We start, as always on SFT, in a generically named institution — tonight, The Office of Scientific Security. Jim Spencer is investigating the disappearance of three leading food scientists, all of them patients of the same doctor. He is curious why these scientists chose to visit that doctor when there were other doctors closer to their homes with smaller index fingers.
He finds it especially strange because all 3 scientists are over 70. Wait, why are these geezers even still working? And they are the leading scientists? Where are the new food scientists of tomorrow coming from? And accordion players? He has heard that another patient, Dr. Kenneth White, has closed his bank account, sold his wife and car, and paid his bills.
Spencer goes undercover to the doctor for a physical. In the waiting room, he observes on the doctor’s diploma that he graduated in 1907. He exclaims to the nurse, “That would make him at least 70!” Well, yeah, if he graduated from medical school at age 21 it would. Maybe there was less to learn then. They were only up to COVID-3.
Spencer recruits the nurse as part of his investigation. He tells her to take time off to care for a “sick relative” so he can send Nurse Kinder as a spy to take her place. Kinder can find no connection to the missing scientists, but does discover a secret lab in the office. Dr. Dove interrupts them, and Kinder introduces Spencer as her fiancee. Dove lets it slip that his dog is 33 years old.
This is apparently good enough to get a warrant because they wiretap Dr. Dove’s office. Sadly, that does not work, so they have Nurse Kinder do some surveillance. She sees a man named Gorman leave the lab. He is rolling down his sleeve like he just had an injection, or forgot his handkerchief. They get his fingerprints and learn that he died 18 years ago, which is shocking because he looks like he died only 10 years ago.
They learn that his fingerprints belonged to a forger who died in prison, and that Dove was the prison doctor. By wiretapping Dove’s lab, they learn that Gorman is providing forged passports in exchange for injections of a youth serum which, frankly, doesn’t seem to be doing him much good.
Sweet Jesus, this thing is only half way through! Dull story short, Dr. Dove has discovered a serum which will add 50 years to the average human life. But the real stunner is that SFT actually came up with an interesting twist. If life expectancy increased that dramatically, then the population would quickly increase, leading to mass starvation as the lines at Cracker Barrel grow to a mile long.
Ergo, Dr. Dove is keeping the doctors alive so they can research how to greatly increase food production before he reveals his youth serum to the world. Dove says, “Their work may take years. My serum will keep them alive and active. And when people notice that they never wrinkle, never weaken, never grow holder, then they will disappear and show up elsewhere” with younger girlfriends.
Blah blah. Lockhart is sent to jail for passport fraud. Without the serum, he shrivels up and dies of old age off-camera in his cell within days. Or so Hillary Clinton would have you believe.
Dreadful.
This is how bored even the host of the show was. Hey, the camera’s still running, dude!
Other Stuff:
- The book Science Fiction Theatre: A History of the Television Program tells us Gene Lockhart picked up a cool $2,000 for his work as Dr. Dove. It was worth it to not have an actor tell us how dreamy Adlai Stevenson is, and that Eisenhower is Hitler.
- Strangely, the chapter devoted to this episode has several typos. I like to think the author was easing his pain the same way I am.
- Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Executive James Barrett barks at his secretary to book him a flight to Toronto. He is leaving the Muldoon merger in the hands of young Philip Weaver. After handing off the file, Barrett calls his dimwit, baby-talking, still-in-bed trophy wife who thinks Canada is overseas. What could such a mature, educated titan of industry see in this numbskull? Oh, she’s 29 years younger than him. Not quite the 37 year difference we saw in yesterday’s 
The next morning, the doorman comes up to their apartment to drop off the mail and pick up Mr. Barrett’s luggage. After her husband leaves for the airport, Mrs. Barrett rifles through the mail until she finds Phillip’s letter. She reads, “By this time, my sweet, your adoring husband is on his way to the airport.” Phillip is pretty trusting that the USPS would get that letter there on the right day. Even more-so that it would be only be delivered after Barrett left, although he did improve his odds by mailing it the same day as the Monkey Ward catalog.
Mrs. Barrett . . . she doesn’t seem to have a first name. Let’s just call this treacherous, cheating ninny Helen. No reason at all. Just seems like a Helen.[1] So Helen immediately addresses an envelope to her husband’s hotel in Canada. After getting stuck because she doesn’t know what “smarmy” means — no, seriously — she pulls a picture of Phillip out of the desk drawer for inspiration. Wait a minute — she keeps a photo of the guy she is cheating with in her desk at home? And this is not a wallet size photo, this is an 8 x 10 glamour shot. It is even framed! These are the dumbest criminals ever.
Back in her apartment, she is mortified. I really felt for her, sitting on the sofa, almost catatonic with anxiety. Although in my case, it would have been because I had to attend a cocktail party. On the other hand, she does look pretty snappy in her little black cocktail dress. Gladys suggests that she go to the Post Office and see if she can retrieve the letter. She does, but again just misses the letter as it is sent out.
OSB once again, to great effect, uses historical and stock footage to add depth to a story which is just not that interesting. We open with several shots of WWII Dunkirk and London in 1940 before we arrive at a bunker where a group of men cheer Winston Churchill’s rousing “finest hour” speech on the radio:
This is an odd assortment of a farmer, a coal miner, a chaplain, a bank teller, a chemist, a grocer, a retired one-armed WWI hero, a young volunteer, and the headmaster of a girl’s school. It is a different time when this group of patriotic civilians would prefer to defend their country rather than going to work in their own jobs every day (well, except the headmaster, I imagine).
The elderly Blakely takes the first watch. Nazis row the boat ashore, hallelujha — wait, that’s not how that goes! But he has already dozed off. He dreams of his wife Ethel, as well he might — she is only 35 years old! Uh, wait a minute, Charlie said they had been married 20 years. Oh well, it was the olden days, I guess.[2] He dreams of Ethel at home asleep in their bed as bombers release their load, which is more than he’s done lately. The old guy is awakened by the whistling of the bombs, the explosions, and his enlarged prostate. Good thing, too, because at that very second, a Nazi is peeking into their bunker.
Another not particularly interesting — not even really a twist — but more of a gimmick or hook this week. It really is a mixed bag though, with some great elements. The episode had great potential with an large cast of defined characters, but didn’t know what to do with them. Too many people were thrown at the viewer at once, and arcs were hinted at but never paid off. The shaky kid did kill a Nazi, but that wasn’t really a satisfactory resolution. Well, not for the kid.
On the other hand, OSB continues to astound with its production design. It might start out in a one-room bunker, but it eventually moves outdoors (even if it was on a set) to show some effective fighting with the Nazis. The devastated town that Blakely walks through is utterly convincing. That and the bombed out home are worthy of a movie in that era. Much as I love The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, they never matched the visuals on this series. If it had not been so committed to such a narrow genre, this series might have been remembered as the equal of those classics.
A hot blonde walks in and busts them for quarreling as usual. Frequent SFT viewers know that scientists on this series frequently have hot daughters, and often the daughters date their father’s proteges. Although there have been many female scientists on this series, I think this is the first with the cliché daughter. Dr. Adler says her daughter Marie disproves the genetic memory theory. “Distinguished scientists on both sides of the family, and Marie has not one brain in her head. How do you explain that?” Marie says, “I’m a throwback to Aunt Elenora. She didn’t have a brain in her head either”.
Joe sits out the race. When there is a crash in the race, all agree that is a sign that if Joe had been in the race, he would have been killed, but that it would have been great TV.