That will teach me not to rely on teasers and promo clips. I was sure Fire in the Sky would be a wonderful mashup of some of my other favourite TV shows: Star Trek, The X-Files, Doctor Who, plus a riff on the cult classic movie that gave this episode its title. And the main story is all that – although it’s not without its problems. Unfortunately, it shares its screen time with not one but two unrelated side stories that only serve to dilute the episode in a way that almost – almost! – made me glad that George Crabtree wasn’t around to witness it.

Let’s start with a bit of time travel. In 1975, a 22-year-old American logger named Travis Walton claimed he was abducted by aliens. His co-workers reported seeing him struck by a beam of light from a craft and they all passed multiple polygraph tests – or, as Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) would call it – pneumograph tests. The incident spawned the book The Walton Experience and the 1993 movie Fire in the Sky. Fast backward to 1913 Toronto, where Murdoch and his fellow members of the Astronomical Society find a man, Joseph Sutter (Craig Olejnik) – naked and covered in slimy goo – who claims to have been returned from outer space. The kicker? He passes Murdoch’s pneumograph test with flying colours.

Thankfully, this is where the similarities between the old and the new Fire in the Sky end. The movie has a nightmare-inducing sequence where Walton is trapped in a gooey cocoon and subjected to a graphic eye-probing procedure that hurts my eyes just thinking about it, whereas Murdoch Mysteries focuses on how people react to Sutter’s story and on Murdoch’s efforts to find out what really happened, since Men from Mars, or the Moon, or-or Venus do not exist. Just ask Constable Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch) who in true Murdoch Mysteries style anticipates the Fermi Paradox, echoing physicist Enrico Fermi who famously asked But where is everybody?

The Truth Is Out There

Despite its otherworldly premise, this is a story this show is uniquely equipped to tell. It makes absolute sense that Murdoch would be a member of the Astronomical Society, that he is up to speed on Einstein’s work, and that he would want to watch the meteor procession. Nitpick alert: in the real Great Meteor Procession of 1913, fireballs moved slowly in a horizontal formation across the sky, not as the shooting stars from typical meteor showers depicted in this episode. Nevertheless, I love that writer Noelle Girard worked in this historical event, and that director Jayson Clute chose to film some scenes at the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, showcasing the iconic Great Telescope.

Olejnik is wonderful in portraying Sutter as a fragile soul who is absolutely convinced – and convincing – that he is, in fact, an extraterrestrial and wants nothing more than to go back to his home in the stars. Despite his scepticism, Murdoch remains respectful and sympathetic to Sutter. He is reluctant to send this obviously troubled and traumatized man to the asylum (and rightly so, given that some of the so-called sane characters, like Sutter’s landlady who does not want spacemen around me, and the man who stabs him for being a traitor to the human race, are arguably as mad as a box of frogs themselves). Meanwhile, Constable Roberts (Kataem O’Connor) is keeping an open mind and Inspector Choi (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) is disappointed when it turns out our spaceman is most definitely from Earth, but Chief Constable Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) is definitely not a believer: the man’s a crackpot.

I Want to Believe

Murdoch’s investigation into the hoax brings him in contact with Doctor Boys (Thom Zimerle), the head of the Physics Department at the University of Toronto. While the plot is well-constructed and it takes all of Murdoch’s scientific acumen to solve this mystery – it turns out Boys orchestrated the alien abduction hoax to discredit Sutter’s work proving the universe is expanding – unfortunately, from the way he stressed the words static universe you did not need a telescope to see the culprit coming from light-years away.

So, this main story has some genuinely good ideas and funny scenes, but it’s not without its faults. Chief among them: what is Murdoch’s great-great-great-granddaughter Macy (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) doing here? For those of you who have no idea who she is: Macy Murdoch is a YA spin-off to Murdoch Mysteries that follows Macy and her friends as they use a time machine to travel from the present day back to Toronto in the 1910s. Since Murdoch Mysteries largely stays within the realm of the possible, they can’t portray time travel to be real. Still, a little nod for diehard fans is fine – Macy appears in the background in the Season 16 episode Whatever Happened to Abigail Prescott. But this time, it’s clear she’s only here to drum up some business for the recently announced Season 3 of the spinoff show. This is not some other Macy who just happens to look like William’s descendant. This is her, and she decided to travel back in time and interact with her great-great-great-grandfather. Why? Because I just have a feeling it’s of great value. Yet she plays no role whatsoever in the plot, apparently does not seem to care about upsetting the timeline, and has no qualms about entering Station House 4 where Higgins might very well recognize her. This is what happens when marketing trumps creative storytelling – no matter how adorably they cross their arms in the same way.

E.T. Phone Home

I will say that the episode grew on me as I rewatched it – however, it did leave me with questions. Why did Sutter not know that the universe won’t be torn apart anytime soon? How would Boys know that Sutter would be susceptible to being convinced that he was amongst extraterrestrials? And why – in that glorious final scene – was he so clearly back on the roof of Station House 4 and still using Murdoch’s equipment to phone home?

Still, my biggest nits to pick are the secondary storylines: Miss Hart’s (Shanice Banton) ongoing problems with Ephraim Currant (Emmanuel Kabongo) and Detective Watts’ (Daniel Maslany) efforts to help her, and Constable Roberts’ timid but sweet attempts to ask Miss Berger (Lucy Hill) on a date. At least the latter is loosely tied to the main story (I could never take a man seriously who entertains such wild ideas), but Miss Hart’s troubles could have been part of any episode. I suspect this was done as a setup for next week’s season finale, but surely Watts would have been intrigued by an alien in the station house? Not to mention that awfully coincidental alibi: Currant couldn’t have had a better alibi if he had directed that movie himself.

Despite its flaws, Fire in the Sky is a genuinely fun episode that does what this show does best: take a wild premise and make it feel completely at home in 1913 Toronto. Just maybe skip the field trip from the future next time.