The show begins with a professor (Keene Curtis) receiving a phone call. He's to meet a guy in order to buy the remains of Peking Man--which were lost around the beginning of WWII. However, when the Professor arrives, his contact is dead--someone killed him to prevent him from selling these ancient bones.
The Professor contacts the police and Five-O get involved. It seems that the Professor was working with the Chinese government to recover these bones but now it's a police matter. Not surprisingly, the State Department contacts McGarrett--'asking' him to give the Professor their full cooperation in order to please the Chinese government.
Soon the trail leads to a guy named Parmel (Vic Tayback)--who was the deceased man's cell-mate in prison. It appeared that when the cell-mate tried to make a deal with the Professor, Parmel escaped from prison--angry that his old 'buddy' was trying to sell the bones that Parmel had stolen back in 1941. McGarrett requests that the Professor alert Five-O if Parmel contacts him--which he does NOT do. Can McGarrett and the gang catch Parmel AND Peking Man? Well, not if the clever Parmel can help it! I like how the writer took a real event and real archaeological discovery and managed to weave it into the plot. There really were some bone fragments that were called 'Peking Man' and they actually did disappear in a manner pretty consistent with the show's depiction. But, to this day, they have not been discovered--though plaster casts of them do still exist.
By the way, there are a few tiny errors which you might notice in the show (other than the one listed in GOOFS). When the police find the skeleton around the middle of the show, he was supposedly a guy killed by gunfire from a Japanese plane. But, the bullet hole is VERY small and clean--and gunfire from large caliber and high velocity airplane guns would have most likely shattered the skull and they DEFINITELY would have left a huge hole. Also, although it rained between the time the two headstones were switched, you never see the police ever try to simply check the markers to see which ones were loose--which it still probably would have been. Despite these--not a bad show at all--in fact, it's pretty entertaining.
The Professor contacts the police and Five-O get involved. It seems that the Professor was working with the Chinese government to recover these bones but now it's a police matter. Not surprisingly, the State Department contacts McGarrett--'asking' him to give the Professor their full cooperation in order to please the Chinese government.
Soon the trail leads to a guy named Parmel (Vic Tayback)--who was the deceased man's cell-mate in prison. It appeared that when the cell-mate tried to make a deal with the Professor, Parmel escaped from prison--angry that his old 'buddy' was trying to sell the bones that Parmel had stolen back in 1941. McGarrett requests that the Professor alert Five-O if Parmel contacts him--which he does NOT do. Can McGarrett and the gang catch Parmel AND Peking Man? Well, not if the clever Parmel can help it! I like how the writer took a real event and real archaeological discovery and managed to weave it into the plot. There really were some bone fragments that were called 'Peking Man' and they actually did disappear in a manner pretty consistent with the show's depiction. But, to this day, they have not been discovered--though plaster casts of them do still exist.
By the way, there are a few tiny errors which you might notice in the show (other than the one listed in GOOFS). When the police find the skeleton around the middle of the show, he was supposedly a guy killed by gunfire from a Japanese plane. But, the bullet hole is VERY small and clean--and gunfire from large caliber and high velocity airplane guns would have most likely shattered the skull and they DEFINITELY would have left a huge hole. Also, although it rained between the time the two headstones were switched, you never see the police ever try to simply check the markers to see which ones were loose--which it still probably would have been. Despite these--not a bad show at all--in fact, it's pretty entertaining.