On the morning of the 16th of September, an ambulance was summoned to pick up Dr. Camp who fell ill in the research department of the Cooper Electronics Corporation.  He was the second person to collapse in the past 2 hours.  At the hospital, the two scientists are diagnosed with appendicitis and ileitis. ^[1]

Hugh, the director, thinks it is just coincidence.  Dr. Bascomb is not so sure.  He believes their groundbreaking work on transistors might have been sabotaged.  To prove this, he takes Hugh to “the computing machine.”

He types in the odds of appendicitis = 1 in 24, blocked intestine = 1 in 2,000,000, one year = 365, and two specialists in a department of four.  The odds of the 2 men being stricken at the same time are calculated to be 55 billion to one — the same odds that the writers ever took a statistics course — there’s yer coincidence!

Hugh realizes both men got sick in the lab, and Barbara is in there now.  They are concerned to find the woman on the floor without a scrub brush in her hand.  She is diagnosed with a brain injury and is partially paralyzed.  She must go into surgery immediately.

George asks the doctors how three people could have gotten so sick.  There is no radiation in the lab, no poison, no Indian food.  Dr. Stone goes to the lab with George and Hugh.  They check the air, the chemicals, and the light frequencies.  They get a call that the two sick men were in surgery, but it was discovered that their appendix and intestines were fine.  Barbara is still in a coma, though.

They detect an electronic wave permeating the lab.  They rig up a direction-finder and trace the signal to the hospital and a room where Dr. Schiller is running electronic experiments.  They can’t figure the connection, though.

They hear a SHREIK, which unintentionally prompts the funniest moment in this series:

George:  “What’s that?”

Dr. Schiller: (very unconcerned)  “Oh, that’s a patient.  The surgery preparation room is right above us.”

They go to the head nurse ^[3] and see that other patients went in for surgery for appendicitis, ileitis, and brain surgery at the same time each of the three people were stricken in the lab.  Turns out Schiller’s equipment was reading the pain of the patients in the operating room above him.  Somehow.  And then transmitting the signal all over the city.  Somehow.  And the new super-sensitive transistors were picking it up across town.  Somehow.   And the transistor made the three people sick if they were standing near it.  Somehow.

They decide to test the theory by looking at the oscilloscope in the lab while another patient goes in for surgery.   The hospital lets them know when another poor sap is wheeled in.  George tells Dr. Stone not to stand near the oscilloscope during the test.  Oh, for the love of God, the oscilloscope isn’t causing the illness, the transistor is!!!

And, by the way, where is this butcher shop that induces such pain in the operating room that patients regularly scream and psychically broadcast their pain?  Don’t they use anesthetics at this chop shop?

They watch the oscilloscope go crazy as the surgeon slices into the poor bastard.  Dr. Stone says, “Do you realize what you’ve got here?  A device to see pain visually!”  Yeah, I’m looking at it, pal.

Barbara wakes up from her coma and doesn’t even complain about the guys calling her “Bobby” throughout the whole episode.  George proposes to her now that she is no longer paralyzed from the waist down, despite there having been no suggestion of a relationship up to this point.

After last week’s gem, this was bound to be a let down.  Still, they did surprise me a couple of times.  First, they actually named the corporation where 2 employees nearly dropped dead, and Second, it was not Amazon. ^[2]  The rigging of the direction-finder was cool (and did not rely on micro-changes in air density).  Then the boyz took a little road trip with their new toy.

Better than the average SFT, but that is one low-ass bar.

Other Stuff:

• Title Analysis: The three people who were carried out of the lab had only the symptoms (or facsimiles) of their diagnosed ailments.  I’m not clear on how that is better.
• Apologies to the fictional family of Dr. Hargrove who I rolled into Dr. Stone.
• [1]  Inflamed or blocked intestine.
• [2]  Would also have accepted:  Foxconn.
• [3]  The head nurse did not have much of a part.  She is worth a mention though, because she played old Geena Davis in A League of their Own, and because of her IMDb picture.