Thirty-Six Hours

"Thirty-Six Hours" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of the American television show Numbers. In the episode, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and mathematicians attempt to determine the cause of a fatal train accident while several agents attempt to rescue survivors. When it was originally scheduled to air as the fourth episode of the season, "Thirty-Six Hours" occurred in the middle of a story arc launched by the season four season finale. When the real-life Chatsworth train derailment occurred two weeks after filming the episode, the accident forced a revision of the script to include episodic events that occurred after the end of the story arc. To simulate both the crash and the rescue effort, series production designer Bill Eigenbrodt and Numb3rs art department had to build two sets, the inside of a crushed railcar and a tent in which first responders coordinated the rescue effort. Eigenbrodt and his production crew also had to simulate the actual wreckage using real railcars placed along a stretch of open track. Eigenbrodt and the production crew also had to design the robots that appear in the episode. "Thirty-Six Hours" first aired in the United States on November 21, 2008. Critics gave the episode a positive review. Plot summary A freight train and a passenger train collide with each other. Several people on the passenger train are killed, and others are trapped in the wreckage. Suspecting terrorism, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) calls FBI Special Agents Don Eppes (Rob Morrow), David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard), Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno), and Nikki Betancourt (Sophina Brown) to the scene. Don leaves David and Colby at the scene to rescue survivors while he and Nikki talk to a conductor who had jumped out of the train before it crashed. Nikki attempts to tie the conductor's deceased crew-mate, who stayed on the crashing train trying to apply the brakes and has Syrian origin, to a terrorist plot. Don feels that the wreck was unrelated to terrorist activities. At CalSci, Dr. Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), Don's younger brother and an FBI math consultant, demonstrates a group of swarmbots, robots which can gather information using infotaxis, the use of information to create a map of the robots' environment, to Don and their father, Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch). Charlie tells Don the swarmbots could map the wreck in order to find survivors.