Marisa Coughlan

When a group of eighth-graders find the decomposed body of a woman wearing a medieval princess dress, the team is on the scene to investigate. With Booth incapacitated due to a back injury, Agent Payton Perotta steps in to help with the investigation. With insight from "squint" Colin Fisher, a self-professed geek and expert in the language of sci-fi, the team identifies the woman as a promotional model from ImagiCon, a convention for fans of comic books, video games and other sci-fi genre entertainment. Brennan and the team must navigate through the outlandish landscape of ImagiCon in order to track down the killer. They soon find the victim may have owned a highly valuable piece of sci-fi memorabilia that many would kill to possess.

When Brennan, Hodgins and author Thomas Vega are summoned by a Federal Judge along with the United States Attorney regarding the ongoing investigation of the Grave Digger, they learn that evidence from the case has recently gone missing. With Brennan and Hodgins having been victims of the Grave Digger and Thomas Vegas currently writing a book about it, they become prime suspects in the missing evidence case. However, when Brennan and the team receive a phone call from the Grave Digger informing them that Booth has been buried alive with only 24 hours worth of oxygen, the Grave Digger threatens to leave him to die unless Brennan brings the missing evidence. The team immediately goes to Booth's apartment to assess the crime scene, knowing from Sweets' psychological assessment of the Grave Digger that they cannot tell the authorities about the situation or else the Grave Digger will retaliate against Booth. As Booth struggles to free himself from confinement, the team joins forces to locate him with precious time ticking away.

In the second hour, they investigate another murder when a father and son find a frozen body in a pond while ice-fishing.

Denny is called to defend a man who raped and killed a 13-year-old girl, but decides he'd rather go to jail than spend his days defending murderers. Meanwhile, Alan must face his fear of clowns and Shirley dumps a bizarre bestiality case on Denise.

Denise finds herself wanting to sue her own client when Boston's most celebrated plastic surgeon is under fire for unorthodox techniques. Shirley takes on a difficult case involving an Alzheimer's patient which touches her personally. Meanwhile, Alan and Denny fight their own demons as Alan asks his new secretary to protect him from night terrors and Denny undergoes an MRI.