From tmiller@prism.gatech.edu Wed Mar 6 14:23:54 1991 Date: Wed, 6 Mar 91 16:19:57 -0500 Here is the guide! I have had much help from people on the net and do not claim full credit for this list. There may be mistakes, and there are definitely hazy areas that need to be filled in. Mail me any corrections and I will update/correct as needed. I have here 22 episodes but have been advised that there are 25. STINGRAY episode guide (version 1.03) "Stingray" ? (premiere) District attorney gets brain fried by drug lord and is rendered a vegetable. Assistant DA contacts Ray to help (love interest also). He uses one favor to get a good doctor for the DA and then goes after the drug lord himself. Only 2-hour episode there was? Culminates with a Rolls going into the ocean. " ? " A deadly virus is loose and inside some small vials. Some guy has these vials and is crazed with the virus and is loose and running around. One of the vials breaks and wipes out an entire town. At the end, Ray manages to get the stuff out of the guy's hands (including a close last-minute catch of one). He is infected and gets admitted to a hospital, but later when they come to check him and ask him why they can't ID him, he's gone. "That Terrible Swift Sword" Ray is contacted by a travelling gospel show singer to find out who is killing prostitutes wherever the show goes. After a few red herrings he finds evidence in the singer's trailer that she herself is the killer, then proceeds to stop her latest attempt. The episode concludes with her in an asylum, alternately sane and insane (a somewhat sad scene). Ray uses two favors in this episode. First, he gets a preacher on a TV evangelist show to hire away someone in the traveling show, so a vacancy opens and Ray can pose as a preacher. Ray had saved this man's daughter from something in the past. Second, he gets a newspaper/records-keeper to look up the background of the entire gospel show crew. "The Greeter" Ray investigates the disappearance of a woman's husband. He worked at a chemical company, but she hasn't been able to get through to him in awhile. No one in the town will admit to the existence of the man. It turns out that he was killed when he found out that the company was selling counterfeit antibiotics to third world countries. Ray exposes them in the end with the help of "the greeter". "Gemini" Someone is impersonating Ray and killing his potential clients and then pinning it on him. He is betrayed by a woman lawyer at the beginning of the episode (someone he helped in the past) and thus gets arrested and taken away. He makes his escape at a restaurant by switching the chairs and jackets around and fooling the officer into thinking that he left. The impostor is revealed to be an old friend of Ray's who was supposedly killed in 1973 or so; he blames Ray for his ~15 year imprisonment behind enemy lines (USSR?). Ray has to travel out to the east coast to talk to the man's wife to confirm that he is still alive. After he returns to Ca., Ray uses the lawyer as bait, and a chase of two black Stingrays ensues. The ex-friend refuses to accept Ray's account of what happened and shoots him, then can't bring himself to kill him, so he flees in his Corvette. The police chase him until he wrecks and burns up. Ray mentions in this episode that he was in the CIA circa 1973. "Echoes" Ray helps a former client of his; three years ago some man was trying to kill her and Ray stopped him (the guy fell out a window). Now the woman, a sculptress, is getting threatening calls and is scared that the man didn't die and is after her again. Ray calls in a favor from a blind audio-tape splicer who has exceptional hearing, and he verifies that it is indeed the same voice. He traces the phone line somehow and finds the calls to be emanating from a warehouse owned by the "dead" man's parents. They know nothing and don't appreciate Ray bringing this up. Eventually there is a confrontation and the guy dies, for real this time. "The First Time is Forever" An old reporter is killed, and his daughter gets Ray to find out why. He uses a favor from a comedian who does voice impersonations for something, and eventually discovers evidence that was missed at the dead man's house. It turns out that the reporter had found about illegal relocations of various criminals and deported people into the U.S. Using a camera inside a plane engine, Ray gets a confession of sorts out of the bad guys, and the police get them all. This episode has several of Ray's flashbacks to his past. From the scenes seen in this episode, Ray killed a gang leader when he was very young (~18 or so) and has always been very troubled about this. He takes confession at the end of the episode. "Autumn" This episode was very unusual. An older mystery author is in the process of writing her last great novel, and sort of borrows Ray's exploits to do it. He follows a trail of