[48] As seen over in Symphony No. 4, Fifth Movement: Requiem for a Lensman.

[160] My original choice of opening Who song was "The Seeker", which I thought suited the changes between the Vegas show and UF. It's also one of my favorite Who songs. We were lifting the Vegas cast en masse, though, so it made sense to keep the original song. CC

[170] Dr. Edmond Locard (1877-1966), a French physician and criminologist, is today regarded as one of the patron saints of forensic science. Locard's Exchange Principle, one of the cornerstones of the modern forensic approach, states that the perpetrator of a crime will inevitably leave some trace of himself at the scene of his crime - and take with him, however unwittingly, some trace of the scene as well. Ardie suggested the title, if memory serves.

[176] Not my first EPU credit - that would be Second Chances over in Symphony #4 - but in many ways the more meaningful one to me. I'd originally posited setting CSI in UF to Ard before I'd even been invited into the studio, going so far (at her suggestion, mind) to write up a sample opening so she could pass it around. In the end, the limiting factor was simply getting Gryph to the point of being able to invest time into actually watching the show, hence the lag between my induction and first credit and this series, my first real major contribution to the UF universe.

The setup of my first CSI: NA sample? The night shift gets one of the biggest possible red ball cases ever: the disappearance of Kei Morgan. CC

[193] The IPO crime lab is on the tenth floor of Headquarters for no special reason. It would probably have made more technical sense to put it in the basement (where, as we will learn in "Parallel Lines", the morgue is), but hey, criminalists need sunlight too.

[195] At this point in the timeline, the crime lab has its own rank system, independent of the police-style ranks used by most of the IPO and the paramilitary ranks used by the Tactical Division. Below the field grades, the lab workers have various nonspecific titles - "Analyst", "Evidence Technician", that kind of thing. Above them in seniority are the Crime Scene Investigators themselves, the field personnel, who come in three grades, 1, 2, and 3, with 3 being the highest. Above them on the org chart are two shift supervisors and the lab director (though at this point those three jobs are filled by two people, since Grissom is both lab director and night-shift supervisor). A CSI2 is roughly equivalent, in terms of administrative clout, to a CID detective sergeant, though at this point IPO CSIs are not sworn enforcement officers and don't have arrest powers.

[208] I envisioned this working in something like the way the FBI's crime lab is often asked for help by less well-equipped local departments, much like the IPO's Criminal Investigation Division can be asked to assist on the investigative side in the manner of Scotland Yard.

[213] Again, I had no specific reason for making Sara Salusian; it just occurred to me that they represent a significant portion of New Avalon's population and should turn up in any reasonably representative group of characters, and for whatever reason, she seemed like the one whose look best worked with the change. (Grissom, on the other hand, pretty much had to be Salusian once I'd decided that Sara was, because of their past connections.)

[219] Actually, at 5'10", the Chief is an inch taller.

[268] It's as much as he deserves for wandering into the office in day-off slobvian mode.

[295] Sure, there's almost certainly a computer to do this, but where's the fun in that?

[346] A 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R32 - with appropriate tweaking, the finest car (and, in its plain gunmetal-grey paint scheme, the most excellent sleeper) in the original Gran Turismo. Superior to the subsequent R33 in pretty much every respect.

[383] Maybe he has... or maybe he was just lonely. It hasn't really occurred to Sara yet that he might be subject to the same prosaic impulses and desires as anybody else.

[419] "That's the bedroom. But nothing ever happened in there!" "What a crime."

[420] Odds are she picked this habit up on Vulcan, where, as we will learn, she spent several years earning her master's degree.

[432] Kitty "Shadowcat" Griffin, of course.

[462] The disappearance of Kei Morgan, a case on which, even with the additional manpower, the crime lab unfortunately made no measurable progress.

[472] Within a few months, the crime lab will have switched to handlinks (like those seen on Bablyon 5, which CID already used, to facilitate better coordination between the two departments.

[560] It's something of a running joke on CSI that Catherine seems to know everybody of significance in town from somewhere, and since a similar joke follows Gryphon in the Future Imperfect setting, that the two of them were already acquainted was all but inevitable.

[569] But, for the record, he never has.

[587] From the start, Grissom finds the whole deal with Sara and the Chief deeply bemusing. Mind you, when I wrote "Locard's Exchange", they weren't seeing each other on the actual show, and I'm on record in the Forum traffic the episode generated as not buying the then-common fan belief that they someday would be. (For that matter, I still don't really buy it, but don't go by me.) At any rate, Grissom isn't jealous, exactly - that kind of response is a bit beyond his comprehension - but he certainly thinks it's... odd.

[781] As we see in Symphony No. 5, Lindsey attends Satori Mandeville Memorial on Jeraddo, where she's one of the new generation of Institute Duelists. The UF version is a bit older than the one on the TV show; at the timeframe of "Locard's Exchange" she's 14.

[847] In the real world, it was an episode of the 1967 color revival of Jack Webb's Dragnet, in which Joe Friday was accused of excessive force because, though he insisted the guy he shot in an off-duty shootout at a laundromat had taken a shot at him first, no one could find the bullet or the gun. (Ironically, in UF Dragnet is a show about Mega-City One Judges, and whoever heard of a Judge being investigated for excessive force?)

[917] This is one of my favorite exchanges ever, just because, if I do say so myself, I think it's quintessentially Greg.

[929] I'm not sure who thought of making Greg a Dantrovian first, but when it came up in the studio, everyone there immediately went "Yes. Must."

