"Man of War"

Episode 209
(aired the week of 11/24/1997)
Case # 26-7210

Log line: After a young soldier vaporizes, military authorities are oddly uncooperative with O.S.I.R. investigators.

Synopsis: He's in the forest, supposedly on patrol...but Army Corporal Del Castor is actually in the midst of a clandestine romantic interlude there. Suddenly, he disappears amid eerie flashes of light in the sky.

Called in by the Parks Service to investigate a series of such events, the O.S.I.R. team comes across their first clue there: a pile of fine white powder. Probing the powder with a stick, Peter Axon reveals a set of Army dogtags belonging to the vanished Corporal. Lindsay Donner notices an odd flow of sap on the trees surrounding the powder, and collects a sample. But, before they can gather any more evidence, a military special forces security patrol creeps up on the team and takes them into custody for trespassing. When the patrol, led by Captain Hastings, brings the O.S.I.R. members back to the military base at gunpoint, it's clear that someone is very protective of whatever the O.S.I.R. was about to discover.

At the base command center, Case Manager Matt Praeger meets Colonel MacLeod, the officer in charge. MacLeod explains that the Parks Service authorized his special forces unit to use the area for military exercises; Praeger and his team were arrested because they were trespassing. Praeger, however, doesn't buy this explanation and, rather than let MacLeod call off the investigation, manages to strike a deal with him: If the O.S.I.R. can continue its investigation into the sightings, MacLeod will have access to O.S.I.R. lab equipment to aid his own internal investigation into Castor's disappearance.

To Donner, Private Kristin Smythe - the woman with Castor when he vanished - admits both the romantic involvement and that she saw something unusual in the sky moments before the occurrence. Meanwhile, Catherine Azzopardi, a psychic viewing consultant to the U.S. Armed Forces during Desert Storm, contacts O.S.I.R. Director of Operations Frank Elsinger with the news that she had a psychic vision of Castor's disappearance. Enlisting the woman's assistance, Elsinger orders Praeger to use her...and, even though doubting her abilities, Praeger grudgingly follows orders and includes Catherine in his search for answers. Back in the lab, Dr. Anton Hendricks determines that Donner's tree resin sample is a highly caustic, acidic compound possibly brought about by a meteor shower - which would also explain the reported flashes of light in the sky. But, if this is the answer, why did the sap disintegrate Castor, while the trees survived unscathed?

As Praeger and Axon continue surveying the area, Hastings tags along to keep an eye on their activities. Sensing something moving in the trees, the O.S.I.R. agents look up to see the sky shimmering oddly - yet Hastings claims he didn't see anything. Now, Praeger and Axon question whether Hastings might be involved somehow in the string of strange occurrences. In fact, Praeger even thinks the military might be using the O.S.I.R. and their state-of-the-art monitoring equipment as a pawn in the testing of a new stealth technology.

When Hastings beefs up security around the sighting area, Praeger is reluctantly driven to rely more on Catherine's psychic viewing. Putting herself into a trance for an Episode of painful viewing, she manages to draw what she "sees" hovering over the forest: a jellyfish like man-of-war. As Hendricks completes his lab analysis on Donner's resin sample, Hastings pockets the test tube in an attempt to throw off the O.S.I.R.'s findings. But he clumsily touches a drop of the corrosive material and it reacts violently - immediately incinerating him to death.

With the military apparently afraid to reveal any more information about the sightings or deaths of Castor and Hastings, MacLeod gives the O.S.I.R. an hour to finish its work. Then, the officer plans on fire-bombing the entire forest and, in so doing, destroying any proof of top-secret government experimentation. As Praeger and his team race to complete their investigation, the investigator contemplates two jarring possibilities: that Elsinger knew the real truth about the government involvement even before they set out on the mission, and that his supposedly-objective supervisor might have unknown motives in his management of the O.S.I.R.

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
Dan Aykroyd - Host

Guest Stars:
Terri Hawkes - Catherine Azzopardi
Patrick Mavric - Corporal Del Castor
Jenny Levine - Private Kristin Smythe
Matthew Bennett - Captain Hastings
Richard Fitzpatrick - Colonel Andrew MacLeod

Written by: Deborah Nathan
Directed by: Stephen William