From a high tree branch, Vange dislodges a hornet's nest. A horrified Quinn and Andy warn that no good will come of it. Tonight, Quinn has a tale of the dangers of incautious meddling - with life and death. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, he calls this story "The Tale of the Reanimator".
In an otherwise empty greenhouse, Julie works on a potted bonsai tree.
As Mr Doyle hurries past, Julie shows him her work, but he seems not to notice her. A preoccupied Mr Doyle hurries to his workshop. On the bare floor, Julie sees a trail of turquoise goo. She follows it into the darkened workshop. A laser beam, several inches above the floor, bars the open doorway of an expansive room. Back upstairs, the shop bell rings. In walk Julie’s brother Peter and his friend Jake. From above, Peter calls for Julie. She mimes a futile shushing gesture, and inches closer to the doorway, the laser beam mere centimetres from her ankles.
In the workshop, Mr Doyle peers into a small glass bottle of blue liquid. He applies several drops to a potted dead plant. Within seconds, its branches sprout large, bright green leaves. A second call from Peter startles Julie into swivelling around. In so doing, she accidentally steps through the laser beam. With an alarm, a mechanical door slides across the doorway. Overwhelmed, Julie runs upstairs to tell Peter and Jake about Mr Doyle's fantastic fertiliser. Jake surmises the claim to be an April Fool. Peter is distinctly unimpressed.
At six pm, Julie locks the greenhouse door and switches off the lights. From outside the front door comes a sharp tapping. From inside the workshop comes a similar tapping. Suddenly afraid, Julie runs for the door. From beneath it slides the stem of a plant. Julie backs away - into a hulking, ambulatory mass of leaves.Julie screams, runs for the door, and opens it. In pops another of the fearsome plant creatures. The creatures surround her. She sinks to the floor, and screams in fear. Each creature pulls off the uppermost part of its leafy body, revealing the faces of Jake and Peter. Their prank concluded, the two leave.
In the once-more quiet greenhouse, Julie searches for Mr Doyle. In the workshop, she peers at a framed monochrome photo of a woman in a bridal dress. Suddenly, on the other side of the room, Mr Doyle re-enters. Julie crouches behind the room’s central workbench. Seconds later, she looks up, to find Mr Doyle looking down at her. He gently offers a demonstration of his experiment. Onto a potted dead plant, he drips a few droplets of blue potion. As before, green leaves swiftly bloom - he's learned how to create DNA. Julie touches a leaf, and finds a glutinous, transparent secretion. As if in disagreement, the shoot coils around the beaker and shatters it, spilling the blue potion. From a kettle, Mr Doyle pours water onto the regenerated plant, which instantly causes it to shrivel and die. As he shelves the shrivelled plant, Julie spies the framed photo. She swiftly snatches a small bottle of blue potion, and pockets it.
To Peter, Julie confides her fear of Mr Doyle's intention to reanimate his dead wife. To the cemetery, Julie leads Peter and Jake. From a distance, they see Mr Doyle, spade in hand, stooped over his wife’s gravestone. Suspicious of being watched, he lifts a hessian sack, and hurries away. Still suspicious of a prank, Peter snatches from Julie the bottle of blue potion, and pours some over a grave marked "may he be forgiven." Before the gravestone of Ian Kazex, a patch of frozen grass starts to steam…
Alone in her bedroom, Julie frets. Downstairs, through the back door window, she sees a distant figure shamble across the snow. She half-opens the front door. In looms a suited man with a heavy stubble and a deathly grey face. With a leering hiss, he lunges for her. Julie screams and manages to latch the door half-closed.
Having ordered pizza, Peter and Jake arrive. Julie urges Peter not to open the door. The Zombie has gone. Peter pulls on his coat, and steps outside, in search of the pizza man. Julie follows. Scoffing, Peter turns around - and finds himself face to face with the snarling Zombie. Back at the cemetery, they find the grave onto which Peter spilled the potion to have been recently dug up from beneath. A crazed growl announces the return of the Zombie. They run to Mr Doyle's greenhouse. Julie realises the Zombie to be after the regenerative blue potion. On the ground, Julie sees a puddle - and recalls Mr Doyle pouring chilled water on the reanimated plant.
At Jake’s suggestion, they run to prepare Mr Doyle’s hose. Peter aims the nozzle, Jake prepares to turn on the water, and Julie holds the bottle as bait. As the growling Zombie lurches into view, Jake finally manages to turn on the water. The Zombie gets a good squirting. He appears to be down for good - but then lurches into life. The three run into Mr Doyle’s workshop. Jake notices a red-lit side room, rowed with dead plants - a hot box. The water that killed the reanimated plants wasn't cold, but hot. As Mr Zombie lurches into the workshop, Julie hastily directs a plan: with the potion, one of them must lure the Zombie into the hot box. Just as Julie and Jake run out, Julie, too late, remembers the laser beam - triggering of which lowers the workshop door, trapping Peter inside.
Peter is frozen with terror. He runs to the door, which opens - revealing one of the plant costumes earlier donned by he and Jake, now worn by Julie. Shocked out of his stupor, he runs to the hot box. In the heat, the Zombie convulses, groans, collapses, and exudes a cloud of steam. A none-too-pleased Mr Doyle arrives, and asks what’s going on. At sight of the liquefied husk on the floor, Peter runs off in search of somewhere to puke. Mr Doyle solemnly surveys the empty potion bottle and the remains of the Zombie, and decides to call it a day on his experiment.
Quinn closes, and Tucker douses the fire. Megan hears a distant buzz - which grows louder. They run.
This episode provides examples of:
- The Lost Lenore: Mr Doyle, bereaved of his wife, invents a potion with which to regenerate living tissue.
- Mad Scientist: Averted with Mr Doyle, who is benevolent, and only needs to see a reanimated corpse to be deterred from his endeavour.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Never again will Vange poke a hornet's nest...
- Our Zombies Are Different: A regenerative potion reanimates the corpse of an implied violent criminal. Perhaps because of the potion, he doesn’t look decomposed, but seems unable to talk, and is rather a brute.
- The Prankster: Peter and Jake prank Julie by dressing up as plant monster type things.
- Shout-Out:
- The title and premise recall those of Herbert West–Reanimator.
- The regenerative blue potion seeps into the grave of a man implied to have been a violent criminal, resulting in a fearsome zombie. This recalls Frankenstein (1931), in which the reanimated Creature is given the brain of a murderer.
