As the deaths of regular characters mount up, connoisseurs of the Anderson oeuvre will recognise that we are already up to the Episode with the Reset Button– the one where everyone gets killed but it’s all a dream or an alternate universe or time paradox or something. Normally these work better later in the series when the audience has had time to become emotionally invested in the characters, but I’m not sure that really matters here.
Anyway, Brogan et al. are engaging in a routine raid on a counterfeiting organisation when suddenly a cyborg bursts in and starts shooting. This cyborg looks suspiciously like an off-brand T-800, and indeed says “I’ll be back” at one point in the story. During the subsequent firefight a young man who was an innocent bystander to the counterfeiting racket falls into a vat of acid, surviving but horribly burned and in a coma, and the viewer has already figured out who the cyborg is at that point.
Of course, it takes Brogan another 40 or so minutes to come to that same conclusion and persuade it to go back in time and reset history, and I’m sorry to say that much of the entertainment factor in this story comes from watching Haldane, Castle, Tookie et al meet gruesome ends at the cyborg’s hands. Brogan’s wife also gets a clue and leaves him, though as with everything else in the Brogan family subplot she manages to time the announcement so it makes no emotional or narrative sense at all.
A Doctor Of Many Things 