episode #86 - Rollback

episode #7 of 5th season / Air Date: 10/30/77    written by Steven E. de Souza :arrow:Directed by Don McDougall

It's the Roller Derby episode - as the episode begins, we see that Austin is already undercover as one of the derby players; he plays the part of a particularly brutal player and (obviously) new to the scene. Goldman and Wells are also there; with their help, Austin puts one of the other players (Rick Springfield) out of commission so that he could be hired on as a replacement. But, the corrupt manager (Robert Loggia) of the team is sharper than he looks and is on to the scam. He puts a quartet of players (including Austin) through some very strange training - also dressing them up in weird costumes - as part of his scheme to sell state secrets to a foreign government. The plan is to enter an annual DC Halloween charity party and use a series of tunnels to get to the Pentagon offices and steal documents. The roller skating is to be used to circumvent certain alarm systems.
There's really not that many Roller Derby scenes as one might expect at the start of the episode. The focus becomes  the special illegal mission to sneak into the targeted government offices. The final act is all about the costumed criminals (and Austin) making their way through the tunnel network and then into the actual Pentagon. It's rather similar to a Mission:Impossible episode, with the obvious difference being that the agents are crooks. For some reason, Loggia's character has figured out all the angles and knows all the security details to smoothly instruct the four agents through their paces. It's never explained how he knows all this information. This certainly strains belief, especially in regard to such a supposedly impregnable facility as the Pentagon. The whole mission ends on a somewhat anti-climactic note, with brief, minimal bionic action by Austin to wrap up the crooks. BoG's Score: 5.5 out of 10