We are told Joe Ferguson drives his wife crazy by spending most of his time downstairs; no, in his basement lab.  Ellie Ferguson arrives home in a great mood because she just learned she is pregnant.  She tries to tell Joe, but he is oblivious, staring into his microscope and talking about his great discovery.  She tells him he is so wrapped up in his work that he doesn’t know she is alive.  This being 1955 TV, I assume her husband knew her a couple of months ago — as opposed to, say, the milkman, TV repairman, or some other extinct species.  I guess today, they would be the delivery guy from Whole Foods or someone from Geek Squad; but are they really threats?

To be fair, when he realizes what she is yammering on about, he is elated.  Ellie brings him down when she mentions this will be a big responsibility, require money, and reminds him they are in debt.  Every time Ellie balances the budget, Joe finds another geologic specimen or scientific instrument to buy.  He decides to sell his microscope for $500.  If I can think of a Gift of the Magi reference by the end of the episode, I’ll be happy. ^[1]

While in the store, another item catches his eye — a piece of fossilized amber with a spider caught in it.  It has a $1,500 price tag, so Joe talks the clerk into letting him borrow it.  He says, “It has the potential to open up a whole new world for us.”  Yeah, Jurassic World.

His buddy Frank identifies the creature as a wolf spider, maybe 100 million years old.  He says the amber is Joe’s area of expertise.  Although, as a geologist, I’m not sure how tree sweat falls in his bailiwick.  Maybe in the Petrified Forest.

Joe says his interest in the item is because his company is working on a new synthetic oil substitute.  Joe explains that in 1955, “The dwindling oil supply has become one of the greatest problems of our age.”  And Al Gore wonders why there are skeptics of anthropogenic global warming.  Joe believes the specimen can provide answers about how oil is created.

Ellie overhears this.  Then Joe inexplicably tells her he paid $1,500 for the specimen which is not even true.  He borrowed the item and left a $450 deposit — this guy makes his own trouble.  She says, “I’m not interested in Mother Nature — I’m interested in Mother Ferguson!”  Good one Ellie!  Sadly, this nice zinger is followed by some really hokey dialogue and Ellie runs from the room accompanied by the God-awful, overbearing SFT score.

That night, the store-owner who sold him the rock drops by the house.  He has a buyer for the amber and wants to get it back from Joe.  He returns the money Joe put down, and Ellie gives him the specimen from the lab. When Joe gets home that night, he finds Ellie having tea with the store-owner and some other creditors. They’ve decided they will all be partners in Joe’s research venture which they have named Spider, Inc.

They all go down to the lab at his job to see his latest experiment.  The company president, who had earlier dismissed his ideas, walks in.  Joe tells him he believes a bubble in the amber could provide a sample of the earth’s atmosphere 50 million years ago.  Looking at the results, Joe believes he can use electricity as a catalyst to make oil much more quickly.  It works — he invented synthetic oil!  I expect a lot of lawsuits between Spider, Inc. and the oil company whose lab Joe used for the experiment.

What I was really left with from this episode was how Joe is getting screwed.  His employer would not buy him the proper equipment, and the President had written him off as a loon.  But as soon as there are billions of petro-dollars to be made, el Presidente pops in to collect his Soprano-esque piece of the action.

Similarly, Joe’s wife has traded debts on the refrigerator and sofa for partnerships in a company that will be worth billions.

And finally, Joe had Jurrassic Park in his hand and didn’t go for it.  Or rather, the writer didn’t go for it.  I’m sure insta-oil seemed amazing in 1955.  But DNA had been discovered, and tadpoles had been cloned 2 years earlier.  The lack of vision in this series is Amazing, Astounding, and Weird.

Another artless piece of dreck from SFT.  I rate it 2 legs.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I’m not happy.
• Gene Barry (Joe Ferguson) was in War of the Worlds both 3 years earlier and 50 years later.

Six months ago, Police Sargent John Emerson was brought in to the Bannister Hospital with “multiple head gunshot wounds” even though he only has one head.  “A bullet was lodged in the brain.  His skull was fractured”.  He hovered near death for three months.  Finally, he moved a finger, then his legs.  A week later he could see.  Soon he could speak and walk.  Then his insurance ran out so they released him.

