Science Fiction Theatre – The Voice (10/26/56)

We open in the home of Roger Brown, “an outstanding attorney at law”.  He and his wife Anna are enjoying a quiet evening at home watching Mendoza the Mentalist perform “an amazing demonstration of mental telepathy.”  Even more astounding, Brown is smoking a pipe while lying on his back.  Bravo!

Vertical pipe smoking: #1 cause of burnt corneas. #2: Emily Ratajkowski.

They watch as Mendoza correctly describes the contents of an envelope that contains a picture of the host’s nephew in a graduation gown.  The crowd is less impressed when Mendoza correctly predicts that the TV host will be voting for democrat Adlai Stevenson in 11 days.

Anna believes the demonstration, but Roger thinks the scientist observing was duped.  He says, “It would be a lot easier to get an innocent man out of the death cell by mental telepathy.  You know, just sit here and tell it to the judge.”  Yeah, I agree the existence of telepathy would clear the “innocent people” out of death row, but not the way he thinks.

Anna thinks there was something paranormal about the way the Sloan case landed in Roger’s lap at the same time new evidence just happened to be revealed.   Roger chalks it up to coincidence:  “The young man’s guardian just happened to wander into my office, that’s all.  A pure paranoid — wants to sue the city because he tripped on the sidewalk.  A pathological liar who let it slip he was with Sloan on the night of the murder.”  Wait, so you’re building the defense around the testimony of a known pathological liar who has a pre-existing relationship with the accused?

Brown has a pilot’s license, but apparently from the same Caribbean correspondence flight school as JFK, Jr.  Brown goes down like Frasier.  He wakes up paralyzed in the wreckage and tries to send out a telepathic SOS.  An old man driving by picks up the signal.  Hundreds of miles away, Anna involuntarily writes the word CRASH on a piece of paper.  How that slip of paper made it into the Best Picture envelope at the 2005 Oscars is not discussed, but explains a lot.

Roger wakes up in a hospital, but is unable to move or speak.  A nurse thinks she heard him ask for a glass of water, a doctor enters the room thinking he heard Roger call for him, and KHJ says he was caller #4 for the Carl Perkins tickets.  Anna enters the room, so I guess he telepathically sent her the hospital address also.

The rest of the episode is as lifeless as Roger’s paralyzed body.  At least one thing is cleared up.  The guardian is again referred to as a paranoid psychopathic liar.  But he is the accuser, not defending the prisoner.  Roger is able to get the man released.  But, c’mon man, he was probably guilty of something.

This was really a slog.  The story was not very interesting, the lead character was paralyzed, the video was in terrible condition, and Roger looked like Fredo Corleone.  That last item might not sound like a big deal, but now I’ll be imagining Fredo banging cocktail waitresses two at a time all weekend.  Maybe I would have been better off with one of the recommendations dailymotion put on the same screen.

Yes, a lot of potential there.

Oh, this is a recipe for disaster.

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