Tag Archives: Science Fiction Theatre

Science Fiction Theatre – The Miracle Hour (12/28/56)

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This one was almost never finished due to depression; and not mine, for a change.  Wait, I guess it is mine.  Parts of the story are just very sad.  Way too sad for this silly show.

Host Truman Bradley says over a picture of New York City, “Don’t let the bright lights fool you.  The production of a Broadway play, in all its technical aspects, is an exact science.”  One of the technical wizards is theater lighting director Jim Wells.  We see the master at work, a grizzled old guy, probably a WWII vet. [1] In his work-clothes and work-hat with the bill facing the right direction, he is efficiently pulling levers and checking gauges like an artist.  Oh no wait, here comes Jim — wearing a suit, a fancy hat, and with a trench-coat over his arm.  He is heading out at 5 pm, leaving the other nameless poor sap to do the real work.  Where’s the Shop Steward!  Wait, the boss is gone — where’s the Wine Steward!Jim is going to see the play’s costume designer Cathy Parker, but it is a social call.  Being of different sexes, they have to meet in private to avoid the stigma.  He rings the bell and Cathy comes down the stairs with a terrible limp.  That’s not the sad part.

They are actually a nice couple.  They have a nicer banter than we usually see on SFT.  This is a terrible print, but Cathy looks amazing in that slender dress.  Cathy’s 6-year old son Tommy unexpectedly comes out of his room.  So the beautiful, single woman has a child.  While a downer, that is not the sad part either.

Actually, Jim knew about Tommy and had been looking forward to meeting him — what a guy!   He has even brought Tommy a present.  Cathy had clearly been dreading this moment.  She introduces them.  Jim kneels and extends his hand.   With a blank, straight-ahead stare, Tommy feels around for Jim’s hand.  Tommy is blind.  OK, that is sad, but just the beginning.

Put’r there! No, here.

Cathy helps Tommy open the present Jim brought.  Jim protests and tries to stop her from unwrapping it.  It is a coloring book and crayons.  It just got sadder.

Jim tries to come up with an alternate description of the gift.  He goes off with a crazy story about wadding up the pages, and the crayons being sticks to bat them around.  Cathy breaks down in tears, but it is partially due to there being a racist Crayola labelled FLESH in the box. [4] The scene is cringe-inducing — and for a change with SFT, that is not a criticism.  It is a terribly sad, awkward situation — would I have handled it any better?

The next day at the theater, Cathy explains what happened.  Her family was in an automobile accident which killed her husband, broke her back, and left Tommy blind.  The other driver was not hurt, and was even able to swim like a fish and run like the wind right after the accident.  After a few days in a fake neck brace, he was well enough to be re-elected to the Senate. [5]  BTW, as they lounge around talking, the old guy is in the background working.

Jim’s college roommate from Dartmouth, Roger Kiley, now runs the Optic Clinic at Mercy Hospital.  He sets Tommy up with an appointment.  Dr. Kiley examines him twice and finds that the optic nerve is completely destroyed.  Jim suggests some experimentation, but Kiley says he’s not into that.

Back at the theater, we find out the old guy is named Bill.  Jim tells Bill he is taking Tommy fishing.  Bill tells him how, as a kid, he used to capture worms for bait.  At night, he would hose down the yard, turn on a lantern, and the worms would come to him.  Hearing that the worms could detect the light without eyes, Jim has an idea!

He calls Dr. Kiley and tells him about the worms.  Kiley is surprisingly knowledgeable about our vermicular-American friends.  He explains that they have photo-sensitive cells in their epidermis.  He speculates that the “soft tender skin of a child” might also be sensitive.

The next morning, Kiley does a brief, preliminary examination.  Holy crap, did he have Tommy take his shirt off for an eye exam? [3]  Then Kiley says, “Would you like to see me tomorrow?”  To the blind kid.  Really?  Is this what they teach at Dartmouth?  Waaait a minute — Dartmouth Medical doesn’t even have a Dept. of Ophthalmology, Optometry, or Otolaryngology (although that last one is irrelevant since it is an Ear, Nose, Throat, and Wallet doctor).

After a few more shirtless — seriously — exams, Kiley theorizes that Tommy is not sensitive to light, but is just feeling the warmth.  Jim suggests they try different colors of light which have different wavelengths.  In time, Tommy can distinguish colors and see movements that interrupt the light.  Through his skin.  Right.  The end.

I’m happy that any progress at all was made, but this isn’t going to help him with Playboy [2] in a few years.

