(Alternate Title: "The Magnificent Fists of Marjean Holden...")
This episode has all but the kitchen sink...
Although it focuses on Max, there is also a little side adventure involving Captains Gideon and Lochley- where they get to interact with a couple of aliens from the planet Lorka...
The conundrum here is that the Lorkans live on a planet that they inherited, that has all kinds of wonderful technology that might be of some help to the general Excalibur mission...
But somewhere along the way the Lorkans became extremely overreligious, and now, they think that it was only their God given right and current righteousness that allowed them to be given access to such technology.
Look for a non-Zathras appearance of Tim Choate... he is one of the Lorkans.
Making matters worse is that the planet is in Brakiri space... and so, a jerky Brakiri ambassador must be dealt with...
Gideon and Lochley have a very fun adventure, let's just leave it at that.
Max is there to visit his ex-wife, Cynthia Allen, played by the wonderful Jamie Rose. Beautiful hair...
She has a problem that involves a tin plated loan shark named Rolf Müller (played by the perennial "crook" Sal Landi, who was involved in "John Dogget's" sons murder in The X-Files).
And because of Max wanting to "stick to the principle of the thing", he causes a little bit more trouble than he is there to solve. And therefore involves not only his ex-wife, but his ex-CAT as well!!
Max is no clod... he knows exactly how to talk to people, especially when they are about to pound his head in... we saw this in the previous episode when he angers a group of barflies, and then next thing we see, they are buying him an ice cream cone...
And so in this episode we see exactly how Max will solve a real problem, when he does not have Dureena Nafeel there to help him...
The first thing he does is he imposes on his friendship with Dr. Sarah Chambers.
And this is what I want to talk about. Marjean Holden, who plays Dr. Chambers, was also a navigator on the Excalibur when president Sheridan hijacked the ship in A Call to Arms. She was brought back to Crusade as a different character, the doctor, of course.
This is a marvelous, beautiful actress, we don't consider her sheer size... there is one incident that occurs in this episode where Mr. Müller tries to cause some trouble for Ms. Allen, while Dr. Chambers is in the room.
Initially it looks like he has the upper hand, but doctor Chambers, has the upper fist!
Marjean has fists like jackhammers, and she gives Rolf a taste. Haha!! That is only the first indignity that he suffers...
Just wait until you see what Max does to the guy!
Ms Holden is not only a great actress but does stunts as well. There is one scene where we get to see the exact size of her fist... and it is huge!
There is no Dureena in this episode, so Majean carries it, giving Dr. Chambers a little bit of focus. Not SIMPLY a country doctor, but a multilayered personality.
It is unfortunate that this show ran for a mere 13 episodes, although they focused on different characters in every episode. This episode gives us a pretty good set of stories involving several of the principal cast. But, we are missing Dureena and Galen...
There are 3 pairs in this ep... Marjean and Jamie, Rolf and Max, Lochley and Gideon... 3 pairs of great actors. I have not seen David Allen Brooks a whole lot before this show, he started out in soap operas. But he held up well against veteran Sal Landi. And then it was Cynthia Alan with Dr. Chambers... just two girls, and Max should probably not be interested in what they talked about in his absence... or maybe he would.
