Tag Archives: Science Fiction Theatre

Science Fiction Theatre – Who is this Man? (04/20/56)

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Narrator:  “In one of the rooms of a major mid-western university, Dr. Hugh Bentley, professor of experimental psychology, often held seminars where he demonstrated hypnotism by placing a student in a deep hypnotic trance.”  Hey, I think I had that guy!

Dr. Bentley and a colleague go to Lou’s Diner where they see a few of his students.  Lorraine’s brother George works at the diner, but is painfully shy.  When Biff pulls a white mouse out of his pocket and waves it at George, he runs shrieking from the room.  Lorraine asks Dr. Bentley if he can help George overcome his shyness.  She says, “He is afraid of people, animals, everything.”

Fortuitously, Professor Bentley has his weekly 4:00 to 4:10 office hours that afternoon, so he tells her to send George over.  He fills out a questionnaire for Bentley revealing he lives with his sister and father, no pets.  Bentley hypnotizes George and asks, “When is the last time you were with an animal?”  Heehee.

George unexpectedly answers, “A livery stable” where he was grooming a horse.  This was in Colorado and he was on the run after killing a man named Jim Wooster in a fight in 1887.  Bentley hands George a card and asks him to write his name on it.  Why not just ask him?  Anyway, George writes “Jack Welsh”.

Dr. Bentley confers with 2 colleagues.  Dr. Brown believes it is just the fantasy of an introvert.  The other doctor — who IMDb does not credit as a Doctor after he spent 7 years in imaginary medical school — disagrees.  He says while many kids had imaginary friends, “they didn’t write with the same hand.”  I think I know what he means, but it is a pretty poor way of saying it.

Bentley puts George under again and suggests that he remember back to 1888.  He begins describing his surroundings.  He is on a platform with lots of people around.  And, oh yeah, he has a noose around his neck and sees a couple of guys in MAGA hats.  Bentley is shocked by this execution scene even though in the previous session, George did say Jack Welsh had murdered Jim Wooster, and it was not in Chicago.  If Bentley were a competent scientist, he would have asked where Jack Welsh was in 1889.  Now that would be interesting.

Bentley decides to see if he can imprint some of Jack Wells’ traits on George.  He gives George a hypnotic suggestion that when he wakes up he will be “just as confident and just as sure of yourself as that man you wish to be, Jack Welsh.”  He could have added “but less murderry” but I guess George’s 50 minutes were about up.

He awakens and sees a white mouse in Bentley’s office.  This time he picks the little feller up and talks to him.  He is clearly more outgoing and confident; at least with rodents.  He heads over to Lou’s Diner, but not to work.  He sees Lorraine and asks her to dance.  When Biff tries to cut in, George wrestles him to the ground and begins strangling him.  I guess he does have some Jack Welsh left in him.  Then Goldie Wilson breaks a chair over his back.

Once George gets out of the hospital, Bentley gives him another hypnotic suggestion to get Jack Welsh out of his mind.  He tells a colleague that he still believes that hypno-therapy can help George.  But he says he will take it slow, like over 10 years or until George’s insurance maxes out.  Doc Brown enters and informs Bentley that he did some research at the historical society — there really was a murderer named Jack Welsh.  And his signature matches the card that George signed earlier!  Not only that, he played Johnny B. Goode at the Palace Saloon in 1885!

This is another episode that feels better in black & white.  If this were a color episode, it would just seem silly.  Charles Smith does a fine job as the blank-faced doofus George, but the doctors are stiffs.  Graded on the SFT curve, not a bad outing.

Other Stuff:

  • According to IMDb, Charles Smith played 3 different characters on The Andy Griffith Show: Counterman, Counter Man, and Counter Help.  You just don’t see that kind of range in today’s young actors.
  • According to SFT:  A History of the Television Program, Variety found the episode “pedestrian”, the vehicle (?) “static”, the performances “routine”, and the direction “uninspired”.
  • The review also used the phrase “no noose is good noose” which, frankly, makes me feel like Mark Twain.
  • Bruce Bennett (Dr. Bentley) was paid the princely sum of $1,000.  Charles Smith (George), arguably the lead, received only $100.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Long Sleep (04/13/56)

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Truman Bradley tries to teach us about hibernation by dropping a raw egg on a table versus dropping a frozen egg.  I don’t think that is a good analogy, and it irks me that he wasted an egg — that was someone’s child!  He says the principle is also true in some animals.  He shows us a cold, hibernating bear cub on the table.  Fortunately, he does not toss a conscious bear out the window to prove his point.  “This is the theme of the story you are about to see.”