Once you get through the sad parts, this is actually one of the better SFTs.  Jim and Cathy had nice chemistry, Tommy had that thousand yard stare nailed, they had a scientific basis for the story — even if it was Ludacris, and the kid does end up a little better than he started.

I rate it 20/50.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Ha, at this point, WWII was only 11 years ago!  Well, war does things to a man.
  • [2]  I really wanted to reference Pornhub.  But by the time that was invented, he wouldn’t care anymore.  In 1956, Playboy had been around for 3 years and the photography was not yet the god-awful mess it would become in 20 years.
  • [3]  You’re thinking that the “soft tender skin” might be on his chest.  That makes sense, but Kiley seems to only be flashing the lights in a band across his eyes like they used to shine on Captain Kirk in Star Trek.  Plus, they make a point of saying the worm’s sensitive cells are on “what passes for a head.”  And in the last test and in a demonstration for Cathy, he is fully shirted.
  • [4]  The article says the Flesh Crayon was discontinued in 1962.  Abalone, I remember them and it wasn’t no 1962!  I got yer flesh crayon right here, hee-hee!  Wait, that’s not very impressive.
  • [5]  I will never forgive that asshole.
  • It just seemed too creepy to caption that last picture “Tommy, do you like movies about gladiators?”

Science Fiction Theater – Facsimile (12/21/56)

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On the morning of the 16th of September, an ambulance was summoned to pick up Dr. Camp who fell ill in the research department of the Cooper Electronics Corporation.  He was the second person to collapse in the past 2 hours.  At the hospital, the two scientists are diagnosed with appendicitis and ileitis. [1]

Hugh, the director, thinks it is just coincidence.  Dr. Bascomb is not so sure.  He believes their groundbreaking work on transistors might have been sabotaged.  To prove this, he takes Hugh to “the computing machine.”

He types in the odds of appendicitis = 1 in 24, blocked intestine = 1 in 2,000,000, one year = 365, and two specialists in a department of four.  The odds of the 2 men being stricken at the same time are calculated to be 55 billion to one — the same odds that the writers ever took a statistics course — there’s yer coincidence!

Hugh realizes both men got sick in the lab, and Barbara is in there now.  They are concerned to find the woman on the floor without a scrub brush in her hand.  She is diagnosed with a brain injury and is partially paralyzed.  She must go into surgery immediately.

George asks the doctors how three people could have gotten so sick.  There is no radiation in the lab, no poison, no Indian food.  Dr. Stone goes to the lab with George and Hugh.  They check the air, the chemicals, and the light frequencies.  They get a call that the two sick men were in surgery, but it was discovered that their appendix and intestines were fine.  Barbara is still in a coma, though.

They detect an electronic wave permeating the lab.  They rig up a direction-finder and trace the signal to the hospital and a room where Dr. Schiller is running electronic experiments.  They can’t figure the connection, though.

They hear a SHREIK, which unintentionally prompts the funniest moment in this series:

George:  “What’s that?”

Dr. Schiller: (very unconcerned)  “Oh, that’s a patient.  The surgery preparation room is right above us.”

They go to the head nurse [3] and see that other patients went in for surgery for appendicitis, ileitis, and brain surgery at the same time each of the three people were stricken in the lab.  Turns out Schiller’s equipment was reading the pain of the patients in the operating room above him.  Somehow.  And then transmitting the signal all over the city.  Somehow.  And the new super-sensitive transistors were picking it up across town.  Somehow.   And the transistor made the three people sick if they were standing near it.  Somehow.

They decide to test the theory by looking at the oscilloscope in the lab while another patient goes in for surgery.   The hospital lets them know when another poor sap is wheeled in.  George tells Dr. Stone not to stand near the oscilloscope during the test.  Oh, for the love of God, the oscilloscope isn’t causing the illness, the transistor is!!!

And, by the way, where is this butcher shop that induces such pain in the operating room that patients regularly scream and psychically broadcast their pain?  Don’t they use anesthetics at this chop shop?

They watch the oscilloscope go crazy as the surgeon slices into the poor bastard.  Dr. Stone says, “Do you realize what you’ve got here?  A device to see pain visually!”  Yeah, I’m looking at it, pal.

Barbara wakes up from her coma and doesn’t even complain about the guys calling her “Bobby” throughout the whole episode.  George proposes to her now that she is no longer paralyzed from the waist down, despite there having been no suggestion of a relationship up to this point.

