This was the second or third episode that I completed, back in the summer of 1996.  As such, it was not at first intended to be part of any Season IV; and you’ll notice a lack of scenes tying into the character subplots which were devised later on.  Once I came up with the idea of organizing things into a season, however, it was obvious that this episode needed to be positioned relatively early on, because it establishes Nick’s relationship with his colleagues, Tracy and Captain Reese.

Whatever reservations Tracy may have about her ignorance of Nick’s personal life (a later subplot), I still think the characterization in “Night Vision” holds true:  she trusts him completely as her partner.  Reese, on the other hand, is a senior police officer:  he works with many subordinates.  He cannot possibly know any of them the way a detective knows a partner.

I admit that “Night Vision” has a very common plot. Sooner or later almost every cop show uses the missing gun idea.  In fact, Forever Knight used it in Season I.  At that time, the suspect police office was Captain Stonetree.  But the viewer was left in little doubt that he’d be cleared, since almost immediately security camera footage from the corner store that was being robbed proved that one of the suspects had been armed.  This was really only what I call a ‘distractor’ plot, i.e. an interim plot to get the story started while clues are planted that will build up into the real plot.

If, instead, the missing gun trope is treated as a serious plot device and applied to Nick, then a whole new range of possibilities opens up, particularly relating to an investigation blowing his cover story.

Nevertheless, this is not where the story started.  Maybe it’s a giveaway that the flashback is a vampire story.  After all, if one starts with a story about police brutality and racism, the obvious historical flashback to choose would be one involving slavery in the United States, or perhaps a Holocaust story.

The impetus for the episode came from wondering about Vachon’s “crew”.  Obviously, their break-up could in theory have happened at any time.  But Vachon makes a point of reminding Urs in “Black Buddha II”.  I doubt if he’d bother to do so unless he thought she was trying to ignore it; and I doubt she’d do that unless it was recent.  And, when you think about it, if three of the “crew”, Vachon, Screed, and Urs, all were to turn up in Toronto at the same time, that would be a remarkable coincidence, wouldn’t it?

Did I hear you say, ‘What about Nick, LaCroix, and Janette?’  But remember:  at the time of the series premiere, “Dark Knight”, Janette had been in Toronto for many years; Nick had been there for three years; and LaCroix had just arrived a couple of weeks earlier.  On the other hand, Urs works at the Raven, and Vachon hangs out there a lot; yet we never saw them before.  Ergo they must be new in town.

The Break-Up

    Vachon’s friend Screed was first introduced in “Black Buddha, Part Two”, at which point we learned that there existed some vampires whose preferred source of blood was animals, rather than humans.  However, it was in “Fever”, several episodes later, that we were told that the difference between carouches and vampires relates to which species is the source of the first blood drunk when they come across.  Carouches first drink animal blood; true vampires first drink human blood.  The craving felt thereafter is for the blood of that first type.

    The attitude taken by most of the vampires in Vachon’s crew to Screed’s taste for rats is based on the opinions expressed by Nick and LaCroix in the episode “Blind Faith”, where Nick describes carouches as a lower form of vampire.  Indeed, whenever he dealt with Screed in any of the episodes of the original series in which the carouche appeared, Nick always seemed to have some degree of distaste for the man.  Admittedly, this might not be unconnected with the fact that Screed was squatting in a disused coal cellar and hunting rats through the sewers:  he probably didn’t smell all that salubrious.  In the historical scenes in “Blind Faith” also, LaCroix’s attitude and tone of voice in dealing with a carouche he wants to have kill Nick’s dog are very much those of a man dealing with someone—or something—he considers barely worth his condescension.

    Urs’s attitude is a bit more problematic.  We never saw her with Screed in any of present-day scenes in the episodes of Season III; and I can certainly see her feeling fastidious about associating with someone who spends much of his time in sewers.  On the other hand, both she and Screed were friends of Vachon’s.  This might have meant a careful juggling act, except that—given Vachon’s general unwillingness to take pains over anything—he probably wouldn’t have bothered to take the trouble.  So I am assuming that, if Urs did feel reservations about Screed, she was at least not openly antagonistic to his lifestyle.