Misty Mountain song

Aaahh, "Beautiful Songbird". One of my very favorite episodes. At the airport while waiting for a flight, he sees someone that looks like his favorite singer, and is stunned.

"Excuse me. Is your name Caitlin Carlyle?"
"That's what my momma told me."
"It's a thrill to meet you. I just love your music."
"Really..? Well.."
"Can I shake your hand?"
"Yeah. Sure. Really? Well, where'd you hear me sing?"
"On VidPix."
"Excuse me?"
"On television. I heard you on television."

Then he realizes he's met her before she's become famous. She hasn't even got a recording contract yet. And that's where the beauty of this episode lies. It isn't Darien being future-cop, chasing a fugitive criminal from two centuries ahead, it's Darien himself, as a person, who he really is that gets to shine through so brightly in this episode. In fact, there was a scene in the first airing, where SELMA gets on his case about helping Caitlin with one of her own songs. She can't seem to get it the way she thinks it should be, so Darien asks if he can borrow her guitar and he plays the lick on it, and she gets all excited because that's exactly the sound she was looking for. She's down on herself for not being able to come up with it, and he says "You would have, eventually." And then she asks him to play it so she can sing along and he joins in on the chorus. She's freaked that he knows the words because she just wrote the song, and he just says "I'll see you at the show tonight." So in the bathroom he and SELMA get into an arguement where she accuses him of "grandstanding" and he yells "It was just a lick!" He snaps her with his towel and she disappears and he's mad.

The song he helps her with is called "Misty Mountain" and I liked it so much that I taped it onto a cassette by putting the recorder next to the TV and playing that part of the episode on the VCR.

Honkin' horns and rumblin' subways
haunt my days and hurt my ears
come the night my dreams are shattered by a string of nameless fears
in the dark I fold my hands
close my eyes and then I hear
lofty pines on Misty Mountain
ooohhhh-oooohhh-ooohhhh-ooohhh-ooohhhh
whistlin' winds that call to me
come on, come on, they sing my darlin'
to a land that's wild and free
come on, come on, my will my darling
cause true love's waitin' there, for me

I love this episode, and I think I may have seen it the most, of all the ones I have been lucky enough to see. They show Darien mostly as a man with no life, from what I can recall. He grew up an orphan, who never knew his parents, and part of a minority in the future he is from. He becomes a policeman, and all of his energy and interest is channelled into that. Aside from the one painting he did of his mother (from an old photo he'd had since birth, I think?), which they based SELMA upon, there's nothing that shows any interests he may have had before becoming a policeman. But this episode changes that. It lets the real Darien, Darien the actual person inside, not just Darien the policeman, shine through. He and SELMA actually get into an arguement and he yells at her. I saw the episode aired again, and they'd sadly cut that scene out.

There is, of course, also a criminal from the future, played deliciously by John de Lancie (Q from "Star Trek"). So it's all around just an awesome episode.