Show: Numb3rs
Season: 3
Episode: 19
Title: Pandora’s Box
Original Air Date: March 30, 2007
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Favorite Quotes:
* Alan: Two sons who solve crimes and no one cares.
* Don: We’ve got a dead ranger and a crashed plane, it doesn’t feel like coincidence to me.
* Millie: Wow, who knew a black box wasn’t black.
* Amita: No Charlie, the point is having someone break into your house can be a very emotional thing.
* Alan: I’ve always looked at this house as an heirloom for you and Don.
Charlie: Then I paid 2%$ over market value for the heirloom.
* Edgerton: I bet I can pull the trigger before you can hit the gas.
* Amita: Somebody tricked the airplane’s computer into thinking it was 4,000 feet higher than it was.
Millie: So the crash was intentional?
* Charlie: This whole exercise was so that someone could plant a malicious program into the FAA’s computer.
Synopsis: A Park Ranger is clearing some brush. He witnesses a plane crash. He goes straight to the scene and tries to find any survivors. Instead of helping anyone someone shoots him. Alan and Charlie comes home to find they have been burglarized. Alan gives Charlie a golf club and then calls Don. Don can’t come because of a plane crash. Charlie is no longer worried about the break in, he races off to the plane crash. Don and his team are at the scene of the crash. They ask if the cause of the crash has been determined. Suddenly, Charlie appears telling them that the plane was intact when it crashed. Agent Edgerton also appears with the black box. It’s likely the killer of the ranger was the fugitive he’s tracking. The black box is damaged and Charlie volunteers the college to retrieve the data. Charlie, Amita and Millie start working on the black box. Charlie suddenly asks Amita about a dvd she let him borrow. He tells her it was stolen along with several other things from his house. Millie and Amita are concerned. Another ranger comes to the scene and talks with Colby. She’s very upset. The two park rangers were husband and wife. Colby is shocked to learn he was her husband. Suddenly, the CEO of the company who owns the plan and its mechanic come to the scene. At Don’s office, they bring up the data from the black box. The investigator runs through the data. The altimeter is off by 4,000 feet. He needs the flight management computer to find out what really happened and it still hasn’t been found. Charlie does some math to try and find the flight management computer. Charlie and Amita are back at the plane. Amita asks how he and his dad are doing with the burglary. She tells him about when her dorm got broken into and the effect it had on her. What she says triggers a thought about the plane crash for Charlie. The numbers are off by 15%. He starts walking a path down a bit. He finds the flight management box. Edgerton found some tire tracks. Charlie runs into the tent with the computer. Charlie demonstrates there was something wrong with the debris field. The debris field is larger than it should be because the plane was carrying an additional 1000 pounds not on the manifest. The investigator has cataloged everything in the debris field. The extra 1000 pounds is not there. Don asks the CEO about the extra weight. It was a scramjet prototype. He’s not thrilled it’s missing. The mechanic is also missing. Back at Don’s office, he tells them the FAA is not worried about the scramjet since it was a prototype. The investigator has learned from the computer that it was reprogrammed two days ago. Now the mechanic is officially missing. At the house, Charlie is working in the garage. Alan comes in with laundry. Charlie apologizes for leaving so quickly. Alan is really upset. To him, memories were stolen that can’t be replaced. Charlie volunteers to try and analyze theft numbers to make his dad feel better. Don comes in the garage. He looks exhausted. He was dealing with smudged prints. Charlie can fix them. At Don’s office, Charlie explains how to fix the smudge. Then he does it. They get a hit on the prints. He works in the IT department for the aerospace company. They go to Mike’s house. He runs for it. David and Colby pursue. He makes it to his car, but Edgerton is waiting for him. David and Edgerton interrogate him. He explains that it’s his job to update the flight computer every time there’s an FAA update. He’s the only one small enough to do it. He explains he was worried he installed the update incorrectly and it killed it friends. The mechanic is still missing. He doesn’t have a clean record. They get a warrant to search is apartment. Ranger Williams comes into the office to check on the case. She’s struggling and Colby tries to comfort her. Charlie and Amita are still working on the crash. Millie pops in and is shocked to learn the crash was intentional. They are going line by line. They also rerun the computers program to simulate the crash. Millie points out that the computer is the plane’s diary, so there’s more to read. They continue to program and there is a weird glitch. It somehow deleted itself. The mechanic was gone but his garbage isn’t. So they go through it. They find a lot of things ripped up. They find a lead, a storage locker. They go to the locker and find the scramjet. Edgerton looks through the whole locker and finds the mechanic, dead in a bag with a bullet in his head. They run through what happened again in the storage unit. It’s not making much sense. They bring in the CEO and interview him. Charlie interrupts. Charlie tells him the scramjet is a smokescreen. The point of this entire plane crash was to get a virus into the FAA’s mainframe. Charlie needs access to the FAA’s mainframe. The investigator comes back and tells Charlie he’s got access. In the break room, Edgerton tells Don he was questioned about Crystal Hoyle and that he backed him. Charlie determined that the malicious program is in the FAA’s computer. The program has to do with squak or the plane’s code transponder. The person who controls the program can make any plane invisible. Charlie and Amita traced the computer trail. Mike, the IT guy, is the one who wrote the program. They bring him back in. He starts to crack. He tells them that the mechanic was behind it. Victor Morales comes up. He use to work with the mechanic. They want him to meet with Morales and they wire him. Mike goes to the hangar and a Ford truck pulls in. Morales gets out of the truck. He wants to see the program work but Mike blows it. Morales has Mike as a hostage. Edgerton gets Morales though with a perfect shot. Colby goes back to the mountain with Ranger Williams. They spread her husband’s ashes. Back at the house, Millie and Alan can’t decide what to play. Charlie pops in and he has a breakthrough on the burglary. Don comes in too. He has a box and he found the stolen items. Charlie decides on a game of spoons.
Categories: Blog Archive, Numb3rs
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