Empty Planet (Season 2, Episode 8)
Premise: A Seattle bomber who takes his name and mission from a science fiction novel targets technology, and the BAU must work out what he really wants.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 8
- Unsub
- Kenneth Roberts, “Allegro” (Jamie Elman)
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
- Starring
- Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “Crime butchers innocence to secure a prize, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.” (Maximilien Robespierre, read by Gideon)
- Guest stars
- JoBeth Williams as Professor Ursula Kent, Gary Werntz as Dr. Emory Cooke, Cheryl Francis Harrington as Dr. Betsy Brazier, Jennifer Jalene as Cassandra Atkins, Tom Choi as Special Agent Nick Casey
- Director
- Elodie Keene
- Writers
- Ed Napier
Summary
The Case
“Empty Planet” opens with a caller warning the national news networks of a bus bombing in the place “where it all began.” A small pipe bomb hidden in an umbrella then explodes on a Seattle bus, killing the driver and a young man who was taking the umbrella forward for an elderly passenger, and injuring seven. The device used a light charge, dried peas for shrapnel and a short-range remote, and it is etched with a robot pierced by an arrow. Garcia ties the symbol to earlier attacks on computers, including floppy-disk bombs near St. Dennis University, claimed by a “Freedom From Technology Brigade.” The team profiles a meticulous, intelligent male personal cause bomber who lives alone and strikes others as angry and odd.
Calling Gideon as “Allegro,” the bomber complains that the networks ignored his warnings, then bombs a closed automated gas station and leaves a manifesto demanding a halt to automation within a week; he later demands that it be printed in the Seattle Ledger. Reid recognizes Allegro as the boy hero of “Empty Planet,” a science fiction novel in which humans fight robots and kill the scientists who build them. The bus bomb sat under the seat of artificial-life pioneer Dr. Emory Cooke, who brushes off the danger and refuses protection; after his meeting with the agents, a pressure-triggered bomb in his car kills him. Garcia learns that the novel’s author is Ursula Kent, a St. Dennis literature professor who keeps the robot-and-arrow symbol as a keepsake.
Small decoy bombs at a post office, the water works and other public buildings keep the team racing across the city. Kent’s syllabus, though, lists one other guest lecturer, artificial intelligence expert Dr. Betsy Brazier. Morgan stops her car in time; she is sitting on a bomb, and he stays beside her against Hotch’s order while bomb technician Cassandra Atkins disables it. The car is then blown up so the bomber will think she died. That night Kent asks for the file of a former student, Kenneth Roberts, and Reid realizes that in the novel Allegro learns he was adopted and kills his birth mother, who narrates the book.
The ending
Spoiler: Kenneth confronts Kent, convinced she is the mother who gave him up in Youngstown, Ohio, 26 years earlier; she tells him her baby was a girl. Holding a bomb, he insists the story must end his way as the agents close in. Afterward Kenneth is taken away, and Kent, hurt in the shoulder, says he only wants to know who he is. Later, Gideon tells Morgan that staying with Brazier was stupid but not wrong.
Why it stands out
- The profile draws on the bomber categories of John Douglas and Mark Olshaker; Douglas is considered the founder of the FBI’s behavioral analysis program, and their work later inspired the series “Mindhunter.”
- While she waits on the bomb, Dr. Brazier recites a line from Psalm 31:24.
- Gary Werntz, who plays Dr. Cooke, had played a character named Hotchner in “Deep Impact” (1998).