn about meddling in O.S.I.R. cases. Kelly recognizes the warning for what it is: a thinly veiled threat.

Back at the power plant, Senior Analyst Lindsay Donner and Chief of Medicine Dr. Anton Hendricks have joined Axon and Donahue to step up the search for Praeger. Axon attempts to track Praeger through his comlink, but when the signal leads them into an abandoned factory building, all they find is an oval-shaped group of metallic disks. Donner questions the two witnesses, or "experiencers," of the initial UFO sighting, but gets little cooperation from them. Donner's instincts tell her something is odd about the two men, a cook and a truck driver. She questions them separately, but their recollections are identical down to the last word.

When Axon finds Praeger near the crop circles, alive and in the fetal position, the team breathes a collective - but possibly premature - sigh of relief. They are unaware that the Praeger in the field is actually a cleverly crafted clone. Meanwhile, the real Praeger is aboard an alien craft being interrogated by "The Grey Man." In order to make the captive feel at ease, The Grey Man delves into Praeger's mind and morphs himself to look like Kelly; he explains how he abducts humans to access their subjective memories for the sake of learning. Caught in the aliens' alternate dimension, Praeger is forced to recall the painful memories surrounding his previous investigation of a horrific plane crash, as he worked around charred bodies. A vile stench and red flags morbidly mark the location of each body part that has been scattered through the crash site.

When both of the experiencers destroy themselves - the cook puts a knife through his own heart while the trucker loses his will to live and simply drops dead - the team becomes increasingly worried about condition of the clone, whom they still believe is Praeger. When Donner notices that it has a pain in his left leg she grows suspicious, since her co-worker had recently injured his right one. On a hunch, she fingerprints it and discovers the print is a mirror image of one in Praeger's file - suggesting their find might be a clone. As confirmation, they fingerprint the deceased cook and trucker and find that they, too, were clones.

Praeger's clone has inherited the original's sense of duty and offers his help in finding him. Together, they discover that the mysterious metallic disks are an inter-dimensional communications apparatus. Using the set-up, the clone successfully contacts the alien craft and gets a response from the real Praeger. Seeing a ray of hope for survival, Praeger now battles The Grey Man through his thoughts, the only weapon he has left. Using extreme mental concentration, Praeger switches places with his clone and returns to his original dimension.

Now safe, Praeger is irked when Elsinger dismisses the report of his amazing experience. Even with Axon's corroboration, Elsinger sweeps it under the rug as a hallucination caused by stress. As Praeger and Axon leave Elsinger's office, Praeger wonders whether Kelly's seemingly-paranoid stories about the corruption and cover-ups within the O.S.I.R. might have some truth. Elsinger, meanwhile, puts on a glove and manipulates one of the alien communication disks. As the leader of the O.S.I.R., is he part of the solution...or part of the problem?

Starring:
Matt Frewer - Case Manager Matt Praeger
Barclay Hope - Peter Axon
Nancy Anne Sakovich - Lindsay Donner
Colin Fox - Dr. Anton Hendricks
Nigel Bennett - Frank Elsinger
Peter MacNeill - Ray Donahue
Michael Moriarty - Michael Kelly
Dan Aykroyd - Host

Guest Stars:
David Ferry - Trucker
Paul Boretski - Cook

Written by: James Nadler
Directed by: Giles Walker