[9] DocWagon is known to Shadowrun players as a top-notch, albeit very expensive, emergency medevac contractor. (The equivalent over in Cyberpunk 2020 would be Trauma Team. They exist in UF as well, but aren't found much beyond the Co-Prosperity Sphere and didn't get the IPO contract.)

[18] Hey, it's Russ Schweickart, and there isn't even anyone from another dimension in this scene. His car, by the way, is a reference to Adam-12, where Sgt. MacDonald always drove a station wagon done up as a black-and-white on the rare occasions when he went into the field.

[88] An obvious play on the Star Trek episode title "The City on the Edge of Forever".

[106] She could find out easily enough, she just can't be arsed. The man wants to go weird places on spur-of-the-moment dates, that's his business, but also his problem.

[122] BTL: Short for "Better Than Life", an illegal simsense program configured to be, well, better than life. Highly addictive; people have been known to stay plugged into them until they die. Illegal in almost all civilized systems. (Originally from Shadowrun as well. It is not a reference to the Red Dwarf episode, at least not directly.)

[176] The 2411 Arnage Type C seen here is a completely made-up car, corresponding to no actual or previously seen fictional vehicle. In my mind, it sort of resembles the angry love child of a real Bentley Arnage (or, well, an Azure, actually, since that's what Bentley call the convertible Arnage at the moment), a Bugatti Veyron, and one of those early-1970s Corvettes with the bulgy fenders, or possibly a convertible version of the Maybach Exelero without such a blatantly Teutonic grille.

[184] I'm not actually all that fond of tan interiors in cars, but it does go nicely with British Racing Green, and the conventions must be observed. If Gryphon were going to get his own Carnage, it'd probably be battleship grey with a matching interior.

[213] Translated from the Portuguese, the name of this restaurant is "The Tower of Meat".

[232] The Marconi's name was inspired by a real-life hotel in New York City, the Edison, though the Edison's style is Art Deco, not Victorian. (It wouldn't be out of place in New Avalon, in fact.)

[259] A term I picked up from Chad Collier. Presumably Gryphon acquired it from the local equivalent as well.

[272] It is entirely coincidental that Gryphon happens to think of a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at this point, though in a meta sense it's kind of funny if you think about it.

[334] As we see, the crime lab has gone to Babylon 5-style handlinks instead of pagers by this point.

[353] I'm sure I've noted this before somewhere, but, Philip Boyce Memorial Medical Center is named for the late Dr. Philip Boyce, who was the first chief medical officer of the original UGS (later USS, later WDF) Enterprise under Captains Chrisopher Pike and (briefly) James T. Kirk. Before his death in 2385, Dr. Boyce came out of retirement to serve as the reconstituted WDF's first surgeon general.

[372] Dr. Stone replaced Dr. Boyce as WDF surgeon general after the latter's death, and is seen in that capacity in Days of Miracle and Wonder. Though his species comes from Alien Nation, the doctor himself is an original character.

[467] Yet another Shadowrun reference, which is odd, since it's not like I've played the game in, oh, 15 years. I've always been a bit fond of the old Citymaster, though. Other candidates for Horatio's ride included a Meerkat military utility vehicle (essentially the Salusian Army's equivalent of a deuce-and-a-half truck), one of the stretched Warthogs with the larger cargo bay seen in Halo 3 design documents, and some futuristic extrapolation of the M1130 Stryker armored command vehicle. In all cases, the joke is a riff on the fact that, for no really fathomable reason, the crime lab personnel on CSI: Miami drive Hummers, of all things.

[482] Caine and Grissom already know each other casually, having met at various professional symposia and whatnot over the years.

[501] Oddly, experimentation has shown that the most suitable footwear for this purpose available at a reasonable price in New Avalon is the venerable Dr. Martens 1460 eight-eyelet boot. Go figure.

[552] The Special Assignment cars are replicas of the 1940 Chrysler Newport Phaeton, with modern running gear and some Q Branch tricks underneath - a similar deal to the treatment Gryphon, Skuld, and company gave Kaitlyn's '62 Impala. M5 Industries built the prototype; the production units are made by a small custom shop in Elstree.

[559] Tucker Boulevard is named after the American entrepreneur and inventor Preston Tucker (1903-1956), who, among other things, devised the Tucker Torpedo automobile and the compact refrigerator.

[671] Sara has more reason than Grissom supposes to be so annoyed by his clumsy phrasing here. After all, she spent a decent amount of time during their previous association, when she was in college, practically throwing herself at his feet and he apparently failed to even notice. And now he's complaining that he might "lose" her? Hello!

Of course, that isn't what he meant, but by the time she realizes that, she's said more than she intended to herself, and the only thing she figures she can do to keep the mess from getting any worse is just shut the whole conversation down and disengage entirely.