clues left for him, all the while wondering who is doing this and why. At the same time, the author's sister is gradually poisoning her. Eventually Ray finds them out, and he and the author stage her death. The sister finds this, and confesses to herself, at which point the police, the author, and Ray pop out and arrest her. The two sisters sort of make up as the one goes to jail. "Neniwa" A contractor is planning on destroying a sacred Indian burial ground to build there. Ray is asked to help, and uses a favor from a librarian to get him a guise as a visiting professor. There are several fights between the workers and the Indians, and Ray saves the life of the young, pretty student who contacted him. By the end of the episode, the contractor (also an Indian himself) is convinced not to destroy all the tradition and magic of the site. This decision is finalized when Ray unearths some magic stones. An eagle flew around a lot in this episode. "Night Maneuvers" A military school student on a motorcycle witnesses a killing, and the perpetrators cars are from his academy. He contacts Ray to find out what is going on here. Ray assumes an identity as an officer visiting the academy. He quickly has a run-in with a hostile sergeant (though he beats him in hand-to-hand combat). He later finds gasoline floating on the surface of a nearby lake, and goes diving to investigate. Ray finds a wallet, which shows that the dead man was a DEA agent posing as a dealer to catch people. The roommate of the student who contacted Ray blabs to his buddies, and they kill him and make it look like a suicide. These guys, one instructor and three students, consider themselves to be some kind of cleansing force to get rid of criminals and such. Ray catches on, and he and the student are taken at gunpoint to some woods by the bad guys, but they manage to turn the tables and capture them all. The sergeant helps with this. It is only too obvious in this episode that Ray has had some sort of wilderness training, as well as martial arts experience. Also, at the end, after Ray is gone their check of his ID finally comes through - and shows a black officer who was killed in 'Nam. Meanwhile, Ray drives away smiling. "Caper" Ray is hired to smuggle a Russian defector off of an ocean liner where he is kept tranquilized in a crate by some Russian guards. The thief Ray wants to help him on this one is in jail, so he points Ray to "the next best guy", who rapidly proves himself to be a bumbling incompetent. Also assisting are an old actor and a woman friend of Ray's. Every possible thing that could go wrong does, but they finally manage to get this guy out of his crate and to America where his wife is waiting. "One Way Ticket to the End of the Line" A woman's father disappears in some small town, and she contacts Ray to find him. The man was a crop duster, and it turns out that he was interfering in some local drug lord's marijuana crops, so he was shot down. In fact, there are two rival growers at work here. A DEA undercover agent (female, of course) seems to be helping Ray but near the end is revealed to be in the employ of one of the drug lords. But that's okay, because Ray had earlier used a favor from a DEA agent he knew to get him some information as well as to set up an ambush. We learn this second fact as the agents swarm in to save Ray and the daughter in the nick of time. The old pilot is alive and well also. "Ancient Eyes" Mexican couples in need of work are going to a sugar farm and never coming back. Ray finds this out through an elderly couple he helped in the past sometime; they point him to the mother of somebody who disappeared there. Ray uses a favor from some lady from a college nearby, she is to pose as his wife. There is a definite indication here of a previous romantic interest that did not work out...They get into the camp, and are treated badly from the outset. She reports that some of the women have been raped and their husbands beaten. Ray does some nighttime reconnaisance. The next day, he is working in the fields when his "wife" is taken away with the guy who runs this whole show. Ray runs like hell to prevent a rape, and barely makes it. He is quite angry, and beats the hell out of him. Then he calls the police station and reports all of this, ties some cable around his waist under his shirt, and exits the trailer only to run into all the bad guys. As they are about to shoot him, the police officer (only one) arrives. Ray punches him in order to be taken away (and thus escape). He later breaks out of jail, and he and the lone officer have it out with all the bad folks and win. "Ether" People are dying in a hospital, and Ray is hired to find out why this is. He uses a favor from a doctor to get him an identity and some experience (actually, he apparently speed-reads many books to learn something about what he's getting into). Later he is