When he comes home from the hospital, his hot gal is there.  His sense of smell must be lagging because he doesn’t smell her cooking him dinner when he enters his apartment, and she surprises him. He tells her he is fine, but ironically Dr. Turner who saved his has died of  heart attack.

After lying around for three months, he has to take the lieutenant’s exam the next day.  But he hasn’t studied!  He doesn’t even know where the class is! ^[1]  He takes the test anyway.  His captain is stunned when the test results come back.  Emerson was scored as having a cute little 119 IQ when he joined the force; now he has scored 173 ^[2].  The captain knows Emerson to be too honest to cheat, so he hands him his new lieutenant badge.

The next day Mr. Fancypants goes to see a psychologist, “Dr. Franklin, I’m Police Lieutenant John Emerson.”  He asks the doctor if brain surgery can induce physical changes in a person.  Franklin says, “There are certain types of surgery that produce smart personality changes.”  He cites a lobotomy as an example.  What?  I guess Joe Kennedy was a great guy after all, maybe just prepping Rosemary for Jeopardy.  Ironically, the same procedure likely would have raised Ted’s IQ.

They decide to go to Dr. Turner’s lab to see if they can account for this change in IQ.  Luckily, the heart doctor seems to have shared an office with the psychologist.  The door to Turner’s lab is in Franklin’s office.  Strangely, like deja vu, Emerson seems to know the names of the lab animals and know all about the medical equipment.  Franklin suggests Turner imparted this newfound wisdom to Emerson by playing recordings to him while he was in a coma; in much the same way I watch this show.

That night, Emerson goes to Turner’s house.  Mrs. Turner confronts him with a gun.  He says he didn’t break in, he just knew where Dr. Turner had kept the spare key.  He wants to see Turner’s workshop.  “It’s in the basement,” she says.  “I know,” he replies.  He further stuns her by knowing that the workshop key was hidden in the clock.  However, he stops short of telling her he knows what she looks like naked.

In the workshop, they find a lot of animals.  Turner had changed their brains so enemy species get along. Literally, dogs and cats living together.  Also hawks and guinea pigs in the same rectum cage ^[3]. Franklin gives Emerson sodium pentothal and he recalls a tape that Turner made.  Turner, on the tape, says that if Emerson discovered this tape on his own, then his theories have been proven correct.  Emerson vows to continue the doctor’s research.  Mrs. Turner gives him the lab.  Great, he got shot in the head, and all he got was this lousy homework.

There are 39 episodes in this first season of Science Fiction Theatre.  Oh the humanity.

I rate it 50 IQ points.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Or is it just me that has that nightmare?
• ^[2] Hmmm . . . they only clocked Stephen Hawking at 160.
• ^[3] I will be the first to agree that the strikeout is the lowest form of comedy. However, I find it elevating when I do it.
• Reading Star Trek: The 50 Year Mission, I was happy to see a shout-out to Science Fiction Theatre.  One of the interviewees was afraid Star Trek would turn out this corny.
• Come on, John Howard (Emerson) was just in last week’s episode!  Give someone else a chance!  He still strikes me as an above-average actor, even if it is in that affected 1950s style.

The host tells us we are in Santa Rosa where “nothing much has happened since the Wells Fargo robbery of 1882”; that streak will not end tonight.  Sheriff Simpson enters Silas Barker’s funeral parlor, sadly for the business, on his own two feet.  He tells Simpson about a call he got to pick up a stiff at the Tyson place.  He was told the corpse would be in the garage.  He found it there with a death certificate that fingered pneumonia as the murderer.  There was no one else around.

Believe it or not, this might be the most visually interesting shot in the episode.

County Health Officer Paul Novak is the next person through the door, also sadly vertical.  Walk-in business — not good for a mortuary.  He examines the corpse which the death certificate identifies as John Corey.  It gives his age as 52, but Novak says he has the body of a 20 year old.  He asks who this E.M. Hall is who signed the death certificate, but no one knows.

Novak drives out to the ol’ Hall place to ask a few questions.  He gets no answer at the door, but does have the good fortune to meet TV’s Fred Ziffel from Green Acres who is delivering a package!