[783] Seriously, the CSI: Miami writers should be taking advantage of all the time off they've got right now to enroll in a remedial naming-things course. La Mala Noche?!

[797] Yeeeeaaaahhhh!

[799] For quite a while, the original Las Vegas show was the only part of the CSI franchise I'd seen, apart from the one first-season episode that set up CSI: Miami (episode 222, "Cross-Jurisdictions"). Chad, who's originally from Florida, wasn't a current viewer, but had watched enough of the Miami show in the past to pick up a mighty love for Calleigh, enough that he lobbied for including her as well as Caine when we got around to showing the day shift. I watched a couple of eps for evaluation purposes and decided I liked the character enough to steal and the show enough to keep watching. A few days later, A&E showed 16 straight episodes, which will teach me to tempt fate.

By an odd coincidence, Emily Procter, the actress who plays Calleigh, used to be on The West Wing, as did Jorja Fox, who played (but woe! alas! no longer) Sara. And they're apparently pals in real life, though their CSI characters never met. (I never saw either one of them on that show, as I didn't watch it, though Truss was a big fan.)

[802] The UF version of Calleigh is of Kumbari Salusian ancestry, though she's from a mixed Salusian-Earther colony (similar to Zeltos IV from Excessive Force) and has never actually been to Kumbaria. We did this for no better reason than it amused me to give our version of such a blatantly Southern character a connection to the Salusian equivalent of Norway.

Although Slarti lobbied damn hard for Calleigh to be a Klingon. JB

At the very least, I got mad props at the time for the Klingonification of her name to Qa'leH Du'tlhayn', which I largely came up with to go with the "Don't bother trying to spell it." line from the CSI:LV ep that introduced the Miami crew. CP

At the end of the day, however, I just couldn't do it to Calleigh, who's a tie for my favorite CSI girl with Cath. I liked the Salusian idea Gryph had, but left this scene intentionally vague when I wrote it just in case there was a change of heart and we wanted to keep her some variant of human. Her primary ears are the same light blonde as her hair, and are easy to miss if you're not looking for them. Especially if she's rocking the Stevie Nicks that day. (I also briefly lobbied for humanized Kilrathi, but I knew I was just being transparent at that point and Gryph was terrified (ED. NOTE: I don't know if I'd say "terrified", but certainly "concerned". --G.) of introducing an actual, honest-to-god catgirl to UF, so I let it go.) CC

[846] They do like both the shooty and the 'splodey a good deal more on the Miami show than they ever have on the original - but then, they have the cultural expectations involved in being a cop show set in Miami hanging over them, so they have little choice in the matter. The generation raised on Miami Vice is their key demo, after all.

[909] In police parlance, a "red ball" is an investigation of unusual importance, one for which whole divisions drop everything else, leaves get canceled, and the brass take an interest. In the succinct phrasing of David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, red ball homicides are "Murders that matter."

[1033] It's anyone's guess which of the two Captains James T. Kirk he's known Gryphon is quoting here.

[1118] Why does Catherine own an M1911A1 pistol in UF? Well, who do you think gave her her first gun and taught her to shoot?

[1204] Holly Gribbs, as mentioned in the notes for "Locard's Exchange".

[1321] Corwin offered it to the IPO for this purpose after he stopped using the top-floor apartment as his primary residence, earlier in the year. It wasn't much of a transition - Janice Barlow already lived on the first floor and Master Chief Spartan on the second, and their presence makes pretty much any building an automatic safehouse.

[1507] As it happens, the actress who plays Dr. Cameron on House, MD is named Jennifer Morrison.

[1606] I know little of the original Marvel version of Comrade Belova here, apart from what appears in the first volume of the Marvel Encyclopedia... and for our purposes here, that's enough.

[1697] I used to keep my CDs in such cans. The ones for .50-caliber machinegun ammunition are just the right width.

[1779] Actually, it was Tony Stark's charm that did that, not Gryphon's, but hey.

[1922] I've never seen a slot machine in a men's room, but the truck stop in western Nevada where Zoner and I stopped for dinner on our way back East from California did have screens for the place's constantly-ongoing game of video poker in there.

Does UF-Calleigh change her hair style every few months the way Stevie seemed to do during much of the 1980's?

>(I also briefly lobbied for humanized Kilrathi, but I knew I was
>just being transparent at that point and Gryph was terrified
>(ED. NOTE: I don't know if I'd say "terrified", but certainly
>"concerned". --G.) of introducing an actual,
>honest-to-god catgirl to UF, so I let it go.) CC

Good. Catgirls are so overdone. If I had a dollar for every young woman I've seen wearing cat ears at anime cons, I could pay off my mortgage.

-Joe-

While i suppose I was expecting this, it still broke me when it appeared.