SFT continues championing our unsung institutes of higher education.  Today we are in “Science Hall” at “State University” home of the fighting Home.  We’re not here long though, so I don’t even know why I bought up.  Or why SFT did.  Flashback . . .

John and Nina Barlow are walking along the beach.  They find a nice spot and spread a blanket.  John, who is a doctor and probably never lets you forget it, begins mansplaining that the Moon does not shine, it merely reflects light from the sun.  Nina begins kissing him just to stop his lips from moving.

A minute later a fog begins rolling in which is just like The Fog — not scary.  John and Nina find themselves forced onto their backs, and they can’t move.  They awaken in a lab in a couple of La-Z-Boys.  They still can’t get up, but only because they are so darn comfortable.  Finally John crawls out of his chair, puzzled by how they got here, and if there might be snacks.

They discover they are locked in a windowless lab,  There are strange sounds and smells.  John really loses his shit when he repeatedly tries to break an Erlenmeyer Flask and it just won’t shatter.  When John starts fiddling with some equipment, a voice tells him to knock it off.  It asks if he is Dr. John Barlow, and if he is an instructor at the university where Dr. August Wykoff disappeared 10 years ago.  The voice tells him Wykoff is not dead. It is he who asked that John be brought here.

Wykoff courteously waits for the commercial to end before entering the room.  The Barlows quite reasonably ask where they are, why they were brought here, and if the La-Z-Boys are for sale or just display.  Wykoff turns on a screen which shows a photo in space.  He says, I doubt you’ll be able to see the university, but it is in this general direction.”  Since the photo shows both the earth and moon, John, the doctor, deduces that it was taken from space.  The next shot shows 5 moons, so John deduces they are on a moon of Jupiter.^[1]

Wykoff criticizes their human-privilege in thinking they are the only intelligent species in the universe.  John asks what the inhabitants of this moon are like.  Wykoff says, “The beings of this moon are not animals, parasites, or plants like the people of the earth.”  While I agree humans can be all of those things, I’m shocked at the boldness of SFT in saying so.  The alternative is that this line was written by a moron, and I just can’t accept that. ^[2]

The inhabitants of this moon brought Wykoff here because because their natural resources of methane were dwindling.  They thought a great human scientist could devise a means to harvest more methane from underground or at least do PSAs on J-TV to convince their population to eat more beans.

In exchange for Wykoff’s help, now 10 years later, the moonies (would it have killed them to name the moon?) have a gift for humanity.  They are giving us the titular Jupitron.  John believes the biggest problem facing humanity is food supply.  Jupitron accelerates the maturation process from 30 days to 30 seconds, a 60,000X improvement.^[3]  This could solve the world’s problems when used in produce, cattle, fish, millennials, and antifa members.

Oddy, he does a demonstration using a sweet potato.  Is anyone really in a hurry for sweet potatoes?  Ya kinda have 12 months warning when you’re going to need the next one.  But your family’s mileage may vary, I guess.

John wants to ask more questions about Jupitron, but makes the mistake of sitting back in the La-Z-Boy.  Before he can finish his sentence, the darn thing puts him to sleep.  He wakes up on the beach with Carol.  They both think it is a dream, but one of those dreams that 2 people can both have, I guess.

So, all of this was a flashback and now we see that John has used Jupitron to save the world!  Yea!  No, not really.  We just see the college dean suggesting that maybe electrons floating between their heads as they slept account for the shared dream.  No wonder they don’t want to name this college.  John discovers he has argon in his blood, so deduces it was not just a dream.  So he gets to work on Jupitron.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Jupiter has 79 moons, but only 12 had been discovered as of this airing.  I’m not saying this is an error, I just thought it was interesting.
• [2] The writer was actually very successful, so this is really baffling.
• [3] I can’t make out exactly what he says, but he does say 60,000.  However, this increase would be 2 x 60 x 24 x 30 = 86,400 times.
• Filmed in 10 hours according to the book.  What did they do the other 9.5 hours?

Sadly, tonight’s regularly scheduled episode, Legend of Crater Mountain ^[1], does not appear to be online.  I assume that is due to a copyright claim that — hey, Truman Bradley brought a hot young chick to the lab!