After last week’s gem, this was bound to be a let down.  Still, they did surprise me a couple of times.  First, they actually named the corporation where 2 employees nearly dropped dead, and Second, it was not Amazon. [2]  The rigging of the direction-finder was cool (and did not rely on micro-changes in air density).  Then the boyz took a little road trip with their new toy.

Better than the average SFT, but that is one low-ass bar.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis: The three people who were carried out of the lab had only the symptoms (or facsimiles) of their diagnosed ailments.  I’m not clear on how that is better.
  • Apologies to the fictional family of Dr. Hargrove who I rolled into Dr. Stone.
  • [1]  Inflamed or blocked intestine.
  • [2]  Would also have accepted:  Foxconn.
  • [3]  The head nurse did not have much of a part.  She is worth a mention though, because she played old Geena Davis in A League of their Own, and because of her IMDb picture.

Science Fiction Theatre – Sun Gold (12/14/56)

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What happened this week?  Was there a substitute teacher?  This episode is relatively awesome!   Relatively.

  • Truman Bradley actually names the location of the first scene rather than giving the usual generic description:  He says “The Smithsonian Museum” rather than “a large east coast museum built on former swampland in the most corrupt city in America.”
  • We meet archaeologist Dr. Susan Calvin.  To be fair, SFT has often been progressive about featuring women as scientists.  The interesting thing here is an actual literary allusion!  This has got to be a reference to Isaac Asimov’s recurring character Susan Calvin in his robot stories.  She wasn’t an archaeologist, but it’s progress.  
  • Explosions
  • Stunts
  • International locations (well, some inserts from Machu Picchu).
  • Ancient Astronauts

Howard Evans enters Susan Calvin’s lab expecting to find a man.  She lets him dangle for a few questions before admitting she is Dr. Calvin.  He reaches in his pocket and grabs two stones.  With his other hand, he shows her two glassy green rocks.  She tells him they aren’t emeralds, but he already knows that.

She says they were created by a nuclear explosion, but he knows that too.  He adds that this is sand from Peru that has been fused together.  Dr. Calvin is surprised that the glass came from Peru.  Evans says they were found “high in the Andes.”  Wait, there is sand high in the Andes?  Why didn’t those Uruguayan soccer players eat the sand which is there?  Sandwiches there?  Anybody?  Is this thing on? [1]

He asks to use her “dating machine”, but it doesn’t find any hot matches 20 years younger than him.  It does, however, determine that the glass is 2,000 years old.  Dr. Calvin says, “You can hardly expect me to believe such a fantastic assumption!”  She knows Peru did not have nuclear power 2,000 years ago, and has her doubts about electricity in 1956. 

Evans tells her a top secret expedition is going to Peru to find where this glass came from, find how a nuclear explosion was set off, find who could have done it, and find lodging with indoor plumbing.  And guess what? You’re on it!  The expedition, not the plumbing.

They travel to Cusca, capital of the ancient Inca Empire.  To go up into the Andes, they must travel by mule.  At a remote monastery, Padre Xavier welcomes them to the Inca Empire, but says they have no throne.  He warns them not to go to Red Ghost Valley.  “It is a place of landslides and evil forces.”  Xavier’s student Sallah Tawa joins them as a guide.

Half-Time Report:  This episode has already distinguished itself as one of SFT’s best.  The dialogue has been snappier than usual.  The writer was no Tarantino, but it is definitely an improvement.  There have also been fun ideas such as a poison arrow booby trap. [3] We get actual stunt work as both performers appear to take a fall down a rock chute.  At one point, there was a rumbling and I expected a giant boulder to chase them.  It’s not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it might be Crystal Skull.  Next, they find a mysterious metal mirror.  When they move it, a giant plume of fire shoots out of the rocks.  Bravo!  Just great stuff compared to past episodes.In Red Ghost Valley, using the hieroglyphics on a stone tablet, they begin solving the mystery.  Dr. Calvin translates, “Four stars make up a sun on earth.  One star on the 15th step of the big staircase.  One star on the yellow peak.  The third star on the block below.  And the fourth star right where we’re standing.”  They are finally able to figure out the cryptic locations, especially the “right where we’re standing” one.

They position reflectors at the four spots and aim them at the ancient mirror.  An intense fire appears a few feet from them and uncovers a cave.  When the area cools, they find more green glass, although part of it is an old Heineken’s bottle.  This means the fire was as hot as an atomic bomb.  Dr. Calvin, also hot as an atomic bomb, is astounded because Peruvians 2,000 years ago could never have designed this system.

