Quincy M.E. (TV Series) By the Death of a Child (1979) User Reviews

Quincy and Sam go to a fictional Caribbean island nation.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 22 April 2013]

In some fictional Caribbean island nation, there is a plague killing small children. The problem is that it's a virus--which is hard to treat. And, it's a problem because the drug that MIGHT work is not FDA approved. So, Quincy goes into angry doctor mode and crusades to get the US government to release the drug. To make matters worse, the pro-American leader of this county (Robert Loggia) is barely holding on to power--and the opposition leader (David Opatashu) seems eager to take advantage of the situation.

If you think about it, the whole idea of Quincy being sent to some foreign nation (especially when an epidemiologist would be a much more logical choice than a coroner) is silly. It shows that the writers were trying to come up with ideas--ANYTHING to make the show more interesting. It's not a bad episode but it is a contrived one.

Average Quincy episode.

[poolandrews · 5/10 · 10 April 2008]

Quincy M.E.: By the Death of a Child starts at about 4 O'Clock in the morning as Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin) & two state department officials Bay & Harris climb aboard Los Angeles chief medical examiner Quincy's (Jack Klugman) boat waking him up. It's an emergency, the small independent island country of San Cristos is in crisis. The countries babies are dying, having recently opened up to Western & American ideals the superstitious locals are blaming the diphtheria vaccines recently supplied by the US. The countries prime minister Harland DeVille (Robert Loggia) is under pressure to renounce all things American while it's Quincy's job to prove that the vaccine isn't responsible for the death's. With political & emotional tensions running high can Quincy step in & save the babies & prevent a full blown bloody civil revolution at the same time...

Episode 3 from season 5 this Quincy story was directed by Allan Cooke & I have to say I wasn't that impressed with it although it's still perfectly entertaining & watchable. Here Quincy is caught in the politics of a situation which he handles like when he comes up against bureaucracy, basically shout at everyone & bang heads together until things get done & it's always fun to see Klugman on top form put in another blinding performance as he passionately fights against red tape for what's morally right. However other than that there's not much here in By the Death of a Child to recommend, there's no murder, there's no great mystery, the solution is all too obvious & apart from a bit of red tape all too easily achieved. I mean form the moment you know the scenario you know that Quincy will save the children, prove the US innocent of any wrong doing & generally save the day. At only fifty minutes in length at least it's short enough not to become boring but even though I only saw it a few hours ago I can barely remember anything about it.

Here we see the cheapest staged revolution & civil war ever put on film, in fact we don't see anything other than the guy from the state department saying there is one so we have to take his word for it! There's a silly little continuity error in the script here, at the start Quincy clearly moans about being woken up at 4 O'Clock but then about half way through he moans at Harris that he woke him up at 2 O'Clock. It's not a huge mistake but it did sort of bug me in a nerdy sort of way. Despite San Cristos apparently having very little American influence it's amazing how many of their people walk around in American suits & ties... I was never convinced that Quincy was working on a small isolated island country. The acting is alright, Ina Balin makes the third of her five Quincy guest appearances here while Robert Loggia went to star in many a film & telly programme & even got nominated for an Oscar.

By the Death of a Child isn't a classic Quincy episode, it's rather unbelievable & a little bit too routine & predictable for my liking & the lack of a murder or a mystery doesn't help. Not bad but not great.

Tedious episode with a far-fetched premise

[rayoflite24 · 5/10 · 10 October 2015]

By the Death of a Child begins with Quincy (Jack Klugman) being awakened on his boat in the middle of the night by Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin) and two state department officials who come aboard. They tell him about a public health crisis in a small island country in the Caribbean where the children are dying from a mysterious virus and ask him to go there and assist. To make matters further complicated, there is a great deal of political unrest in the country and the U.S. has been providing support, but some of the locals blame the U.S. involvement and a vaccine that was provided to the children as the reason for the illness and fatalities. Quincy and Sam (Robert Ito) travel to the Caribbean nation to help treat the victims and prove that it was not the vaccine that caused the virus.

This is one of those Quincy episodes that strays way off the premise of the show in that we see him going off to some remote location to treat living patients and getting himself involved in a political dispute which he has no business being in. Why would Washington DC officials hand pick the Los Angeles coroner to travel to this country and deal with this crisis? It seems much more plausible that they would send representatives from the U.S. Dept of Health or the CDC which are federal agencies they are in partnership with to deal with this crisis rather than a city coroner. I had a problem with this plot right from the beginning and found it hard to take the rest of the episode seriously.

If you enjoy the episodes where Quincy travels outside of LA and does something out of the routine than you might find this one entertaining, but this is just not the type of story I enjoy and found it to be below average and tedious. Between this and the previous two episodes, Season 5 is off to a very disappointing start.