At yet another SFT generically named college, “Geneticist Anna Adler ^[1] is conducting a series of intensive experiments in an attempt to discover what specific hereditary traits are transmitted in animals.”

Two years ago, Dr. Adler discovered that her lab-rats were so sensitive to high-pitched sounds that they were driven into a frenzy.  “By careful breeding, the professor developed a pure strain of these mice.”  Now, eight generations later, she has bred vermin that react crazily to an ultrasonic whistle.  Congratulations for ending up where you started.  A government grant must have been involved.

Dr. Hughes tells her, “Congratulations, you’ve created an inherited characteristic!”  Well, didn’t the fact that it was enhanced by breeding mean that it was already an inherited characteristic?  Breed circumcised baby boys, then you’ll impress me.^[2] No, seriously, [2] now.

Hughes has also made some breakthroughs in breeding with Dalmatians.  C’mon man, you know what I mean.  He has a pup that is constantly sniffing around the corner of her cage.  He says that is where the pup’s grandfather had his food dish; or maybe where he dragged his ass.  His conclusion is that she inherited that memory.

Dr. Adler says it is preposterous to think that memory can be transmitted through genes.  Dr. Hughes says this accounts for deja vu, although they were afraid to use that exotic word on TV in 1956.  She challenges him to find a family with 100 generations of written memories to test his theory.

A hot blonde walks in and busts them for quarreling as usual.  Frequent SFT viewers know that scientists on this series frequently have hot daughters, and often the daughters date their father’s proteges.  Although there have been many female scientists on this series, I think this is the first with the cliché daughter.  Dr. Adler says her daughter Marie disproves the genetic memory theory.  “Distinguished scientists on both sides of the family, and Marie has not one brain in her head.  How do you explain that?”  Marie says, “I’m a throwback to Aunt Elenora.  She didn’t have a brain in her head either”.

Anna goes to teach a class, and Marie invites Dr. Hughes to go to a fencing match with her.  Marie says Joe Castle is just as good a swordsman as his father, which is the plot of a video I just saw at Pornhub.  Hughes starts thinking maybe genetic memory has something to do with it.  After the exhibition, Castle’s father says his son is training for the Olympics despite only fencing for a year.  Hughes excitedly asks him, “How did you feel when you first picked up a foil?  Did you have any sensation of having fenced before?  Or dueled before?  Did you have a feeling the movement or stance or holding of the foil came instinctively?”  Joe says literally, “What, who, hunh?”

Marie tells him about Hughes’ genetic memory theory.  Fortuitously, Castle Sr’s hobby is genealogy.  Back at casa de Castle, the father shows Hughes paintings and scrapbooks going back to the 1300s.  They are so old, he used 23 and Thee to do the research.  Hughes notices that Giuseppe Castillo looks exactly like Joe Castle.  Not only that — and I am serious here — he takes it as a confirmation of his theory that Joe Castle’s name is the anglicized equivalent of Giuseppe Castillo.

Shockingly, Dr. Adler is skeptical.  Hughes angrily demands that she wake up and smell the coffee. ^[3]  “The almost identical facial structure — the chin, the nose, the eyes!  The enormous similarity in their personality!  Both men fearless to the point of recklessness!  The both of them rebels against social convention!  And both of them wonderful swordsmen!  Genes can carry memories!”  Well maybe memory could play a part in the fencing skills, but the rest of his tirade does nothing to support his hypothesis.

Hughes also makes a plausible point by observing that Giuseppe Castillo raced a horse called Esmeralda, and Joe Castle named his race car Esmeralda.  However, he squanders this bit of credibility by predicting Joe Castle’s death.  Giuseppe Castillo died after being thrown from his horse Esmeralda in a race when he was 22 years, 180 days old.  Joe is racing his car next week when he will be exactly that age.  This load of Esmeralda-manure gets Dr. Adler starting to believe in genetic memory even though it does not seem relevant at all.

Joe sits out the race.  When there is a crash in the race, all agree that is a sign that if Joe had been in the race, he would have been killed, but that it would have been great TV.

This one was painful to sit through.  The premise was Ludacris, and the ideas presented to support it were infantile.  Dr. Adler sports a heavy German accent.  She calls her own daughter out as a moron and the girl has no reaction.  Peter Hanson (Dr. Hughes) has an annoying style of shouting his lines when he is the least bit angry or excited.   Joe Castle is portrayed as a muscle-head boob, then at least sharp enough to race cars, and ultimately Hughes gives him a lab coat and recruits him onto the research team.

Just a mess.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Oh, I get it.  She is named after Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler.  Or maybe famed acting coach Stella Adler.  No, definitely Alfred. ^[1a]
• [1a] Cheap shot as usual; Virginia Christine had a huge career.
• [2] I didn’t really want to go there, but couldn’t figure out how to describe how women could be bred to naturally have boob jobs.  I mean, they couldn’t be born that way.  It’s just creepy.
• [3] Virginia Christine went on to appear in Folger’s Coffee commercials as Mrs. Olson for 21 years.