He describes her as “a specimen of the genus Homo Sapiens.”  For some unknown reason, Truman decides to go through her purse, finding an eyebrow pencil, lipstick, perfume, and “mad money.”  And when I say for some unknown reason, I mean it — I can see no way in which this exercise relates to the story.

He does compare her to a doll he has placed in a bell jar. ^[3]  He says the girl is fine on earth where the pressure inside and outside her body is equal.  He switches on a pump that sucks the air out of the jar and the doll demonstrates that her body would inflate like a balloon if subjected to low external pressure or 20 years aging.

All this is to point out that earth is the only place in the solar system that life as we know it can exist.  Bob and Laurie Grace Bob and Grace Laurie are researching whether life could exist elsewhere.  Cheers to SFT for progressively casting both Bob and Grace as scientists.  Jeers for still having her at home in an apron and pearls making dinner for Bob after his long day at the lab.  However, Cheers to that apron and pearls combo which look quite nice on her.  But a vacuum cleaner would really have made the ensemble pop.

Because of their lack of money, Grace is arranging their dinner settings — seriously — on an ironing board covered by a tablecloth.  Bob’s associate Charlie drops by.  He has determined that some equipment is missing from the lab and wonders if Bob maybe knows anything about it.  Under this brutal interrogation, Bob folds like an ironing board dining room table.  He takes Charlie into the spare bedroom; at least I hope Bob and Grace aren’t sleeping in there.

The room is full of equipment.  Bob shows Charlie a bell jar where he has used the equipment to simulate the atmosphere on Venus.  Grace tells him the goal is to see if intelligent life could exist on Venus.  Charlie isn’t impressed.  The Dean insists that the equipment be must returned immediately, but if Bob wants to takes over an administration building or egg a professor instead, the Dean is cool with that.

Later, while Bob is tutoring a cute student named Elaine for some extra cash, Grace begins dismantling the lab.  She calls Bob in when she sees a light in the bell jar.  He spends all night taking pictures.  When he awakens in the bright sunshiny lab, he sees the light is now gone.  He then notices it floating in the room.  He closes the shades so the light can’t escape, and also so maybe he can get a nooner from Grace.  He is able to nudge the light back into the bell jar.  Because it moved independently, changed the environment in the jar, fed on some lichens, and hates Donald Trump they determine it is alive.

That morning, Grace goes off to teach a class, and Bob tutors Elaine at home.  Bob gets a call from Professor Adams asking him to come in.  He leaves Elaine there to study.  She says, “At least it is easier to study here than the sorority house.”  What with all the topless pillow-fights, I imagine.  As Bob leaves, he tells her not to go into the other room.  Of course, she is on her feet before the scent of his Pomade has left the room.

The ball of light is out of the jar again.  It shines on her face (I finally understand that particle and a wave thing) and nearly blinds her.  It then makes for the shadeless window in the living room and escapes.  She does not wake up until Bob and Grace return to find her on the floor.

Professor Adams is with them.  He still refuses to believe Bob’s crackpot story about not banging Elaine, and about the light.  Then, suddenly, two lights appear.  They alight on Bob, then go back to the jar.  Adams throw a blanket over the jar and turns the pump to maximum suckage.  The jar implodes, killing the lights.  Good job, Adams — you ruined 2 years of research, turned first contact into a double murder, and probably ensured that earth will be invaded by an army of green, bare-breasted, 7-foot Venusian women.  No, seriously — good job!

Other Stuff:

• [1] Like Talking Heads, SFT stylistically dropped “The.”  If only The The had taken that approach we could have avoided them entirely.^[2]
• [2] I retract that snarky comment.  After finally giving them a listen after mocking their name for decades, I really like them.
• [3] Sadly, unable to work in a Sylvia Plath reference.

Narrator:  “This is where it started and ended.  In the top secret laboratory of world famed scientist Dr. John Bellow.”

Being conspicuously on top of a hill with a 300 foot tower on its roof, I’m not sure how top secret it is.  But it is, at least, secure as there are fences and guards, and history has shown us that no one can cross that kind of border.

Security Chief Steve Conway enters and says he has finished his assignment here.  He will be going on to set up similar security for Dr. Hayes.  Dr. Bellow is sorry for “what I got Hayes into” and “all this blasted secrecy”.  Conway says their work is more important than the H-Bomb.  Bellow still wonders why Conway won’t allow  Hayes and him to at least work together.  I guess it’s like not letting the guys with the formula for Coke fly on the same plane, or the guys who invented New Coke being booked together on Malaysia Airlines 370.