Back at the Sheriff’s office, Novak suddenly decides “Dr. Hall” sounds familiar.  He pulls out a medical directory and flips through the pages, “Haynes . . . Haynes . . . Hale . . . Haley . . . Hall”.  What bloody order is this thing in? ^[1]  Hall was a Nobel Prize winner in 1936, when that meant something.  He was a leader in the field of nutrient biology.

Novak returns the next morning to the Hall house.  This time, via an intercom, Hall tells Novak he may come in.  However, just inside the door he will find a shower where he must scrub down.  Luckily, not airing on Showtime, the next shot is of him post-shower buttoning a fresh surgical gown.  Hall greets him and takes him into the lab.

Hall tells Novak that Corey worked for him 3 years.  Corey’s hot daughter Jan is also working in the lab.  They are searching for a nutrient — an artificial food — that is cheap and foolproof because earth has gotten to the point where it can’t feed the number of people living on it.^[2]  As proof, he shows off a fully grown rabbit that is only 6 weeks old. Sadly it will die soon as a virus occurs whenever the nutrient is used.

The next day, Novak goes back to see the doctor.  He confronts him about not buying groceries and John Corey’s inexplicable youth.  He suggests that Corey did not die of pneumonia, but from testing the nutrient on himself.  Once on the nutrient you can never go back to real food.  Everyone in the lab is now taking the nutrient.

They were able to survive by switching to the New & Improved nutrient after Corey croaked.  Unfortunately, the novelty wears off and Jan contracts the virus.  Blah, blah, blah, Novak comes up with a cure.

This was excruciating.  The YouTube transfers are terrible but whatta ya gonna to do? The score continues to be offensively pompous.  The story was just an utter nothing although some of the dialogue was good.  John Howard had a few good moments as Novak.  The real catch was Vera Miles who would be in The Searchers the next year, and in Psycho a few years later.

I rate it 20% of the minimum daily requirement.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I guess it could have been the less-used Haines, but why would they do that?
• ^[2] This was when the earth’s population was about 1/3 of what it is now.  This is the kind of shrewd analysis that led to Hillary being given a 95% chance of winning.
• Director Jack Arnold, writer Robert Fresco, and hayseed Fred Ziffel previously worked on Tarantula together.  That film was one of Clint Eastwood’s first gigs.

“Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.” What the hell?

Truman Bradley tells us how physicist Antoine Becquerel worked with Pierre & Marie Curie to first extract Radium.  But this not their story.

A couple of uranium prospectors in a jeep are pulled over to the side of the dirt by the sheriff. He tells them 7 men have been killed in this area in the last few months; 200 if you include radiation sickness.  After checking their gear and — God bless America — firearms, the Sheriff sends them on their way.

As they drive up the mountain, the Geiger Counter starts clicking.  They see an eagle on the ground that seems to be the source of the radiation.  Sadly the bird is dead.  The prospectors throw a blanket over the dead corpse and decide to “keep him for luck”.

They throw the eagle in the Jeep and it not only comes back to life, it is no longer radioactive.  They get the bright idea to use the eagle as a Geiger counter.  This is a great idea except unlike a Geiger counter, you must feed it, keep it from flying away, listen to it squawk, and have it shit on your arm all day.  Oh yeah, and you have to check it with a real Geiger counter to see if it is radioactive.

They find what they believe to be a $10 million deposit of uranium.  They decide to file a claim on it, but notice a miner’s shack nearby with smoke billowing out of the chimney.  They grab their guns and kick in the door.  Inside they find a man named Ballard calmly tending to some plants.  He claims to be a naturalist, not a prospector.  He tells the men that the spot they found does not contain uranium, but some other form of radioactive energy.

Nevertheless, one of the men goes to file the claim while the other keeps an eye on Ballard,  He continues working on the plants which he plans to “take home.”  His home is lacking these life forms that breathe carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

200 years before the Weyland-Yutani shake and bakes, this sets up an interesting premise that I suspect not many people in 1955 had ever considered — terra-forming.  Unfortunately nothing is done with this intriguing premise.  Nothing.

In fact, such a nothing is done with this that I have to wonder if the episode is complete.  It only runs 22:25 on YouTube whereas some episodes run 3 – 4 minutes longer.  They had everything going for them — a mostly exterior setting, an eagle, interesting actors, and a great premise.

Having all that and blowing it earns them a rating of Death Valley.