They drop into a cave (another stunt!) and find a fortune in Incan gold.  Hieroglyphics describe how the reflectors can form a beam to turn rock into gold.  The tablet also says this technology came from people from the sky.  They find a skull that is too large to be from a human, even Leonardo DiCaprio.[4] Dr. Calvin suggests, “Do you think they came from outer space, leaving the Incans this gift of progress?”  Holy crap, did SFT just invent Ancient Astronauts?

In the 2nd half, the fun continued with stunts, explosions, and actual ideas.  Even the shortcomings work in its favor.  Howard Evans is not developed much as a character. [2] But that is largely because Marilyn Erskine as Susan Calvin blows him off the screen (but that is none of our business). Not only is she beautiful, but she drives much of the detective work solving this mystery.  Another example is some wind noise in the Andes scenes.  I suspect it is a technical error (not Hollywoody enough), but it totally works in establishing the harsh environment.

I can’t express how much I love this episode.  It might be objectively terrible, but compared to the previous 70 episodes — I never imagined this would happen with SFT — I have to give it an A. [5]

Other Stuff:

  • Who to credit for this masterpiece?  Writer Peter Brooke?  His career is almost entirely packed into four years.  Then, presumably, his wife told him to get a real job.  Thirteen years after a story credit on a 1964 The Fugitive, he rebounded with one episode of The Six Million Dollar Man.  I didn’t even know she was sick.  He did manage to parlay this early effort into six Sugarfoots (or Sugarfeet).
  • This was director Eddie Davis’s 9th SFT, but I don’t remember any others being standouts.  I see on IMDb he also directed 16 episodes of The Unexpected which looks pretty good.  Sadly it seems it be lost forever.  
  • [1]  Joe Miller Jokebook circa 1739.
  • [1]  They were rugby players.  Why does everyone always call them soccer players?
  • [1]  But all seriousness aside, would there be sand in the Andes?
  • [2]  Dr. Calvin is more developed, but it’s hard to tell in that lab coat.  Heyoooo!
  • [3]  As in Raiders, I wonder who resets these ancient booby traps?
  • [4]  Would also have accepted: Ted Kennedy.  That had to be a 30-poundah.
  • [5]  I’ve watched 70 of these things?  

Science Fiction Theatre – Human Circuit (12/07/56)

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“On the afternoon of April12th, Dr. George Stoneham received an emergency call to a large downtown nightclub [The Kitten Club].  Chet Arnold, manager of the club and a personal friend of Dr. Stoneham, summoned the physician when Nina LaSalle, a dancer, collapsed screaming in the middle of a rehearsal.  Although Dr. Stoneham didn’t know it yet, this was to be one of his most unusual cases.”

Oh yeah, the case when he left the suffering tubercular patients in his office in the middle of the day to make the country’s last recorded house-call at a nudie bar?  Yeah, that one might stick in the memory.

With no evidence at all, Stoneham says his diagnosis is “severe pressure on the optic nerve.”  Once the pressure is relieved, the hallucinations should go away.   Nina says that was no hallucination, she really saw an atomic explosion. [1]  When Mrs. Dr. Stoneham learns her husband abandoned his practice to ogle young women, he might feel a pressure on his optic nerve.

That night, Stoneham has dinner with his friend, scientist Dr. Albert Neville.  During desert with Neville’s mother, he mentions that Nina had a hallucination of a nuclear explosion.  While Ma Neville is doing the dishes, her son reveals that at exactly the same time Nina had her hallucination, a nuclear bomb was exploded by accident in the Pacific.  Since there was a democrat in office, the press did not deem it worth reporting. [2] 

Neville suggests Nina might be clairvoyant.  He helpfully defines it as “the faculty of perceiving a pictorial representation of a current and distant scene.”   Neville’s hobby is the paranormal, so he wants to further examine the case; which means — well, well, well — a trip to see the girls at the club.

Nina says she had a vision once before when her boyfriend Larry died.  He was in uniform, clutching his gut.  An army pal of his confirmed his exact time of death as the same time she had her vision, plus there was a time-stamped receipt from the Taco Bell near the base in his pocket.  Then SFT surprised me by earning the only laugh in its entire run:

  • Neville: Have you ever heard of clairvoyance?
  • Nina:  Who?

Nina agrees to help the boys with an experiment about clairvoyance.  Just as they are leaving, though, she collapses.  They take her to the dressing room and connect her to an EEG.  Neville tells her “radiant energy” is the reason for her clairvoyance.  The electrical wave-lengths of her brain are too close together.  Nina has another clairvoyant episode in the lab.