Hmmmm, the telephone that should never ring rings.  Washington had agreed to communicate only by courier, and no one else has the number.  Conway picks it up.  The caller asks if this is 727J ^[1] and Conway says it is.  The caller asks to speak to Bellow, but says he would not know his name.  What the heck — we cut to a guy recording the call on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.  Where’s our security chief?

Conway hands Bellow the phone and runs to an adjoining room.  Oh, the recording guy works there for Conway.  Wait, that phone is never supposed to ring.  WTF does this guy do all day?  Anyhoo, excited at finally having a purpose, he traces the call.  The caller asks if Bellow will be there in 30 minutes.  He says yes, but Conway tells him he will have to leave for his own safety.  The soldier traces the call to a hotel occupied by the government.  The lab bursts into flames, killing Bellow.

The investigation begins at the hotel.  The Communications Chief tells Colonel Davis that Conway came in at 4:30 and asked how to contact Bellow.  The Chief gave him the phone number to the lab — wait, I thought no one had that number!  Conway — at least according to four witnesses, it looked like Conway — made the call to Bellow then left the hotel.

Conway says Bellow was working on a new rocket propellant capable of inter-planetary travel.  Davis says it is workable and could be finished in a few years.  He orders Conway to fly to Dr. Hayes’ lab as he is “the 2nd most important man on this project.”  Uh, they did hear about the 1st most important guy getting blowed up, didn’t they?  Hayes gets a call similar to the one Bellows got, and he too is soon dead.

Dull story short, they figure out the scientists were fried by high frequency sound beams which makes the title of the episode a complete non-sequitur.  They figure out how to reflect the beam back to the source and kill people who shot it.  But were they people or aliens?  How did they imitate Conway?  Why did they call first?

Other Stuff:

• [1] What is 727J?  Is this a secret code name?  The Base designation?  Is he confirming he dialed the correct phone number?  I get the KLondike5-#### format, but why does this switch back to a letter at the end?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Johnny Cash . . .

Host Truman Bradley tells us the show opens in “Mesa Flats . . . 105 degrees in the shade . . . but there is no shade.”  WTF?  Could there be a more useless piece of exposition?  We see prospector Mort Woods who is luxuriating in a cool swimming pool . . . but there is no swimming pool.  He is sitting on some rocks beside the dusty flats.

He sees a car approaching which is strange because there are never cars there.  He tries to flag down the car, but it zooms right past him.  He can see that there is no driver.  Being from South Florida, he even checked for skeletal fingers on the wheel and the tip of a hat.

Mort thinks this is so significant that he runs in the 105+ degree heat to report it to Sheriff Barney Cole in Mesa City.  Mort has had hallucinations before, but Barney goes out to the desert with him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Arthur Gress and his wife Regie are also in the desert.  She calls up to him on a ridge to ask if he sees anything through the binoculars.  He says, “No, I can’t see a thing, Regie.  Better turn off that engine.  As soon as it cools, I’ll tape up that radiator hose.”  So he has brought his wife to collect samples in the 105+ degree desert, left the car running, knows there is a radiator problem, and risked stranding them in this furnace because the car overheated?

Dr. Gress heads into the desert where he spotted an outcropping of ore.  Regie is left at the car.  Soon, she hears another car coming.  She attempts to flag it down, hoping they have some water or eligible bachelors.  Unfortunately, the erratic car swerves and mows her down.  Gress arrives just in time to see that there is no one in the car!

The sheriff meets Gress’s car in the desert.  Both cars stop and the Sheriff says, “You won’t get very far that way, mister.  You’ll burn up your engine.”  I guess he thinks Gress was speeding.  They put Regie in the Sheriff’s car and head back to Mesa City.  On the way, they are surprised to meet an ambulance that has already been summoned.

At the hospital, she remains unconscious with the diagnosis of a concussion.  The local doc calls a specialist in Los Angeles, but learns the doctor is already on his way to Mesa City, summoned, like the ambulance, by a mystery caller.

Morty and Sheriff Cole go back to the desert to search for the driverless car.  At 1:45 they spot it and begin a swervy pursuit.  Somehow, on the vast empty flats, the driverless car is able to shake these two bumpkins.