[938] COGENT, the Cooperative Genetic Tracking database, is a 25th-century extrapolation of the real-world CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. As its name suggests, it's a database of genetic profile information maintained by the cooperative efforts of many law-enforcement agencies around the galaxy. Unlike CODIS, which began as and is still largely an index of offender data, COGENT contains profiles of a great many ordinary law-abiding citizens, many of whom were originally profiled for purposes of identification.

[958] And you thought Azalynn was making up the pudding thing when she and Zoner talked about Terzayyl back in Symphony No. 1.

[1023] Nobody ever does.

[1111] Salusia and Zardon are the second and third planets in the same star system. They were at war for a long, long time, and though relations between the two planets have been peaceful since the early 21st century, the average Salusian in the street still isn't terribly fond of the average Zardon, and vice versa.

[1162] Presumably, Sara's not actually quoting Stargate in-story, but in a meta sense, that's where this joke came from.

[1240] The first movement ("Allego") of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Serenade in G Major, K. 525 (Eine kleine Nachtmusik).

[1252] Unlike Zardons, Salusians did not evolve from apelike creatures. Their evolutionary forebears were more like badgers. This may help explain their reputation for ferocity and stubbornness, especially when defending themselves and/or their homes.

[1327] Technically, "fedora hat" is redundant - it's like saying "T-shirt shirt" - but you'd be amazed how many people nowadays don't know a fedora is a hat unless you say so outright.

[1498] Ecklie's kind of got his shirt on backward here; he may have worked in the lab longer than Grissom, but Grissom, being at least nominally director of the entire lab, outranks him. Still, since he exerts almost no administrative control over the day shift in the normal course of business, it's not all that odd that it might slip the minds of the people working Days that they technically work for him.

[1519] Ecklie refers to the late Holly Gribbs, a rookie night-shift criminalist who died after being shot by a suspect while working an improperly cleared crime scene. In UF, that happened in 2406, three years before "Locard's Exchange". Bringing her up in this context is a rather low blow, since Grissom had nothing to do with her death; clearing the crime scene of hostiles before calling CSI is the local police department's responsibility.

[1569] AQS, as it is popularly known, is Salutown's main drag. It's named for Queen Asrial's late mother, one of the most popular monarchs in Salusian history (after Asrial herself).

[1618] The canonical Sara had better luck with her attempts at vegetarianism (perhaps because the actress who plays her, Jorja Fox, reportedly is one), but then, the canonical Sara isn't Salusian.

[1626] Schlumbergera truncata, in 2409 one of the Earth plants most commonly encountered offworld.

[1660] Actually, Zach is an angel, but.

[1700] Ragol, the setting of the video game Phantasy Star Online, is renowned in the UF universe for its large, aggressive wildlife, the result of a planetary accident with Getter rays early in its colonization by Corellian settlers. Grissom's pet dwarf saber beetle, incidentally, is named Enrique.

[1763] It's the one Gryphon was wearing on Zardon.

[1812] People sometimes have a hard time figuring out precisely what to call Gryphon, since he has several names and titles. At this point, Sara's not sure whether she's cleared to use his nickname, but feels a bit silly calling him by his rank. Eventually, for whatever reason, most of the women in his life end up using his real name (like Cath does in the diner scene), but she's not there yet.

[1836] One of the best lines from the short-lived but hilarious Clerks animated series.

[1861] Though they do belong to the family Cactaceae, Schlumbergera grow in rain forests, not deserts, and as such are not considered true cacti by some botanists.

[1912] A room in this position offers a superior escape route, plus it has a neighboring room only on one side. As such, it is often the scene of hotel murders.

[2032] No First Initial, No Middle Initial.

[2034] I believe this marks the first time we've introduced an author avatar as an at-least-nominal bad guy, and it certainly gives UF-Geoff one of the more dramatically complex introduction/origins. We were very pleased at the surprise effect holding this revelation until the end of the piece created.

The original concept for this was much more convoluted and didn't work nearly as well; thankfully, Gryphon and Ard came up with an idea that worked MUCH better. GD

[2066] On Giant Robo, Dazzling Cervantes didn't have a specified first name. Here, it's an offhanded reference to the author of Don Quixote, but he's certainly not supposed to actually be the historical Cervantes.

[2103] We'll learn later that this was a Daodan, as seen in the Bungie video game Oni.

[2322] Zetan firing squads use phaser rifles set to Disintegrate. It's reputedly quite a quick way to go.

[2434] For some reason, one of my favorite Grissom lines of ours.

[2582] Gryphon paraphrases something Lex Luthor said, in a much more sinister context, about Metropolis in the Superman: The Animated Series pilot, "Last Son of Krypton". I thought it was an interesting notion that two men could say such similar things and mean them in such diametrically opposed ways.

[2653] At the time, there wasn't a big CSI viewership among the Suspects. I hadn't watched the show myself until a few weeks before, when I picked up the season-1 box set more or less on a whim, and it seemed a terribly odd thing to be bringing into the UF universe. But these things will happen from time to time...

Must make it kind of tough to do the one-blank thing...

You know, something that struck me as kinda funny while reading Upward Mobility and again while reading this was how that Ecklie is, if anything, more of a spectacular asshole than he is in CSI. In UF, most garden variety jerks actually mellow out compared to their series counterparts with exposure to the cast unless they're Villains, but UF Ecklie kinda went the other way. In the regular series he was still a bureaucratic prick but had largely been pointed away from the crime lab at various city officials who hassled the main cast and could actually be semi-reasonable when asked for help/favors (and note that it's been a couple of years since I've watched so maybe that brief stint of nondickery was an elaborate Machiavellian gambit to isolate Grissom from the night shift or simply gone crazy go nuts but that doesn't much seem like the shows style).

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Jon Helscher

I'm here to slow you down, cost you money, and generally retard the process.

-Mike Rowe: Dirty Jobs