“Some men climb to the top of a mountain simply because it is there; these men are mountain-climbers.  Others because it puts their telescopes closer to the stars they observe; these men are astronomers.”

Is Truman Bradley suggesting the view of Jupiter is better if you are 1,000 feet closer?

Ironically, Seth and Barbara have gone up a mountain to get a better view of Los Angeles below.  These two are past their Lover’s Lane age.  Seth is 30 and looks every bit of it with his Gutfeldian receding hair, jowls, and rumpled suit.  Barbara is a mere 25 — in age, and on a scale of 1 to 10.  They see a Flying Saucer that looks like Gilligan’s hat.

A weirdo in a suit named Mr. Galleon approaches the car.  He says he also saw the hat and asks for a ride down the mountain.

Barbara’s father just happens to be an astronomer.  He asks why, after 30 years of watching the sky through powerful telescopes, he has never seen a flying saucer.  He thinks what they saw was just an optical illusion.

Sitting in a restaurant after a big argument with Barbara’s father, Seth figures they have about $275 between them.

Seth: We could do it on that.

Barbara: Oh, Seth, you mean it?

Seth: We could rent everything we need.

Barbara: We could find a Justice of the Peace.

Seth: A 16 mm movie camera.

Barbara: Sure, and take pictures.

Seth: Sound recording equipment.

Barbara: Sound equipment?

Seth: For a soundtrack.

Barbara: A soundtrack?

Barbara finally realizes that he wants to make a documentary about Flying Saucers rather than film their honeymoon antics (and why did the sound bother her more than the film?  Is she a howler?).  He sees this as a way to “get famous, then move right into television” where he expects to sexually harass a much hotter league of gals. ^[1]

Mr. Galleon enters the restaurant and the couple invites him to join them.  He has been checking the paper to see if the flying saucer was reported.  He tells Seth he admires his open mind.  Seth begins making his documentary.

He films a minister who draws a picture of the flying saucer he saw which looks nothing like the film representation.

An airline pilot convincingly shows what his UFO looked liked by demonstrating how he pointed at it.

An air traffic controller claims in his career he has seen 500 craft of a type never seen before, although most turned out to be on-time Delta arrivals.

An air force major takes a lie detector test to confirm his story of UFOs over Mt. Palomar.  Hey, maybe he knows Bob Richardson!

After a week of editing his road trip into a documentary, Seth screens it for Barbara’s father.  Dr. Arnold finds it “interesting but misleading, more opinion than fact”  and, yet, the feel-good hit of the summer.  Despite the testimony of the trained observers in the film, he convincingly suggests science-based alternate explanations for every case.

“Oh yeah,” counters Seth.  “What about the fireball that Barbara and I saw?”  Dr. Arnold says he can not only explain it, he can reproduce the phenomena.  Seth asks Mr. Galleon to join them for the demonstration, but he can’t make it.  He does however, give Seth a photo that he wishes Dr. Arnold to analyze.

Dr. Arnold’s demonstration is pretty convincing even if, in reality, it doesn’t reach swamp gas authenticity.  Seth is embarrassed that they could have been so wrong.  Dr. Arnold consoles him that even though the conclusions were entirely unsupported, it was a “magnificent” piece of reporting.”  With this on his resume, he is thus encouraged to call his old college buddy Dan Rather about how to break in to network news.

Oh by the way, Seth hands Dr. Arnold the photo that Galleon gave him.  Dr. Arnold checks it with a magnifying glass and is stunned that it is “an authentic photograph of our sun and all its surrounding planets — our solar system.”  He says the photo could only have been taken from another solar system or a spaceship.

Seth calls the hotel where Galleon was staying, but he has checked out.  He left a forwarding address to be given to Dr. Arnold.  The hotel clerk can’t pronounce it, so spells it out C-E-N-T-A-U-R-I-6.  He explains that is the 6th rock in the Alpha Centauri solar system, 4.3 light years away!

OK, it is hardly a nitpick to say a single photo that made the entire solar system visible would have to be about the size of the universe.  If it fit into the photo Dr. Galleon provided, the planets would be smaller than atoms.  It would have been much more credible for the photo to be of the entire earth which would not happen until 1967.

In some ways, this was a companion piece to last week’s Project 44.  Both played with the form a little bit by introducing documentary elements.  In both cases, it made the episodes stand-outs in the series.

This did lead me to a mistake though.  Pat O’Brien (Dr. Arnold) was so terrible that I thought they had recruited another actual scientist to play the role.  He starts out OK, even in that stilted 1950s style, but gets worse as the episode unfolds.  By the end, I was convinced he was drunk or incapacitated by stage-fright.  He had a yuge career even extending 25 more years, so I am baffled.

As always in SFT, the scientist has a smokin’ hot daughter.  Though the show is often quite progressive, she is just eye-candy this time.  Seth is believable as the rumpled reporter.

So, one of the better episodes; but that is one low-ass bar.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Note to Seth — you will never do better.
• Title Analysis:  WTF?