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"RollBack"

(Original air date 10/30/77)

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Steve goes undercover as a champion roller skater to infiltrate
a crime syndicate

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Writer: Steven deSouza

Director: Don McDougall



The T-Birds and the Hawks roller derby teams compete in a deciding game at the local arena. Steve has gone undercover as the Hawks' favourite, rocket number 37 Phil Taylor. His mission is to impress the manager of the T-Birds, Rand Hendricks (Robert Loggia), suspected of being the head of an international crime syndicate.

Hendricks is nervous; the stakes are too high to let the Hawks win. He and his assistant, Maureen Wright (Suzanne Charny), instruct their two top players, Miles (Rick Springfield) and Brady (Paul D'Amato), to knock Taylor out of the game.

           

Once a new start is given, Steve grabs Miles in a neck hold, forcing him to inhale chloroform before he hurls him over the rail. He nods to Oscar who nods back as Rudy rushes over to the unconscious man sprawled on the floor with a suspected compound leg fracture.

           

Incensed by the accident, The Hawks' manager (Russ Grieves) fires Steve on the spot. Their argument is played out for the benefit of Hendricks and his assistant.

At the hospital, Rudy voices his concern of having to fib about Miles's injury. Oscar assures him that it's merely a temporary situation to keep the skater from under foot until Steve can uncover Hendricks's plans.

           

Later, Steve wanders about on the roller rink, patiently waiting for the fish to bite. Minutes later, Maureen asks him back to Hendricks's office where he is offered a place on the team, much to Brady's displeasure who is jealous that Maureen is already making sheep eyes at Steve.

           

The next day, Maureen introduces Steve to the members of the team before they head on to the rink to dispute a match.

In his car parked in the alley, Oscar listens to the play on the radio, waiting for it to end before meeting with Steve at the back door to convey him new information. Interpol has just been informed that Hendricks's people are prepared to pay the sum of 10 million dollars in exchange for the documents he's supposed to appropriate himself before deadline on Halloween night. Steve is to find out what he's after, how he intends to get it and most importantly, where it will go down.

     

For their next round of practice, Hendricks has the team members wearing fancy costumes and train to jump over specific markings on the floor. Steve wonders about the purpose of this training, and gets more suspicious when he's asked to wear a backpack full of bricks.

At the hospital, Miles contact Hendricks with his doubts that his leg is truly broken. Hendricks asks him to keep silent, that he's already on to Taylor, but needs to find out what the man is after before he decides to get rid of him.

           

Another peculiar training prompts Steve to probe deeper, but Maureen remains evasive. She's as much in the dark about Hendricks's plans as he is.

Steve is puzzled when he learns that some team members have been assigned unusual hobbies. Even more disturbing is Hendricks asking him to throw darts at a particular yellow square on the wall.

           

Once everyone is out of the arena, Steve jumps to a second-storey window and sneaks inside Hendricks's office to search for clues. He finds an envelope marked Property of US Government inside which he finds the Pentagon's blueprints.

He quickly reports his findings to Oscar who's stumped as to Hendricks's true intentions. They both surmise that the Pentagon will be the target on Halloween night, a Sunday when most of the personnel is off duty. Instead of beefing up security, Oscar proposes to let the door wide open to thus catch the thieves in the act.

           

On Halloween night, Hendricks's team is geared up with costumes, masks, special rubber skates and miniature earphones. Their objective: steal top secret documents from the OSI.

They enter the ballroom in a building across from the Pentagon, briefly mingling with the crowd before Hendricks instructs them to climb down to the basement and tread along a series a tunnels, using their training to avoid triggering the security system.

           

Once Steve and Brady deactivate the remaining alarms, they skate inside Oscar's office to buckle down to their task.

           

Sensing Steve's reluctance to follow further instructions, Hendricks threatens to kill the pretty Maureen if he doesn't fulfill his assignment till the very end.

Steve starts hammering down a wall behind which is a cylinder made of unbreakable glass. In the event of a nuclear war, the secret documents are shifted through the tube down to an underground facility. Brady uses a powerful acid the cut the glass and replaces part of the cylinder with one in his backpack.

           

Afterwards, Steve applies a blow torch to the safe to trigger the illusion of a nuclear war. The documents are then automatically sent inside the cylinder.

     

They grab the papers and flee the office. Before leaving, Steve activates an alarm button located underneath the reception desk that alerts Oscar who's on standby that the robbery is taking place at the OSI.

     

Once he has the documents in hand, Hendricks trains a gun on Steve but before he can pull the trigger, Maureen elbows him in the side. Steve seizes the moment to overpower Hendricks and his band of merry men just as Oscar's men converge to the scene.

Later, Steve assures Maureen that he will support the extenuating evidence against her that will undoubtedly reduce her jail sentence.

           

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