The Memoirs of Nicodemus Legend: Bone of Contention

"Bone of Contention" was the eighth episode of Legend, and first aired on June 20th, 1995. It was written by George Geiger and directed by Charles Correll. You can watch the episode via Amazon Prime Video or DVD.

Bartok is surprised when a wounded man delivers a dinosaur vertebrae to him at his laboratory, and then dies. Although the death is duly reported to Sheriff Motes, Motes is only too happy to let “Nicodemus Legend” handle the actual investigation, much to Pratt’s chagrin. 

Thus Pratt, Bartok, and Ramos follow the dead man's tracks to the site where he was attacked, and from there to the campsite he had been using. They find the dead man's journal, and learn that his name was Miles McMillan. Bartok reflects that paleontologists have been the victims of violence before, often at the hands of petroleum companies seeking rights to the same land in which fossils are often found. As night approaches, Bartok suggests that the team stay overnight at the campsite themselves, intending to retrace McMillan's steps back to the dig in which the dinosaur bone was discovered when they awake in the morning. During the night, a man sneaks in to steal the bone from Bartok's bags. Although Pratt wakes up and attempts to give chase, he only manages to rip a button off of the thief's coat before Pratt is knocked out.

Pratt awakens a few days later, attended to by a woman named Beth, apparently the sister of Miles McMillan. Bartok soon arrives to introduce them both to Professor Rudolph Kendall, a friend of Bartok's who had been Miles’ teacher. While Pratt has been recovering, Skeeter has been keeping an eye out for someone missing a coat button, and points Pratt to Dave Larson of Langsdale Petrolium (sic). While Pratt talks with Larson in the Buffalo Head Saloon, Skeeter uses his skeleton key to enter and search Larson’s hotel room. Skeeter recovers the dinosaur bone, which he returns to Bartok, but also discovers that Larson is a government agent, working undercover, sent to investigate Miles’ murder at the request of Langsdale Petrolium.

While Beth and Professor Kendall remain at the lab to examine the dinosaur bone and learn where it was discovered, Pratt and Bartok take the Legend Balloon to the headquarters of Langsdale Petrolium. There, they learn that Miles McMillan was, in fact, an employee of Langsdale, as was Beth, but it turns out that Beth’s surname isn’t “McMillan,” but rather “Langsdale.” Meanwhile, Beth steals the bone from the lab, with the assistance of Larson, who knocks Kendall out. Together, they head out to the site of the bone's discovery, having obtained enough evidence to determine where to look.

When Pratt and Bartok return to the lab, they bemoan the loss of the dinosaur bone, but Kendall has been studying some dust containing red clay and manganese, probably from pottery, which narrows down the bone’s origin to some ancient Hopi caves in Blanco Canyon. They travel via the Legend Balloon, and discover that Langsdale and Larson are already in the area, below them.

When Pratt, Bartok, and Kendall enter the caves, Kendall suggests that they split up, arguing that this gives one of them a better chance of getting to the bone repository first so that they can stake a legal claim on the area before the petroleum company can. Although Pratt considers this unwise, Bartok agrees. After Kendall leaves, Bartok explains to Pratt that it was important to get away from Kendall as soon as possible, as Bartok believes that Kendall was the person who killed Miles McMillan. Kendall needed evidence to point to the caves, but after Langsdale and Larson had taken the bone fragment, he had to supply the new clue in the form of the pottery dust from the caves themselves, something which hadn’t been present on the bone fragments, and which Kendall could only have provided if he had already been there.

Pratt and Bartok are soon caught by Langsdale and Larson, but before they can explain their suspicions about Kendall, the floor underneath them gives way, and all four fall into an underground cavern where they discover an almost fully-assembled dinosaur skeleton. Kendall is already there, when Bartok suggests that the cavern had been Miles’ discovery, Kendall suggests that Miles doesn’t deserve credit, having made an “unpardonable deal” with Langsdale Petrolium. Kendall threatens to trap the others in the caves, kill Ramos, and return later to “discover” the caves, eventually to build a museum to house the skeleton. Bartok tries to appeal to Kendall, and threatens to take bones away from the assembled skeleton. This distracts Kendall long enough for Pratt to zap him with the electrofulminator.

With the truth now exposed, Kendall is turned over to the authorities. He confesses to Bartok that he wanted the notoriety that finding a complete dinosaur skeleton would have provided. Pratt offers to make Kendall famous in a book, but Bartok simply replies “I wish you wouldn’t, Ernest.”


Some additional notes:

• While the homages to The Wizard of Oz in the opening (when Pratt writes about little people chasing Legend and shouting “follow the yellow suede suit!”) are obvious enough to modern viewers, the movie was obviously made far too late for Pratt to be referencing it in his Legend novels. Even the original book wasn’t published until 1900, and while “the road of yellow brick” does originate there, there’s nothing like the phrase “follow the yellow brick road” in the book. We’d have to speculate that the movie's script writers were fans of the then-over half century-old Legend series to attempt to force this homage into retroactive history.
• Pratt’s idea for a parachute is definitely better as a visual gag than any meaningful science. Even if it worked, it could hardly do so merely a few stories up…. Note that the parachute had already been conceived at least as early as the late 1400’s, and was successfully implemented at least as early as 1783, although one might suggest that the concept was unknown the American West until it was used in San Francisco in 1887, more than a decade after this episode takes place. 
• Yes, I know that "petroleum" isn't spelled with an "i," but the letter in which Beth's real surname is revealed (see above) shows the word as unambiguously misspelled, and so I went with that misspelling throughout this recap when referencing the company. I have no inside knowledge as to whether or not the misspelling is intentional, and if so, why they went that route. It's not really a detail that's relevant to the plot.
• Blanco Canyon is in Texas. The Hopi tribe is largely Arizonan. I'm not sure whether these two facts can, nor should, be reconciled....
• Check out Wikipedia’s entry on the “Bone Wars,” (also called the “Great Dinosaur Rush”), which started around 1877 (just a tiny bit after this series is typically said to take place, in 1876), and in which a pair of scientists really did participate in underhanded deeds seeking notoriety through dinosaur bones and similar fossil finds.
• John De Lancie has shared that it was during the filming of this episode that the production crew learned that the series was not being picked up for another season.^*

The Memoirs of Nicodemus Legend returns in two weeks, with "Revenge of the Herd"

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^*Source: "An Evening with John De Lancie" event in December, 1999, at Bournemouth, England. Transcription by Sarah (last name redacted at her request).