We start, as always on SFT, in a generically named institution — tonight, The Office of Scientific Security.  Jim Spencer is investigating the disappearance of three leading food scientists, all of them patients of the same doctor.  He is curious why these scientists chose to visit that doctor when there were other doctors closer to their homes with smaller index fingers. 

He finds it especially strange because all 3 scientists are over 70.  Wait, why are these geezers even still working?  And they are the leading scientists?  Where are the new food scientists of tomorrow coming from?  And accordion players?  He has heard that another patient, Dr. Kenneth White, has closed his bank account, sold his wife and car, and paid his bills.  

Spencer goes undercover to the doctor for a physical.  In the waiting room, he observes on the doctor’s diploma that he graduated in 1907. He exclaims to the nurse,  “That would make him at least 70!”  Well, yeah, if he graduated from medical school at age 21 it would.  Maybe there was less to learn then.  They were only up to COVID-3.

Spencer recruits the nurse as part of his investigation.  He tells her to take time off to care for a “sick relative” so he can send Nurse Kinder as a spy to take her place.  Kinder can find no connection to the missing scientists, but does discover a secret lab in the office.  Dr. Dove interrupts them, and Kinder introduces Spencer as her fiancee.  Dove lets it slip that his dog is 33 years old.  

This is apparently good enough to get a warrant because they wiretap Dr. Dove’s office.  Sadly, that does not work, so they have Nurse Kinder do some surveillance.  She sees a man named Gorman leave the lab.   He is rolling down his sleeve like he just had an injection, or forgot his handkerchief.  They get his fingerprints and learn that he died 18 years ago, which is shocking because he looks like he died only 10 years ago.

They learn that his fingerprints belonged to a forger who died in prison, and that Dove was the prison doctor.  By wiretapping Dove’s lab, they learn that Gorman is providing forged passports in exchange for injections of a youth serum which, frankly, doesn’t seem to be doing him much good.  

Sweet Jesus, this thing is only half way through!  Dull story short, Dr. Dove has discovered a serum which will add 50 years to the average human life.  But the real stunner is that  SFT actually came up with an interesting twist.  If life expectancy increased that dramatically, then the population would quickly increase, leading to mass starvation as the lines at Cracker Barrel grow to a mile long. 

Ergo, Dr. Dove is keeping the doctors alive so they can research how to greatly increase food production before he reveals his youth serum to the world.  Dove says, “Their work may take years.  My serum will keep them alive and active.  And when people notice that they never wrinkle, never weaken, never grow holder, then they will disappear and show up elsewhere” with younger girlfriends.  

Blah blah.  Lockhart is sent to jail for passport fraud.  Without the serum, he shrivels up and dies of old age off-camera in his cell within days.  Or so Hillary Clinton would have you believe.

Dreadful.

This is how bored even the host of the show was.  Hey, the camera’s still running, dude!

Other Stuff:

• The book Science Fiction Theatre: A History of the Television Program tells us Gene Lockhart picked up a cool $2,000 for his work as Dr. Dove.  It was worth it to not have an actor tell us how dreamy Adlai Stevenson is, and that Eisenhower is Hitler.  
• Strangely, the chapter devoted to this episode has several typos.  I like to think the author was easing his pain the same way I am.
• Epstein didn’t kill himself.