Directed by Christine Moore
Written by Anthony E. Zuiker, Ann Donahue, Carol Mendelsohn, & Bruce Zimmerman
"What Schemes May Come" is the 20th episode of Season 3, and the 67th overall. It originally aired April 11, 2007.
Synopsis:
A body is stolen from the coroner's van; this case leads the team to a genetics lab. A man is found impaled while dressed in medieval armor. A third victim is found stabbed in the neck in an expensive hotel room. Stella asks Mac to approve the purchase of a kit that will provide her HIV results more quickly.Tropes for the episode:
- Artistic License – Biology: The heart monitor on the rat is set for human heart rates, not those of rodents which are much faster.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Zig-zagged with the first victim. When the body is recovered, bruises on the chest make it evident that someone had performed CPR in an attempt to revive him. It didn't work, so they dumped him in the river. He wasn't dead though.
- Famous for Being First: One of the scientists involved with the near-fatal experiment tells Mac that 100 years from now no one will remember his (Mac's) name but that he himself will go down in history for being the first to successfully revive someone from voluntary hibernation.
- LEGO Genetics: The rat with a human ear growing on its back, and the goats that produce spider silk. Both, as it turns out, are legitimate.
- Mistaken Death Confirmation: A body stolen just as the ambulance arrives at the morgue is later found by NY Harbor Patrol, still in the body bag. When they unzip it at the scene to identify the man, he starts gasping and is rushed to the hospital. When Mac asks Peyton how this could've happened, she gets defensive and tells him she hasn't forgotten how to do her job. She explains that she always checks for a pulse AND uses a light to look for pupil dilation before declaring a person dead. They later learn the guy was part of a hibernation experiment. Peyton doesn't believe that's possible, but Mac recreates it with a rat in the lab to prove it to her.
- Not Quite Dead: The man stolen from the van isn't quite dead yet...he had been part of a hibernation experiment and is revived and sent to the hospital...before dying for real this time.
- Phlebotinum Overdose: A couple of researchers do a hibernation experiment on a friend who'd volunteered. They start off with very small doses of an unusual chemical (that even stumps experienced M.E. Peyton Driscoll) and slowly increase it, trying to find a safe but effective amount. The friend gets impatient and, when they glance away, turns the dial way up, which knocks him unconscious and eventually lands him in a vegetative state.
- Powerful Pick: The hotel victim is stabbed to death with an ice pick.
- Pun-Based Title: Plays on a famous line from Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Act 3, Scene 1: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come..."
- Science Is Bad: Danny is freaked out by the genetic experiments, and tells Mac so.Danny: You know, I can take dead bodies obviously, decomp, little old ladies chopped up into bits, but this? Mac, I just saw a rat with an *ear* on it's back!Mac: What's that saying? Progress is great, it just went on too far.
- Suicide, Not Murder: The jousting victim and the man in the hotel room are believed to be murder victims before their suicide pact partners are found to have assisted them with their deaths.
- Suicide Pact: The second and third victims had entered into a suicide pact with two additional people. All have terminal conditions and decided to end their lives on their own terms.