Dr. Samuel Willard is checking his artificial hibernation equipment. An important patient is being brought in with massive infections, a temperature of 107, and the worst case of hypertrichosis John has ever seen.  Hey wait, that’s Jambi the Orangutan from the local zoo!

John asks if hibernation can be used although it is not clear why.  Hibernation will cool him down, but with a little hat and bowtie, he’s already the coolest orangutan in town.  It would halt the infection, but it not cure him.  Dr. Willard says he has only ever tried the procedure on squirrels and hedgehogs.  He agrees to try, but does not expect success.

They put Jambi into a coffin-like box filled with ice which will 1) chill him down to 80 degrees, and 2) be very convenient if this doesn’t work out.  When he gets down to 81, Willard tells Ruth it is close enough for gorilla work and to stop the chilling.  But since he is buried in ice, how is she going to stop the temp . . . oh, nevermind.

Jambi had been given 12 hours to live, but 24 hours later Jambi is still alive and his body is fighting the disease.  WTH?  Truman Bradley just said infections are stopped during hibernation.  Maybe this is more like an induced coma . . . too easy. [1]

After one more day, they revive him.  Dr. Willard gives him the banana test.  He figures if Jambi eats it he will be OK.  Success!  The town rejoices and the newspaper headlines return to calling President Eisenhower a fascist imbecile.  Willard is a smart guy, though; he cautions his family it will take many more years of research, studies, tests, patents, and government funding to make this single achievement a success.

That night, Willard is shocked to get a call asking him to repeat the procedure on . . . a gorilla.  OMG!  Wait, another freakin’ monkey?  Well it does worry him that it is a step closer to man.  He gets over it quickly, and goes to his lab that night.  The caller shows up with a gorilla with the worst case of alopecia he has ever seen.  Oh, wait, it is a boy, not a gorilla.

Mr. Barton does not care about Dr. Willard’s protests that the procedure is not yet safe for a human.  Willard punches him out and calls the cops.  Barton says if Willard calls the police, his wife and son will die.  Barton has kidnapped them.

Willard puts the boy into the icy hibernation chamber.  The next morning he is alive, but with a week heartbeat.  You know, like you might get from hypothermia since humans can’t hibernate.  But he has lasted longer than his previous doctor expected, so it is all good so far.   Ruth comes in and they determine the kid has a kidney infection.  For the next 4 days, the kid is hooked up to an artificial kidney.

Blah blah blah.  There is a subplot where Barton is going to see Willard’s wife each day to deliver her insulin only as long as Willard cooperates.  Even with this extra wrinkle, the episode is just deadly dull.  Dick Foran as Willard is laughably bad in some scenes.  Some blame is due to the director, but his performance often feels like a silent movie.  A few times, the director has him speak directly to the camera in an extreme close-up.  Despite the sound, I expected a title card to pop up.

John Doucette as Barton was just loathsome.  I guess he was supposed to be.  But he should have also had a bit of humanity as he was doing this to save his son.

There are silences, deliberate line readings, sluggish dialog, just about every problem you can think of.  This is an episode that had potential — a scientific (if implausible) theory, a guy getting punched out, blackmail, a wife who could be killed at any time, an orangutan, and Ruth the smokin’ hot assistant.

After a promising start in Season 2, this is just a bomb.  Not the bomb, just a bomb.

Footnotes:

  • [1] Once again, reading this later, I don’t know what this means.  The episode was inducing a coma for me?  Was that the titular long sleep?

 

Science Fiction Theatre – Signals from the Heart (04/06/56)

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What the?  I have stumbled unwittingly into the second season.  For budgetary reasons, they switched to black & white.  Ya know, it’s easy to make funny jokes at this show’s expense even if there is no evidence of that here.  I bought a book about the series and now have more sympathy for what they were trying to do and the limitations they worked under.

“This is an electrocardiogram,” the narrator tells us while fortuitously showing a picture of an electrocardiogram.  Mechanic Warren Stark is working on a Volkswagen — no wait, he’s a doctor working on a big fat guy lying on his back.  Dr. Stark tells the the patient, Tom Horton, that his EKG looks fine, but that he might want to keep an eye on those brake pads.  And WTF decided the abbreviation for electrocardiogram should be EKG?

Dr. Stark warns Horton that his EKG might look fine, but that is while lying down in a comfortable office.  On his job as a cop, pounding a beat, it might be different.  Then his hatchet-faced wife chimes in, nagging him about retiring.  Although being at home with this shrew is not the Rx for a long life either — his or hers.