called upon to operate (by the head doctor at the hospital) in order to prove his identity. He gets his doctor friend to do it and then switches places with him before he leaves the operating room. It turns out that the main doctor at the hospital is in the employ of a rich old bad guy, who is using the people who are dying (all John and Jane Does w/o relatives) are being used to produce a serum for this rich guy, who is dying of an unknown ailment. Ray has his doctor friend comment to the bad guys that Ray has an interest in unorthodox experiments, which leads him into their fold and eventually reveals what is going on. "Abnormal Psych" Ray investigates after a college student attempts to kill him. He uncovers a plot concerning the use of mind control drugs or hypnotism or both on students, and the having them commit murders and/or suicides as needed. At one point Ray calls in a favor from a police chief to search the professor's house. Also, Robert Vaughn appears in this episode as an old nemesis of Ray's, drugging him at one point. The professor gets caught after a brief car chase, and Ray pursues the evil Mr. Vaughn to a plane. But old Robert has kidnapped the student, and put her in a car filled with explosives, and sends it coasting away as he boards his helicopter. He muses about how Ray has no choice, and always was the noble one, etc etc. Ray rescues the girl as Robert escapes. Some hints of Ray's (CIA?) past are dropped here, having to do with Robert Vaughn. My memory fails me on some of the details above though. A neat phone-tap device was used at one point. "Sometimes You Gotta Sing the Blues" Ray is sleeping peacefully in a large house when he is arrested in the middle of the night. He is not pleased and later demands an explanation when brought to the police chief's office. He is told by the chief that he was brought in for the murder of the chief's wife, but the chief knows that Ray didn't do it. He also informs Ray that he has a good-sized file on him, and that he had him arrested so that he could tell him all this because the chief is about to be arrested for the murder of his own wife. And he is about a minute later, leaving Ray to solve this mystery. Ray, with the help of the chief's secretary (who is madly in love with the chief), finds that the poor guy was framed by a candidate for governor (and his cronies). This guy used illegal information gathering to threaten and blackmail rivals, and the chief had evidence. Also his wife was cheating on him, though I don't think Ray told him that in the end. Ray presented the evidence to some powerful political figure and solved the case. The secretary didn't get the attentions of the chief though and was heartbroken. "Bring me the Hand That Hit Me" Ray is asked by the sister of a guy who is in trouble to help him out. It turns out that the brother and another guy ripped off a big mob boss. Ray "joins" their gang and attempts to set the brother straight. But the brother is inherently "bad" and ends up indirectly causing the death of his sister, and goes to jail with this guilt trip. "Blood Money" Ray is asked by a high school principal to help set three kids straight. They are running around with an ex-con and getting into trouble. Ray attempts to show them the right path and brings them to a house he is staying at. The ex-con kills the principal. He and Ray have a showdown, and the police show up to arrest the ex- con. The house Ray was staying in is owned by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who makes a cameo at the end of the show. "Below the Line" A woman has a missing husband who went to work at a marine research station. No one there claims to have ever heard of him. Ray joins the research station as a diver, and gets distracted by a pretty marine biologist with "three feet of leg and thigh". He eventually finds out that the station's owner has been stealing oil from an offshore oil rig and selling it. Ray brings them down but the husband has been killed off. The biologist is working for the bad guys and goes to jail. "Orange Blossoms" Ray investigates Soviet abduction of scientists in a psychiatric hospital. They were being taken by helicopter. "Anytime, Anywhere" Ray goes to Vietnam to secure a golden statue and is blinded by a bomb blast. He learns to cope and survive with the help of a blind American veteran there. He has to flee from some people who are trying to kill him. Eventually his eyesight returns and he's okay. The vet has a tattoo (Anytime, Anywhere) thus the title. "Less Than the Eye Can See" ? Ray is called upon to figure out how and why six people in an isolation experiment killed each other/died. He does so by being a participant in a re-creation of this experiment. It turns out that some burning insulation produced fumes that induced psychotic behavior in those who inhaled them. I think Ray almost fell prey to this effect.