The specialist, Dr. Avery, is able to patch Regie up pretty quickly.  Gress dutifully stays by his injured wife’s side, nursing her back to health, making sure no further harm comes to her.  Naw, he borrows some equipment from the Air Force and heads back to the desert with the Sheriff and Morty.  I guess the deleted scene where they convinced the Air Force to hand over a million bucks of radar and acoustical equipment to a Geologist, a Sheriff, and a smelly desert rat will be on the DVD.

While they are fiddling with this high-tech gear to locate the car, it does a drive-by and almost clips them.  Nice work, fellas!

Back at the hospital, Gress says the car they are looking is radar-controlled, and electronically-guided.  And apparently solar-powered because it seems to go forever without gassing up.  When the Sheriff gets a call about another hit-and-run they go back to the desert.  WTF — the victim is the local doctor!  Before he dies, he confesses that he built the car and tells them how to stop it.

There isn’t much going on here, yet I liked the episode.  Hollywood, not noted for ever learning a single f***ing thing ^[1], has never understood the appeal of just watching a pile of American metal zooming down the road.  Whether it is Barry Newman in Vanishing Point or Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Americans are hypnotized by a vehicle in motion.  Even when there is an utter nothing in the driver’s seat like in the schlock classic The Car or Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.^[2]

The shots of the runaway car zooming across the desert were just awesome.  By any objective standard, the episode is awful, but I give it a thumbs-up.  God Bless America!

Other Stuff:

• [1] Like how the overuse of the F-word hurts movies.
• [2] R.I.P.
• Title Analysis:  Hmmmm, it is pretty clear that it is a real car.  The phantom seems to be the driver.

The XP205 is a new experimental aircraft which, based on the mock-up, has no wings.  It can go weeks without landing, challenging the current Delta on-time records.  Unfortunately, due to a minor design flaw, it exploded just east of Hawaii.  Within hours, navy planes were searching for wreckage.  After a week, the search was called off.

Pilot / Physicist Mark Kendler was lost in the crash, and the heartless bastards in the government notified his wife Peggy by telegram.  Six months later, after she had given up hope, she gets another telegram — from Mark!:

DEAR PEGGY  STOP  I AM NOT DEAD  STOP  HOPE YOU ARE THE SAME  STOP  THINKING OF SELLING MY GOLF CLUBS?  STOP  SPENDING MY INSURANCE MONEY? STOP  ^[1]

She calls her mother to give her the good news.  OK, everyone was too afraid to face the poor widow when Mark was killed, so they sent a wire.  But now that he is alive, even HE sent a wire.  He couldn’t give her a call?  We know she has a phone, she just used it!

Mark Kendler is introduced to Al Mitchell, Director of the Bureau of Scientific Security.  Mitchell asks if he remembers anything.  He says, “I wish I could help you gentlemen, but I passed out when that ship picked me up, and I can’t remember another thing until I woke up in the hospital in Singapore.”  So is the missing six months between the explosion and being picked up by that ship, or between being picked up and waking up in Singapore?  I think it is the latter because they describe some sort of surgery that was performed on him.  But the former would have been a better story.

His colleagues welcome him back to the office.  They have begun work on the XP206.  Unfortunately, another group overseas, probably foreigners, have begun a competing project.  There is paranoia over how the plans could have leaked to them.  Hmmm, could it have something to do with the top physicist who was abducted and missing for 6 months?  Actually no, this is apparently the new, less-explodey XP206 project that is being duplicated.

As they are investigating the leaks, a spy is picked up on the border.  He has with him tapes of the project’s top scientists, including Kendler, recorded discussing the XP206’s heat shield, aerodynamics, but mostly Marilyn Monroe’s rack.  The offices are searched but no listening devices are found.  As they continue playing the tapes, it is clear the the bug is on Kendler.  They X-Ray his head and find that during his disappearance a chip was planted in his noggin.

Kind of a snooze.  Even Variety did not bother to review it that week.  Arthur Franz (Mark Kendler) got the big paycheck this week ($750).  The other scientists picked up a cool $80 each.

Other Stuff:

• [1] My favorite joke ever from MASH.
• The title keeps reminding me of this commercial.  Imagine that ad pitch now:  We have a great idea to sell your gum!  It mashes up 2 great American institutions, high school and guns!