Buckle up, folks, because this episode’s plot is a *wild* ride.
A Tarn and a human are brutally murdered. They both work for the same company, they both own dogs, and a strange alien of the latex-prosthetics-and-human-eyes type was seen near both crime scenes. When Brogan and Haldane track him down, he kidnaps Brogan and tells him that his planet was invaded by some aliens called the Omeara (believe me, I keep wanting to put in an apostrophe), and Demeter City is next unless he stops them. For some reason Brogan actually believes this guy. After a third murder, Haldane and Brogan discover that all three victims were on the board of a company called Demeter Dogs, which claims to have developed a vaccine to protect dogs against Creon Fever, which is otherwise fatal to them (still with me?) and is now also selling Golden Retrievers to the people of Demeter City. As our hero cops work out that the dogs have a silicone chip implanted in their brains which can be triggered by a combination of the “vaccine” and a remote-control device, the O’Meara, sorry, Omeara, have identified Brogan and plot to murder him by giving his daughter one of the Demeter Dogs. The dog is triggered and it takes Brogan and Haldane far too long to hit on the idea of breaking the remote control, which they do before it savages the Brogan offspring of course. The bad guys are brought to justice and the vigilante strolls off into the sunset, but the Brogans can’t keep the dog because a) the vaccine was a fake, and b) episodic series have a reset button.
I have many questions, of course, like, why bother with the fake vaccine at all and not just have the silicone chip trigger, and why everyone seems so chill with Vigilante Man who at the very least has obstructed police proceedings, and why the O’Meara, sorry, Omeara, are killing off people who are collaborating with them. But they will not be answered.
High points include learning that on Demeter City, rather than working up a sketch of a suspect from witness’ statements, they just get a Tarn to scan the witness’ memory and print off a picture. Which is sort of cool.
The O’Meara, sorry, Omeara, look suspiciously like Lord Voldemort, though I can’t find any direct connections between the effects teams on the early Harry Potter movies and this one (the effects director on this series is Neill Gorton, later to do an awful lot of Doctor Who, but as far as I can tell he never worked on Harry Potter, or at least won’t admit to it on his CV). The attack dog puppet is hilariously fake-looking.
Also, I actually spotted a non-White extra in the police station, but it is still a bit of a mayonnaise festival around there.
A Doctor Of Many Things 