Cade sneaks into a hospital with dark secrets in search of an ally who can help him fight the aliens, but Alikah, Cade's would-be ally, teaches him a hard lesson.

Additional Credits
Enuka Okuma -- Alikah Aldredge
Andrew Airlie -- Dr. Reed
Jerry Wasserman -- Dr. Markowitz
written by Daniel Howard Cerone
directed by Holly Dale

Nostradamus Says
"Where angels touch grace,
One without sight sees the dark enemy.
At the right hand of the twice-blessed man,
The ally leads him to the summit."
(quatrain 12, century 5)

Quotable Moments
Alikah: "You've still got that malt liquor funk happening."

Alikah: "So says the mighty Nostradamus. Well, no old dead white guy is going to tell me what to do."

Analysis
Nobody likes hospitals. Despite their white walls and disinfectants, we're always aware they are a place of diseases and death and people cutting parts out of other people. "Blind Witness" plays to this fear, especially to the part of us that asks, "If I'm unconscious when I'm in the operating room, how do I know what the doctors are really doing?"

We know something is wrong as soon as Cade is wheeled to the ward from the emergency room in the first act. Dr. Reed and the emergency room staff seem capable and friendly, but who are all these people staring at Cade's gurney? They're more than diseased, they're deformed.

They're also isolated -- there's nobody caring for them, and they're all standing at arm's length from each other. The unspoken alienation is also noticeable in the naming of the characters. Alikah's a patient, and we never learn her last name during the show. Nor do we learn the doctor's first names, and the nurses don't have names at all. This isn't uncommon in medical dramas, but here it's another touch of the sinister.

It's not just that there's blood and body parts, though blood and gore in TV and movie hospitals has always been a touchy subject. It's that the blood has been sprayed all over, the body parts tossed hither and yon. It's worse than messy; you get the sense that whoever spread the gore enjoyed doing it. It's what the darkest part of your mind can't help thinking about: what if that nice clean operating room is actually a madman's slaughterhouse?

That's one area where "Blind Witness" works. The plot's fairly routine, though there are some nice character turns. I liked the way Alikah turned away from the hero's path at the end, especially the fact that she didn't feel at all guilty about it.

Cade's realization that he's now hunting the aliens as a goal in itself is also a small but important change. It makes him proactive, gives him a drive that he doesn't have as a mere fugitive from the aliens. It's something a lot of series don't bother to do.

In the end, mood is this episode's strong point. It comes through best in a short scene where Cade follows Alikah's directions to the operating room. Through a voiceover, we experience what sightless Alikah heard, smelled and felt while we watch Cade make his way through the ward. The detailed picture that results makes us use almost all of our senses, which is unusual in a heavily visual medium like television. It's this attention to detail that makes "Blind Witness" exciting.

Dangling Plot Threads
Reed likens the alien experiments to humans' experiments on animals. Assuming he's not putting Cade on, this suggests some important similarities between humans and the aliens. We've already seen some significant differences -- salt or the dissolving thing, for example. So what are the similarities?

What kind of moron stands around to mock someone who just doused him with alcohol and is pulling out a lighter?