“The Crenshaw Foundation has at its disposal millions dollars to be spent in projects involving the arts, science and the humanities.”  In other words, everything.  Focus, people!  Did we learn nothing from Sears?

Dr. Cole receives a phone-call and sends for Dr. Burton.  He tells Dr. Burton that Dr. Keller has died.  Burton says each age gets only one such genius:  “Aristotle, Darwin, Newton . . . Keller.”  Does he think they came in that order?  Cole wants to be sure none of his work is lost.  He sends Burton to casa de Keller to catalog his papers.

The next day, Burton goes to Keller’s house.  Keller’s “lifelong servant and companion” Thatcher shows Burton to the secret laboratory.  Burton is intrigued by an electronic telescope.  Keller had used it to take pictures of celestial bodies more detailed than any before, especially the blonde in 2G.  Burton figures it is 200x more powerful than any telescope in existence.

A woman storms in and begins nagging Burton immediately.  He asks who she is and she replies, “I’m Nina Keller, daughter of Dr. Charles Keller and everything here belongs to me.”  Burton says Keller didn’t have any children.  When she insists on taking Keller’s papers, Burton physically removes her from the lab.  Even Thatcher was unaware of the daughter.

Burton finds a postcard from Barcelona with the idiotic equation PQ – QP = 1H⁴ .  Oooh oooh, I got this one!  H = 0!  Thatcher also is clueless on who Keller knew in Barcelona.  Nina comes back the next day with Sheriff Olson who has a warrant for Burton’s arrest.  The next day, Burton returns to the Institute where they determine that Keller really does have a daughter, and she had the legal right, if not upper body strength, to throw Burton out of the house.

Burton says the real find is the pictures Keller took through his prototype telescope.  He has found pictures of an asteroid heading toward earth.  Of more concern to me is that giant spear zooming our way.  Burton shows Cole the postcard.  He recognizes PQ – QP = 1H⁴  as Keller’s Sub-Quantum Theory of the Universe. ^[1]  The postcard is suspiciously dated 1 year before Keller announced his KSQ breakthrough to the world.

Keller’s reputation takes another hit, as does the series’, when a 2nd postcard from Barcelona is found with another formula as the only message.  Cole reads the formula, “NA²CC⁸CC” and Burton translates it as  “Sodio Ethylene Dibroxide, the new miracle drug!”  Or did he say “the numerical drug” because this is more anti-science bullshit. ^[2]  This postcard is also dated a year before Keller announced a big discovery.  Cole wonders aloud if it could be possible that someone smarter than Keller lives in Barcelona . . . the racist!

The narrator says, “The already strange life of Dr. Keller had became an enigma wrapped in a mystery to Dr. Cole.”  Wow, those are some appropriatin’ MFers over at the Crenshaw Institute — this is 2/3s of Winston Churchill’s description of Russia.  Burton and Cole offer to help Nina sell the life story of her father in exchange for the rights to all discoveries in his house.  Hmmm, let me mull this over:

• Cole and Burton want to act as negotiators; a skill there is no evidence that they have any experience in or aptitude for.
• They will be dealing with the publishing industry, having never written anything other than a peer-reviewed article.
• Cole says a publisher has already offered $300,000 for the rights without their help.  That’s $3M in today’s moolah for the story of an unknown science geek.
• Burton demonstrates his lack of negotiation prowess by saying that in exchange for doing nothing, risking nothing, and sacrificing nothing, “We retain the rights to any inventions we might discover in your father’s papers.  That includes an electronic telescope which is the finest instrument of its kind!”

I guess Nina accepts their Ludcris offer because they are working for the next 3 days on the electronic telescope to learn more about the asteroid.  They finally locate it, but discover it is not an asteroid.  Cole says it is a “man-made” object; although I think he just means it was fabricated, rather than occurring naturally.  “Man-made” includes aliens; just not alien women.  Suddenly, they lose sight of the object and get a message on the radio:  Say nothing until you hear from Barcelona.

A few days later, a postcard arrives from Barcelona.  The only message is a block of ones and zeroes.  Cole recognizes it as “the language of cybernetics”.  Burton feeds the 1s and 0s into an electronic calculator.  The message is translated as

 Dear friend, this message from Barcelona comes to you through an intermediary from another world system.  We established this space platform 1,500 miles above the earth to observe and study your planet.  Dr. Keller discovered ours secret, but he agreed not to reveal it to the rest of the world.  He realized that this knowledge might throw the world into a panic and a guided missile might be fired upon us.  He tested our goodwill and we have given him information periodically that was vital to your scientific development and helped your world.

This is just absurd.  He read more words than there even were characters on that card.  It’s just not possible, even if — oh Christ, he’s not finished . . .

We make you the same offer.  Do not reveal our existence and in 3 months time you shall receive a staggering new scientific concept that will benefit the population of earth.

Burton says Keller was an even better man than they knew.  Well, he did sign his name to these great discoveries, but I guess the valor was in keeping the real source a secret.  Also, he was doing this work for a charitable foundation rather than pocketing the rewards personally.

Not much here, but at least it did have a story and a mystery.  Sadly, the cast did not help.  Walter Kingsford was fine and credible as Dr. Cole.  Christine Larson was angrier than seemed necessary, but that might have been due to weakness in the screenplay.  The killer was Burton.  His line deliveries were maybe the dullest, flattest, most wooden acting I have seen in years (and I just saw Gabriel Byrne in Hereditary!).  His performance truly must be seen to be appreciated.

Other Stuff:

• [1] OK, they didn’t have to cover a blackboard like Good Will Hunting, but did no one recognize the absurdity of this formula?  Obviously the Commutative Property reduces the left side of the formula to nothing.  The 1 on the right aide is completely unnecessary.  This is basic stuff.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe people aren’t getting dumber every generation.  Naaaaaah.
• [2] Congratulations to the producers on getting NA right for Sodium (close enough to Na) — but why does Burton pronounce it as Sodio?  Ethylene exists, but not with that formula, although Cs and Hs are involved.  Maybe Cole says H instead of 8, but it would still be wrong (but better than C¹¹ being written as CC⁸CC).  And surely one of those Cs must be Carbon; or the speed of light.  Dibroxide, I got nuthin, but there is an Ethylene Dibromide.
• The simplicity of E = MC² always intrigued me.  Can it be true that a concept so huge reduces down to something so simple?  Just seems like a cover-up by Big Physics.
• PQ – QP = QPQPQ