“At an atomic test base in Nevada, preparations are underway for the detonation of a nuclear device. The purpose of the test is to measure metal resistance in military planes for heat and shock waves generated by a nuclear blast.”
Dr. Raymond Michaels looks at the weather report. A low pressure area is forming to the west, and will be here in 18 hours. It will be a week before atmospheric conditions are stable. Dr. Michaels decides, because of the storm, to move up the nuclear bomb test, which sounds like the kind of thing that could be arbitrarily rushed through with no ill-effects.
The only problem is that Dr. Barton is visiting his family in family in Los Angeles. Hey, it’s TV’s DeForest Kelly from TV’s Star Trek! He and his son are looking at complicated formulas on a blackboard. Mrs. Barton tells her son that his father works on physics all week, so he probably doesn’t want to look at it in his off-time. She got this theory from her sister who married a gynecologist. Turns out Barton and his son were working on a formula to see who would win the World Series, where e = steroids and the Astros were stealing the cosines. [1] Barton gets a call from Michaels to come back to Yucca Flats.
Sadly, his plane’s ETA gets later and later until it finally just disappears from the arrival board like a Delta flight. Like Lindsay Lohan, it is no longer even a blip on the radar. As a precaution, the scientists opt to delay the nuclear tests, although why there is an FAA approved flight-path over a nuclear test range baffles me.
There is an extended sequence of stock footage which prompts credits at the end thanking the Civil Air Patrol, the Uncivil Air Patrol, and the Antifa Air Patrol which just harasses travelers at the terminal food court.
The Civil Air Patrol finds an aircraft rudder and amusingly runs it back to the lab. One of the CAP dudes says, “That was Barton’s tail section alright.” OK, but why wouldn’t it be in the same vicinity as Barton? He wasn’t hit by a missile like TWA 800 after all. OK, maybe he bailed out. Or had an escape pod like the President in Escape from New York. [2]
Back at the base, the CAP commander says they can’t find the rest of the plane. He surmises that it has disintegrated on impact and the pieces disappeared like Flight 93 or the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11, although his intimate knowledge of those future events is problematic at best.
He continues to believe that Barton is still alive. He calls the base meteorologist. By feeding the computer the last known location, time of bail-out, wind-speed, and Dr. Barton’s weight, they hope to calculate where he landed.
At 13:47, the audio went out on the Dailymotion video I was watching. I will try to follow the story just from the visuals.
They input the data into the computer which is, appropriately, as enormous as a 1956 computer. It gives them a range where Barton might be. Major Sorenson goes out into the desert and finds Barton in a box canyon. Barton thanks God that Sorenson showed up because he was about to cut off his arm to escape. He then complements Sorenson’s firm buttocks, although that is just speculation since the sound is out. I could be thinking of other movies.
He is taken back to the base. Thank God he is in no danger, so the base can perform its A-Bomb test which is visible to Barton in the hospital, tourists in Las Vegas, and soldiers at the base, leading to all their early deaths decades later.
This series is impossible to rate, but I will miss it when it is gone.
Other Stuff:
- [1] I know more about cosines than sports, so apologies if the Astros reference makes no sense. I blame Google.
- [2] Did ya ever think how goofy that was? The President ejects with no Secret Service? Plus, that must have been a rough landing with no parachute. And WTF is a Limey doing as our President, anyway?
- Truman Bradley earned his pay this week as there is a huge amount of narration required over the stock footage.
- DeForest Kelly was paid a princely $150 for his work on the episode.