The next day there is a massive train derailment.  The District Attorney and head of the State Insurance Company visit Dr. Stark.  They tell Dr. Stark that the engineer was a patient of his.  The man died of a heart attack and caused the massive crash.  The autopsy showed the engineer had a bad heart, yet just a week before Dr. Stark and given him a clean bill of health.

Stark again uses the “in the office” excuse.  He says the engineer’s EKG looked fine in the office but could not possibly reproduce the stressful environment on a train.  After all, the strain of having a union job, a bottomless pension, generous healthcare, and the responsibility of guiding a beast which rides on unmovable steel rails to an inevitable destination simply cannot be duplicated in an office.

Stark gets a call from his wife.  Journalists are saying the train crash was his fault after finding no possible way to blame it on 10 year old Donald Trump.  They say “he passed the engineer without giving him a thorough examination.”  The two men tell Stark that a coroner’s jury will determine his guilt in the deaths of 24 passengers.  He could be charged with “malpractice, criminal negligence or even manslaughter.”  The jury finds him not guilty, but his reputation is shot.

That night, while he is checking the want-ads, his son asks for help with his homework about the weather.  Junior wants to know, “How do they make the forecasts so accurate,” so he is no brainiac either.  Dr. Stark describes how a system of high altitude weather balloons, telemetry, historical data, complex models, and high school graduate celebrities are able predict a blizzard everywhere Al Gore goes to lecture, and 20 out of the last 3 hurricanes.  That gives Dr. Stark an idea.

He wonders if such telemetry could be broadcast from the heart.  He works all night on his idea and presents it to Dr. Tubor [1] in the morning.  It would be a radio-EKG broadcasting the titular signals from the heart to a central database.  Stark says they would “have a continual picture of his heart action at all times.  When he’s playing or working or arguing with his wife.  EVERYTHING!”  I don’t know about his patients, but I can hear Mark Zuckerberg’s heart palpitating from here.

The two men work for days to create the transmitters that could broadcast heart data.  Tom Horton stops by for another exam.  They decide to use him as a guinea pig (no police pun intended).  They remotely chart Horton’s EKG for 3 hours without a blip.  Suddenly there is a spike that indicates he is running.  And frankly, the escape of the young thug is the most exciting 10 seconds I’ve ever seen on this series.  Sadly, it is too exciting for Horton and he has a heart attack.

The police are unable to find Horton.  Despite being the world’s oldest uniformed beat cop, they have assigned him a large area of dark alleys.  Stark has the brilliant idea of calling the FCC although I don’t know who he expected to answer after 5 pm.  They are able to find Horton by triangulating in on his signals.  They save Horton and Stark is a hero!

Holy smoke does black & white make a difference!  This was one of the most enjoyable episodes despite a lackluster story.  Not only does the B&W look great, it also provides a comfort level.  The color episodes seemed like they were grasping for something that they just couldn’t reach.  With B&W, you just accept certain limitations because it is unmistakably from another era.

I don’t think anyone in 1956 would have felt the same way.  I’m sure this was seen as a step back.  Another show that show have stayed in black & white:  the 1960’s Lost in Space.  The Netflix remake should have been filmed in black & black so it could not be seen at all.

Footnotes:

  • [1] LOL.  Why would they give a character the hilarious name Dr. Tubor.  I think that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.  I know it’s the funniest thing you’ve seen.
  • But it’s still better than Toomer.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Other Side of the Moon (01/28/56)

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Truman Bradley:  Heat, cold, sound.  These are only a very few of the problems that will confront modern man as he ventures into space.

Great news Truman, there is no sound in space!  Again I have to wonder, how did anyone on the production not know this?  To their credit, however, they did not once call the titular other side of the moon “the dark side.”

Professor Lawrence Kerston has invented a new kind of camera.  Unfortunately, he is disturbed by the pictures he has taken, and not just the ones at the playground.  He has not left the lab for 2 days, so his wife has come to nag him in the way that women inexplicably think will make a man more likely to go home to them.  Lawrence says he can’t leave because he has called Dr. Schneider, and he’s coming in.

Katherine says, “Not at 3 am he isn’t!”  Perfectly on cue, Schneider walks into the lab.  The tall bald man is wearing an insanely well-tailored suit, a tie, and has the chipper, self-confident attitude of a casually-dressed man at an earlier hour with a full head of hair.  Katherine apologizes for her husband calling him in at that hour.  He says, “A man with 4 grandchildren is used to getting up at the oddest hours.”  Katherine replies, “Well there are no grandchildren in sight, believe me!”  That’s a nice emasculating zinger, but really makes no sense because 1) Schneider is not either of their fathers, and 2) why would his grandchildren be in the lab?