Post-Post:

• Meh.

The voice-over tells us we are on “the campus of one of our great universities near Washington, DC.” This is immediately called into question as they have a Department of Parapsychology.

Lt. Col. Van Dyke busts into the office of Dr. Lawton despite a sign that warns, EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS — DO NOT ENTER.” The dick, Van Dyke, finds Lawton has hooked up brain-scanning equipment to his smoking hot assistant Edna to test for ESP.  She closes her eyes and Lawton says to her, “I’m focusing on something I’m holding in my hand.  I’m sending you a mental picture.”  She bucks the odds by guessing he is holding a yellow pencil, rather than his junk, but she is correct.  He congratulates her on getting 21 out of 30.  But really, since she was guessing from an almost infinite number of possibilities rather than say a deck of playing cards or different shapes, this is miraculous.  Or maybe he’s pulling a Venkman.

Van Dyke interrupts to say the government wants Lawton to go the North Pole.  The all-man crew at the weather station are “in a state of mind that is incredible and unreal. They are suddenly psychic.” Eighteen hours later, Lawton, Van Dyke and Edna are on the way to the North Pole.  The pilot radios ahead that he is landing with “one witch doctor, one chicken colonel ^[1], and one luscious babe.”  One of the men senses their friend Grayson is in trouble, so they rush out to find him before he freezes or has to cut open a tauntaun.

“The Brain, the Brass, and the Babe” land and enter the one-room base.  The men ask Dr. Lawton how they knew where Grayson was when they sensed he needed help. Lawton tests Warrant Officer Milligan by looking at a picture in a book and asking Milligan to guess what it is.  He correctly guesses a tiger, a leopard and a panther.  After a series of questions, Lawton scores Milligan at 66%, or three times normal, demonstrating this show has zero understanding of statistics.  Every man on the base was able to psychically identify cards, shapes and numbers.

“It was far after midnight when Edna was subjected to the same tests, and she was on her way to an unheard of 100%.”  Of course, being the only woman around for a thousand miles, she didn’t need to be psychic to read these guy’s minds.  After a string of perfect responses, she begins getting signals from a different source — the word YORD for example.

Star Trek’s DeForest Kelley was 35 in this episode. By comparison, Karl Urban was 37 as McCoy in the reboot.

In the middle of the night, everyone is awakened as Milligan unconsciously sends a radio signal, “YORD.”  Edna faints and, if I am not mistaken, Dr. Hall ^[2] takes this opportunity to brush his hand along her prominent breasts. The less Trumpian officers put a gizmo on Edna’s head as she is still comatose and record her brain-waves.  The waves are translated into sounds.  Through a means too ludicrous to describe, the sounds are transcribed into English letters, but still gibberish by the CIA.  The mysterious YORD is used as a key.

In a cryptological feat of Kanamitian proportions, the CIA is able to decipher the four letters as standing for DISASTER CALL ADVISE WHAT TO DO.  Van Dyke, now back in DC, wires the full transcript to Lawton.  It is an SOS from alien Exploration Ship 7 radioing home that they are losing power.  This signal mixed with the magnetism of the North Pole — even though they aren’t at the North Magnetic Pole — caused their psychic abilities.

The gang comes up with a method for the alien ship to descend to earth slowly enough so it doesn’t burn up . . . because there’s nothing aliens like better than a bunch of hairless apes telling them how to park after they’ve crossed the galaxy.  Since Edna had the most psychic ability, they put the gizmo back on her head and use her to transmit the instructions . . . because it will be much better coming from a woman. The ship falls to Earth and eventually disappears from the radar.
Another station radios that the alien ship was destroyed in a fireball.  Dr. Lawton is philosophical over their failure to save the alien ship.  At least now we know we are not alone in the universe, and we know that interplanetary travel is possible.

Another overwhelmingly meh episode.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] A Chicken Colonel is a full Colonel, but it has been established that Van Dyke is a Lt. Colonel.  Witch doctor and luscious babe are pretty on-target, though.
• ^[2] DeForest Kelley, 11 years before playing McCoy on Star Trek.
• Rachel Ames was previously seen in The Hidden Thing.
• Leon Benson has a ton of directing credits, most involving shows with horses or dolphins.  This is his only writing credit.

Watch that hand, bub!