.....this episode of CSI: VEGAS has wandered into science fiction territory. There's an employee of Mojave Kinetic Designs named Robert Cuevas (Mario Perez) who works the night shift at the facility's dark factory where a bunch of automatons work during the graveyard shift, while the flesh-and-blood people work the day shift. There's even a robot dog! Four legs and all! Leave it to CSI head lady Maxine Roby (Paula Newsome) and veteran lady Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) to try to get to the bottom of things. This episode starts off cutesy-wootsy, with CSI cutie Penny Gill (Sarah Gilman) plumb scared that her current romance is going to be sniffed out by the Las Vegas Police Department's IAB bunch of ratfinks. Or something like that. The question then becomes, was Cuevas killed off by one of the humanoid robots with an artificial intelligence operating system, or did an actual person did the dirty deed? Josh Folsom (Matt Lauria), Maxine Roby, and Allie Rajan (Mandeep Dhillon) try to determine the blood spatter and come up empty. The CSI crew senses a coverup, especially since the head honcho Truman Thomas looks like he's trying to circle the wagons. And then there's Cliff Roland (Gabriel Tigerman) who's determined to be very helpful. And the only "witness" to the murder is Ocho The Robot. Wouldn't you just know it, there's an electrical shortage at the CSI lab and the resultant loss of power just as the investigators are about to test Ocho! Coincidental? This reviewer thinks not. Especially since a memory module has been French fried. And what about the power surge at the factory? Could Cliff Roland be the killer? The question is moot, as he dies in a car accident. CSI: VEGAS was off to a good start with original CSI cast members William Petersen as Gil Grissom, Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle, and Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass reprising their respective roles for the first season. Since then, CSI: VEGAS has been a great prime-time series investigating strange mysteries like this one. This is a mighty good show, and it's great seeing Marg Helgenberger from the original series in this series. A little continuity never hurts. And the show runners have the sense to keep it entertaining. That's all I ask, and that's good enough. It was a real wowser of an episode, and it owes plenty to Karel Capek's work RUSSOM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS which was written way back in 1920!
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