Lawrence shows Schneider the new camera he invented, and the disturbing picture he took with it.  He has a photo of the moon surrounded by a mysterious corona invisible to telescopes.  A spectrographic analysis identified the corona as being radioactive dust with a wedge of lime.  Lawrence concludes, “Something is going on on the other side of the moon — the invisible side.”

They take Lawrence’s photo to the Dean.  He is skeptical of the new camera and photos “that might throw the world into panic.”  The Dean suggests a six month research project before the news of the radioactive cloud is released.  Lawrence decides this is too important, and sells his findings to a magazine; then the danger is broadcast on the radio.  He is fired faster than a professor refusing to call a student zher.

He lounges around home for a few days, still wearing a tie everyday.  Katherine says maybe the Dean is right.  “Maybe a 38 year old Associate Professor shouldn’t act as if he knows more than everyone else.”  That’s the students’ jobs.

Lawrence goes to pack up his things at work.  He decides to takes a few last pictures of the moon since “atmospheric conditions are ideal.”  Although the atmospheric condition of actually being the daytime seems like an impediment to a non-pro photographer like me.  These new photos are even more convincing and disturbing than the first set.  Even Schneider agrees that streaks in the pictures are “man-made” objects.  I think he just means it was fabricated, rather than occurring naturally.  “Man-made” includes aliens; just not alien women. [1]

They call Washington and are summoned to a meeting with General Evans.  The Joint Chiefs decide we must go to the moon to see who and what is up there.  Seemingly overnight, a rocket is launched to the moon.  In minutes, it arrives and the ship is sending back pictures.  The scientists are amazed at the clarity of the pictures being transmitted.  As they approach the far side of the moon, one says, “We’re half way there.”  Hunh?  Does he think the moon is 250,000 miles around?  The ship is unmanned; there is no need for it to return.  No idea.

The rocket detects intense radiation on the far side of the moon; until it is destroyed by the radiation.  That’s why we can’t have radioactive things.  They do get enough telemetry to see that there are mountains of toxic nuclear waste on the moon.  The last photos from the rocket show a fleet of ships leaving.

Schneider believes the aliens will not attempt to communicate with us puny earthlings because “they must be highly civilized to do what they do.”  Yeah, like your civilized neighbor who lets his dog shit in your yard.  These aliens can go anywhere in the universe, but they choose to drop their deadly radioactive waste on the moon of the only inhabited planet within a thousand light years.

On the SFT curve, not a bad episode.

Other Stuff:

Science Fiction Theatre – Operation Flypaper (01/14/56)

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It is becoming a chore just to get through the opening narration of this series.

The Pacific Ocean . . . seen first in the great early days of exploration by Balboa.

Really, there was no one else living on the Pacific at the time?  Nobody?  Maybe over behind that rock?  He was probably the first guy to see it while wearing a metal hat; I’ll give him that.

Part of the many waters of the world, all of them known since the beginning of time as maris nostrum, our sea.

Since the beginning of time?  Even before man had evolved?  Who was calling it that before humans?

Sure, these are petty nitpicks, but that just shows how simple it would have been to correct them.

A group meets clandestinely in an ocean-side hotel in La Jolla.  Among them is Dr. Phillip Redmond, who won the Nobel Prize for Outstanding Scientific Achievement.  Alma Ford is there representing her father because SFT always provides scientists with hot daughters.  Are these guys killing their wives?  It is always the old man living with his hot daughter.  And of course the Vollard Brothers from France.

Redmond welcomes the group and explains their mission is to explore the sea and find ways to mine it for food and minerals.  For example, he mentions plankton could be harvested for food, much to the delight of fans of Plankton Fest at Red Lobster.  Hey brainiac, how ’bout some fish!

By extracting food and minerals from the sea, we would be guaranteed to never run out.  He explains that is why “we are met here in secret [sic], to work in secret, until we are successful.”  If there was any question that this is a government operation, he continues, “It’s 11 o’clock.  We can start work tomorrow, if someone would make a  motion to adjourn.”

Vollard #1 wants to continue — there’s always one!  He wants to show the group the amazing Echo-Sounder device that he and Vollard #2 invented. [1]  The revolutionary machine uses the latest technology to map the ocean floor.  He opens the case and finds the device has disappeared.  Maybe it went back to 1930 when it was called SONAR.

Vollard insists he had it in his hands the whole time.  There is no way it could have been lost or stolen!  He swears he felt the case get lighter as he was carrying it to the table.  Alma points out that Redmond just said it was 11:00, but their watches now show 11:45.  Well, they can knock off 45 minutes early tomorrow.

