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.
(
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