Siren

The Cetacean is called in on behalf of the Navy when an engineer for a major defense contractor is kidnapped in the open sea; Mark is able to save the man’s daughter, but can’t find him. Mark assumes that the man is now a hostage of offshore pirates with their own submarine, but what he can’t explain is the entrancing singing heard even through the water. He believes it to be a siren, though his human colleagues dismiss this idea as a myth. But how else can the pirates’ ability to convince others to do their bidding be explained?

written by Michael Wagner
directed by Edward Abroms
music by Fred Karlin

Cast: Patrick Duffy (Mark Harris), Alan Fudge (C.W. Crawford), Neville Brand (Stringer), Laurette Spang (Amanda Trevanian), Michael Strong (Hugh Trevanian), Lisa Richards (Jenny Reynolds), Timothy Scott (Caine), Carol Miyaoka (Mermaid), Richard Laurance Williams (Jomo), J. Victor Lopez (Chuey), Gary Tomlin (Cetacean Crew), Kim Lankford (Cetacean)

Notes: Belinda Montgomery is absent from this episode, though the character of Dr. Elizabeth Merrill is said to be attending a Senate hearing. In her place, and making her sole appearance in the series, is Lisa Richards as Jenny Reynolds. When Mark sings his own song to calm the “siren”, he’s actually singing the theme from Man From Atlantis. Writer Michael Wagner went on to write scripts for Hill Street Blues and Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as creating the short-lived Parker Stevenson series PROBE with famed SF writer Isaac Asimov. Guest star Laurette Spang would go on to a regular part on Battlestar Galactica, in which she played Cassiopeia.