That afternoon, Alma and Redmond take her father’s workpapers to store in the safe.  The documents somehow vanish from the office before they can be secured.  Alma notes that 35 minutes have somehow elapsed without their knowledge.

Redmond gets into the advanced wet-suit he invented (dubbed “second skin”) that men will use to mine the sea.  He says it will “enable a man to handle himself physically in all operations at 2,000 fathoms.”  Hee-hee.  Wait a minute, these guys are going to go down 12,000 feet?  In a wet-suit?  That’s about where the Titanic is.  A nuclear submarine is not going below 3,000 feet.

He steps into a pressure chamber and orders the staff to simulate a depth of 2,000 fathoms.  An alarm goes off and the chamber is opened.  They find Redmond has been clubbed like a baby seal, and his second skin stolen like a baby seal’s.  Luckily he seems to have worn a full set of clothes under it.  Alma notices another time-jump and says, “the thief took something else — one hour and 10 minutes from our lives.”  Yeah, I know the feeling.

Back at the hotel, the Vollard brothers are trying to figure how to replace their space-age, one of a kind Echo-Sounder without driving all the way down to Bass Pro Shop.  Redmond calls, but while Vollard #1 is one the phone, the priceless Echo-Sounder suddenly re-appears on the table.  However, as 2 Snickers disappeared from the minibar, it is a wash.  Hey wait a minute, Vollard #1 was on the phone with Redmond when the Echo-Sounder re-materialized.  How come Redmond did not notice a 30 minute lull in the conversation?  Is Vollard #1 that dull?

The documents from Alma’s father are also returned.  They come by USPS, the opposite of instantly appearing.  The group reconvenes.  Redmond laments that “this is not theft, it is brain-picking on a very high level . . . our friend now knows where to mine the sea and how the Echo-Sounder works” and, I guess, whatever is in Alma’s father’s papers.  Vollard #2 suggests that the high-tech wet-suit will also be returned.  Redmond says they won’t be there to receive it, because they have been ordered to Washington DC.

At the Bureau of Internal Security, Mr. MacNamara notes that all the thefts took place in front of witnesses who saw nothing.  “We don’t know if it was magic, optical illusion, mass hypnosis or what.”  MacNamara has a plan to catch the crime in DC using several high-speed cameras, just like C-SPAN.  The four scientists — no, the 3 scientists and 1 scientist’s daughter — will set up a mock lab.  He says, “You will continue your work there, in deepest secrecy.  Actually, you would have more privacy in a department store window.”  Unless it was a Sears, which is realllly private.  The bait will be a story placed in the fake news that research has begun on a revolutionary new dredge, because who can resist a good dredge story. [2]

MacNamara warns that “the time-thief can steal at any time and can kill at any time.”  The group accepts the challenge.  They go to the lab each morning, pretending to work, going through the motions, keeping an eye on the clock . . . (naw, the government worker shot is too easy.  The structure encourages slackassery and a few lazy bastards taint the brand).  Some workers wheel in a crate with the new XD Dredge.  The box says 646 pounds, but the 2 fat guys get it off the cart pretty easily.  Maybe this episode should have been about them.

This goes on for weeks with Redmond and MacNamara monitoring the screens to be sure cameras catch anything amiss with the XD, the chemical stores, the workstations, or under Alma’s desk.  Their diligence is rewarded when they see the workers in the lab suddenly freeze in place.  A man, who Redmond recognizes as a former student, enters carrying some sort of scepter.  He weaves around the motionless workers until he finds the XD.  Redmond proposes the scepter is an ultra high frequency transmitter that has put everyone into “hypnotic sleep.”

Over the intercom, they tell the thief to turn off his scepter and give up.  He tells them to buzz off and opens the crate.  It is empty, making the he-men who handled it seem more human.  He says it doesn’t matter because “I have a secret that is more valuable and no one will take it from me!”  He then smashes the scepter, which makes no sense.  Rather than escaping by putting the guards into sleep mode, he has awakened everyone and is ignominiously overpowered by a woman and 2 Frenchmen.

Redmond calls him “a poor, demented paranoid with the IQ of a genius.”  MacNamara responds, “I have another word for him: Thief.”

OK, that’s what Sgt Friday would have said.  But I can totally imagine it.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] He says they brought a “working scale model”.  If it works, isn’t it a miniaturized version of the original device?  Good work, garçons!
  • [2] No reference to The Drudge Report intended.
  • Why was Alma there?  Really, the question is, why is she representing her father?  SFT has shown female scientists before.  It just makes no sense to diminish her like that.