"Forever Knight" Bad Blood (1994)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Allan Kroeker

Writers:

James D. Parriott (creator) and
Barney Cohen (creator)

TV Series:

"Forever Knight" (1989)

Original Air Date:

7 November 1994 (Season 2, Episode 4)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Horror | Mystery

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Vampire | Police | Immortal | Flashback | Multiple Time Frames

Cast

Geraint Wyn Davies	...	Det. Nicholas 'Nick' Knight / Nicholas de Brabant
Catherine Disher	...	Dr. Natalie Lambert
Nigel Bennett	...	Lacroix
Deborah Duchene	...	Janette
Natsuko Ohama	...	Capt. Amanda Cohen
John Kapelos	...	Det. Don Schanke
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Krista Bridges	...	Sharon
John E. Campbell	...	Young O'Neal Boy
Gary Farmer	...	Detective Norton
Theadora Farray	...	Raven Waitress
Kimberly Huie	...	Bridget Hellman
Lesley Kelly	...	Policewoman
Ken Ketter	...	Barber / The Ripper
Earl Pastko	...	Miklos
Bryan Renfro	...	Jogger
Sandi Ross	...	Grace Balthazar
Cliff Saunders	...	Irish Man
Todd Schroeder	...	Karl
Cedric Smith	...	Liam O'Neal
John Swindells	...	Father Hurley

Jack the Ripper?

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This was a pretty good episode, but it was also a bit disappointing. The story is supposed to be about Jack the Ripper, but it did not make much sense. Like many TV episodes about Jack the Ripper (remember Kolchack The Night Stalker had one), this one proposes the theory that he never died, and was killing several people every twenty years or so. The episode also proposed that LaCroix created Jack the Ripper by accident, and that Jack the Ripper was a vampire who used to be a barber. Most of the modern theories are that Jack the Ripper was a member of royalty, so this story is already dated compared to more recent theories.

Anyhow, the point is that you never actually see Jack the Ripper until the end of the episode, and he is a chubby, ugly guy who gets run over by a car. That is not exactly a very supernatural ending, and there is never any actual confrontation between Nick Knight and Jack the Ripper. Even worse, Jack has no lines, and there is never any back-story told and none of the mythos of Jack the Ripper is exploited for effects. Most of the episode is about an inspector from Ireland who was bitten by a vampire when he was a little boy. That is shown only in a memory flashback, and he never discusses it with anybody. So there is no clear connection between Jack the Ripper and the inspector. What was the point? The inspector also figures out that Nick is a vampire, and the inspector also kills off a vampire at the end of the show.

So for all intents and purposes, the name of Jack the Ripper was just thrown into the story for the sake of making a bland tale more interesting. It could have been about any vampire. What is even sillier is that the other vampires are blaming themselves for unleashing Jack the Ripper on humanity, yet they probably have killed as many people as he has? What made him worse than a regular vampire? Because so little time was spent on the actual character of Jack the Ripper (and he never speaks a single line), there really is nothing to pull the viewer into the theory that Jack was an undead vampire. It was just a name tossed in for effect. In spite of that, the story was pretty good because the inspector from Ireland was pretty entertaining.