SCORPION: PILOT {SERIES PREMIERE} (TV)
Summary
The pilot of this dramatic suspense series about a team of geniuses working to solve crises for the United States government.
In Callan, Ireland, a special forces team breaks into a small farm and find a little boy, Walter O’Brien, inside; he apparently hacked into NASA and offers them an extradition form in exchange for his confession and safety. Years later, Walter is an adult living in the United States, and breaks up with his girlfriend due to his inability to connect with her on an emotional level, demonstrated when he creates a “decision tree” based on her probable reactions and schedules their breakup during a job to “be more efficient.” While repairing computers at a diner, Walter notices that Ralph, the young son of a waitress named Paige, is behaving unusually and asks his mother to “help him” before leaving. Walter and his roommates, all working as repairmen, live in a garage and siphon electricity from the power grid, as they have neglected to pay their bills. Their other roommate Toby, a behaviorist from Harvard, runs back in a panic, pursued by gangsters for beating them in poker. Walter is frustrated that he and his peers, all talented geniuses, are having difficulty making a living.
The thugs are driven away by the arrival of a squad of United States special agents led by the man who arrested Walter when he was a child. Walter is highly distressed and orders him to leave, but he does not. The man is Homeland Security Agent Cabe Gallo, who says that an automatic update in the Los Angeles International Airport tower contained a bug which has interrupted regular communications, forcing flights to be diverted elsewhere. However, dozens of flights are out of communications range and are in danger of crashing, and Gallo needs Walter to repair the software and save them. Walter refuses, but begrudgingly changes his mind when Gallo offers a large payment to him and his associates.
The group proves to be unable to reach the airport and Walter suggests that they stop by the diner he was in earlier, as it has a wireless signal which should allow them to remotely upload the necessary software. They enter the diner and Gallo commandeers the use of the owner’s computers. The customers are ejected from the diner and the only staff remaining are Paige, accompanied by Ralph. Gallo gets Walter in touch with Brooks, the air traffic supervisor, and Walter walks him and his staff through the process of reinstalling the old, un-bugged software. During all of this he speaks with Paige and makes educated guesses that she is a single mother who is devoted to her young son. However, she resents his assumptions about her life and says that Ralph is “challenged,” asking Walter to be more empathic. Walter helps Paige realize that Ralph is actually a genius, demonstrated when he beats his associate Sylvester in an impromptu chess match. He also advises Paige to help him learn to make physical contact with her so as to better communicate with him.
Toby and Happy, another of Walter’s associates and a mechanical genius, travel to a data center in order to retrieve the previous copy of the air control software, but find that the facility is shut down and an automatic update of the system is impending, which will make their mission impossible. Walter advises that they change strategies, and they are willing to accept a couple of lost planes if it means saving the rest. Paige emphatically calls for Walter to reconsider, believing that he is intelligent enough to resolve the situation without casualties. This gives Walter the idea to cause a minor power outage, thus allowing Happy and Toby to gain access to the data center. Inside they find a massive server bank, but Toby is able to use various visual clues in order to discern the location of the LAX hard drive and pull it out before the automatic update can begin. Meanwhile, Sylvester talks to Paige about what is likely going through Ralph’s mind; he is busying himself with calculations and speculation, barely aware of other people around him. Sylvester says that it is not Paige’s fault that she has difficulty connecting with him, and notes that he hasn’t spoken to his own parents in ten years. Gallo expresses doubts in Walter’s associates, and admits that he has been keeping tabs on Walter for years.
