Episode
Dark Skies: Mercury Rising
Overview
A dream is drawing Sayers to Florida. And though Bach isn't far behind, Loengard reluctantly agrees to help find the astronaut she's seeing. As Majestic prepares a space probe to locate the alien base, Kim and John arrive in Cape Canaveral where she spots Ty Yount, an astronaut who she thinks was with her on the alien ship. And while Yount admits he's been dreaming about her too, he's hustled away by crew mate Gary Augatreux - but not before slipping Kim a note requesting that they meet. Meanwhile, having survived his seemingly fatal encounter with the Loengard family in California, Majestic cloaker-turned alien Jim Steele continues his pursuit of John and Kim.
Details
- Series
- Dark Skies
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 3
- Air date
- 1996-10-19
Episode context
Mercury Rising is Episode 3 in Season 1 of Dark Skies. It aired on 1996-10-19.
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Episode 2: Moving Targets
Following the Kennedy assassination, Bach heads for Dallas to recover the artifact Loengard used to prove the alien invasion to the President. However, when he's sent by Robert Kennedy to get it too, John meets Jesse Marcel, a government official who was in New Mexico when President Truman learned firsthand of the invasion, and who claims that an alien craft long suspected to have crashed there was really shot down.
Episode 4: Dark Days Night
Tracing alien radio transmissions received in New York City, Loengard and Sayers suspect the Hive is planning an operation around the American debut of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. At the studio where preparations are underway, they find nothing suspicious. However, after learning the radio operator they're tracking died recently in a mysterious traffic accident, they find a second phone number for another suspect operator. Meanwhile, Bach stumbles onto evidence that the Hive has been rejecting some abductees.
More episodes from this season
Episode 1: The Awakening
Arriving in Washington D.C. on the heels of the election of President John F. Kennedy, Kimberly Sayers finds work at the White House as boyfriend John Loengard plunges into his job as an aide to Congressman Charles Pratt. Sent to look into the Air force's investigation of UFO sightings, John meets a couple who claim to have been abducted by aliens. And back in Washington, he's accosted by the mysterious Navy Captain Frank Bach, whose history with UFO's dates back to when spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was downed over the Soviet Union while pursuing an alien spacecraft. Though warned that it's too risky, John confronts Bach and is recruited into the top secret Project Majestic, whose most closely guarded secrets include the body of an extra- terrestrial. With his girlfriend and his boss in the dark, John is sent to interview an Idaho farmer who has been inhabited by a parasitic alien life form that Bach says are taking over human bodies. Then, as Kim suspects John's comings and goi
Episode 5: Dreamland
With $500 in poker chips they found on Steele, Loengard and Sayers head for Las Vegas. As John makes his way to the gaming tables, Kim lands a job and meets Susan Swenson, a cocktail waitress who already knows more than she wants to about a scheme to use casino winnings to finance a Hive operation. Meanwhile, as John zeroes in on some big winners he suspects are using telepathy beat the odds, he and Kim are brought in to meet with the eccentric casino owner, Howard Hughes.
Episode 6: Inhuman Nature
Following some sightings in Wisconsin, Loengard and Sayers question dairy farmer Kester Boehm about the strange lights he's been seeing and the unusual deaths of some of his herd. Finding one of his cows implanted with a trio of triangular nodules, they head to the University of Wisconsin to see Mark Waring, a veterinary school graduate student familiar with Boehm's problem. Though already warned by Majestic against discussing the case, Waring is persuaded to talk and reveals that the implants found in Boehm's cow were not unique.
Episode 7: Ancient Future
Following up on some mysterious magnetic disturbances, Loengard and Sayers head North to Chiliwack, Alaska. There, Reverend Gary Barrow, a local minister, introduces them to his uncle, Tug Barrow. Told of an old Tlingit Indian legend about a star that fell from the sky 2,000 years ago, John and Kim suspect the tribe had contact with the Hive long ago and may even be guarding a ship that crashed near their village in 100BC. But, while investigating the sacred Tlingit site, John and Kim are caught in the massive Alaskan earthquake of 1964.
Episode 8: Hostile Convergence
Loengard's wife Kim decides that she cannot miss her sister's wedding in Denver and sneaks away from John while he meets with one of the few people who know his terrible secret. The man that Kim's sister is planning to marry is Rob Winter, but he isn't what he appears to be ... he's a Majestic agent. During the course of his assignment, Rob really does fall in love with Kim's sister and in the end, kills the people sent to harm Kim and her family instead of doing the job that he was sent to do.
Episode 9: We Shall Overcome
Following a message from his congressional colleague Mark Simonson, John and Kim are drawn to Meridian, Mississippi, where the struggle for voting rights is clouded by the disappearance of three civil rights workers. As Kim senses the Hive's presence in the town, news that Loengard is in Mississippi prompts Bach to act. Then, after being contacted by Etta Mae Tillman, John and Kim are led to where Simonson is hiding after escaping the deadly fate of his three missing civil rights co-workers.
Episode 10: The Last Wave
Following the suspicious suicide of college classmate Robert Dewey, John and Kim arrive in Los Angeles to see their old friends Nat Heller and Gina Abbott. Learning that Dewey's corpse was mysteriously confiscated by someone claiming to be with the coroner's office, Kim heads to the funeral home to investigate. Upon discovering a cameraman lurking in the bushes, she meets film student Jim Morrison, who has documented the removal of Dewey's body. And though John is suspicious, Kim befriends Morrison to find out just what he knows.
Episode 11: The Enemy Within
Following the deaths of both President Kennedy and his assassin, Bach realizes that the alien hive has planted a spy inside Majestic - and all the evidence points to his trusted aide, Jim Steele. However, Steele escapes into the Majestic complex after a failed attempt to eject the alien ganglion from his body. Meanwhile, Loengard and Sayers return to John's childhood home in California, where an uneasy reception from John's older brother Ray revives long-standing tensions between them.
Episode 12: The Warren Omission
With the Warren Commission looking into the assassination of his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asks John to testify. Despite Bach's warning, Kennedy paves the way with his own testimony before Loengard describes the events that led him into Majestic. And while John has a long way to go before convincing a skeptical Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and his fellow commission members of his story, Bach decides to thoroughly discredit him anyway.
Episode 13: White Rabbit
When Soviet operatives fire on a Hive ship over the Gulf of Tonkin, Bach claims that US naval vessels were their target and starts the country's involvement in the Vietnam War. After air strikes down a Hive ship, Bach kidnaps Loengard for a reconnaissance mission. Yet, when military officials express reservations about having Majestic's Juliet Stuart co-ordinating with Russians also tracking the Hive, Bach joins Loengard for the trip himself. Teamed with Vietnamese guide Tay Ma, Loengard comes across a crazed American soldier as he finds a Gray's severed head. And when John finds that the crash site has been visited by the Viet Cong, Bach orders him to destroy it while requesting an air strike that could kill them all.