Walter attempts to send the software from the hard drive to LAX, but the software has become corrupted, thus making it useless. Walter is highly upset and knows that military fighter jets are on standby to shoot the planes down over the ocean in order to prevent ground casualties. Paige recognizes that Walter is frightened and tries to talk some sense into him despite his protestations that it will not work. Walter notices Ralph looking upward at a plane passing overhead and gets an idea, telling Gallo not to activate the fighter jets. He theorizes that many of the flights will have previous versions of the control software on board, and believes they can communicate with them by having the flights do a low pass over a nearby airfield. Gallo believes it is dangerous and doesn’t want to shut down major roadways in order to get them there, so Walter goes behind his back and asks Happy to hack into the city’s traffic signal protocols. Everyone is assigned tasks to complete this objective, but no one is available to drive Walter to the airfield. Ralph surprises Paige by offering her the keys to her car, and she volunteers to drive Walter. Walter is unwilling to risk Paige’s life, but she notes that Ralph has been much more responsive with them than he ever was with her, and she believes that helping them could help her form an understanding with him.
Paige maneuvers through the streets at high speeds, nearly avoiding several collisions in the process. Gallo chases after them and smashes into an oncoming truck to prevent it from hitting them. Toby, Happy, and Sylvester manage to get in contact with an airline passenger via his out-of-date cell phone. They patch Walter through to the plane’s captain and he instructs him to buzz the tower at the airfield so that they can email Walter their uncorrupted software. However, Walter is unable to download the software due to the speed of the passing plane. He comes up with a new strategy: he has Happy assist him in breaking into a Ferrari and asks the captain to fly the plane several feet off the runway so that he can manually connect his computer to theirs and download the software. Paige is uneasy about this plan, but Walter asks her to trust him. They speed down the runway at two hundred miles per hour as the plane’s co-pilot reaches out through the underbelly of the plane, handing Paige a cable to link to Walter’s computer. They manage to barely stay in tandem with the plane as the software downloads and is transferred to the LAX systems, thus saving the various planes. The plane pulls back up, narrowly avoiding a collision with the control tower, and Walter manages to stop the Ferrari and avoid crashing.
Gallo gives Walter the money he promised, and Walter gets him to agree to give Paige a payment as well. Gallo also reveals that he came to Los Angeles to start a “strategic response team” meant to deal with all manner of threats to national security. Walter, having anticipated this offer, hands Gallo demands for him and his team to be given large salaries and a proper research facility. Gallo agrees and the rest of Walter’s team are ecstatic about their new jobs. Later, Walter visits Paige at her apartment to thank her for her assistance. He also offers her a job working with them in the strategic response team, hoping that it would give him the opportunity to “translate” Ralph’s thoughts for her; he also hopes that her common sense will prove invaluable in helping his team interact with “normal” people. Paige asks about Walter’s history with Gallo, and Walter reveals that when he was sixteen he developed software for him meant to guide military aid packages, which was then appropriated by the military as a missile guidance system. The missiles used were dropped on Baghdad and caused thousands of civilian deaths, which continue to haunt Walter. He advises Paige to encourage Ralph not to be hesitant about what he is capable of doing and guide him to be able to socialize with others. Ralph says hello to Walter, making him the first person he has spoken to other than Paige. Walter sits down to play video games with Ralph. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: CBS
- DATE: November 30, 1999 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:40:49
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 116188
- GENRE: Drama, mystery/suspense
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, mystery/suspense; Technology; U S - Politics and government; Asian American Pacific Islanders Collection
- SERIES RUN: CBS - TV series, 2014-2018
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Justin Lin … Executive Producer, Director
- Nick Santora … Executive Producer, Created by, Writer
- Alex Kurtzman … Executive Producer
- Roberto Orci … Executive Producer
- Walter O'Brien … Executive Producer
- Heather Kadin … Executive Producer
- Scooter Braun … Executive Producer
- Danny Rose … Co-Executive Producer
- Elyes Gabel … Cast, Walter O'Brien
- Katharine McPhee … Cast, Paige Dineen
- Robert Patrick … Cast, Agent Cabe Gallo
- Eddie Kaye Thomas … Cast, Toby Curtis
- Jadyn Wong … Cast, Happy Quinn
- Ari Stidham … Cast, Sylvester Dodd