Blah, blah, blah.  The episode gets bogged down trying to conjure a scientific basis for Nina’s clairvoyance.  That’s really too bad because they had a genuine talent in Joyce Jameson as Nina.  No nudie bar employee since Jack Ruby has so quickly emerged from the pack to blow away others on screen.

As often happens on SFT, the discoverer or possessor of the skillz does not seem to reap the benefit of their talent.  For taking time off to cultivate her clairvoyance, the bar manager allows her to change her stage name from Nina (pronounced Nine-uh) LaSalle to . . . Claire Voyance!

No, that would be too much to expect from SFT.  He allows her to change her name to the god-awful Saturday Knight.  Seriously.

The two doctors received $500 and $750 for the episode.  Joyce Jameson was paid only $300.  Even sadder, she would be dead by 59.  She was a ray of sunshine here, though.  Enough to recommend the episode?  Oh, hell no!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Note the complex, clockwork, Nolandesque exposition: First, an evidence-free diagnosis, then a treatment, followed by the symptom.
  • [2]  Oh, alright, Eisenhower was President when this aired.
  • And it wasn’t a nudie bar.  But this COVID thing is going on for so long . . .

Science Fiction Theatre – Doctor Robot (11/30/56)

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This week, Truman Bradley is excited to show us a keyboard on which the keys play sounds from the English language.  Maybe I’m not appreciating this leap in technology, but it is pretty unimpressive.  He says the goal is to create “a machine that translates a given text from one language to another.”  So far they have invented the See n’ Say. [1] Baby steps, I guess.

Dr. Edgar Barnes, head of Operation Polyglot, has come in early to see if anyone was tampering with the machines.  He finds that someone has soldered some wires to a terminal.  Worse, he realizes it will take a year of programming to make the machine understand the word “solder” does not rhyme with colder.  He also notices the debris leftover from some computer punch-cards.

He takes the bits of paper to Security Chief Phil Coulson — wait, what?  They go back to the lab.  Barnes — is his nickname Bucky by any chance? — shows him the typewriter where words are input, and the other typewriter where they come out in “French, German, Spanish, Russian and Chinese” although I am dubious of a 1956 Smith Corona having a 废话 key. [2]

He says no one could have punched those cards except his 3 subordinates.  But they passed the rigorous 1956 security screening by being US citizens over 21, white, male, and owning a hat.  Coulson goes undercover as a member of the foundation supporting their work, and takes the gang out to dinner.  They discuss what they do in their off hours.  Sadly, Dr. Lopert’s wife “has been ill for some time” so he hangs out at the lab most of the time.  A government worker putting in those kind of hours sounds suspicious to our guys, so they go back to the lab and go through his desk.  They find letters written in several languages.  Luckily, they have just the machine to translate them.

After a couple of embarrassing letters to Russian mail-order bride magazines, they discover a letter from a German doctor stating his experience treating sub-acute bacterial endocarditis — hey, that’s what Mrs. Lopert suffers from!  So, Lopert has been using the machine to help his wife.  Coulson still thinks there might be something nefarious encoded in the letters, but he thought the same thing about his Alpha-Bits this morning.  After all, a man with a sick wife might be willing to sell secrets to the Russkis for cash or a coupon to upgrade his new mail-order wife from a dumpy 1950’s model to a swinging 1960’s Commie babe.  A search of Lopert’s home reveals a soldering iron and punch-cards.

I don’t know what this is, but it was a recommendation from dailymotion on this same page.

They catch Lopert in the lab that night tinkering with the computer.  He says he is using its logic to assess the best surgical treatment for his wife.  Touched by this, Coulson helps him and they work through the night.  The computer finally recommends a medical strategy, and even provides a contingency plan in case the procedure fails — insist on a Ukrainian girl.

The Loperts accept the computer’s decision and Mrs. L. has the operation.  In no time she is back in great health, and Lopert has lost his deposit from the magazine.  Even better, a grant has been approved for him to continue researching medical applications of the device.

Despite the always welcome presence of the gnome-like Whit Bissell, one of the series bigger slogs.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Why is the turkey quacking like a duck?  Maybe this technology is trickier than I thought.
  • [UPDATE] Starting the video a bit earlier, I see the pointer started on the duck.  I am not going erase the observation, though, because it was literally the most entertainment I got from the episode.  And in fairness — to me — it is a pretty poor design.  You point at the animal you want to hear, then pull the string.  The pointer spins while the noise plays.  There is nothing to contemporaneously associate the sound to the original selection.
  • [2]  A little off-point here, but what do Chinese people eat for breakfast?  They have lunch and dinner covered, but where are the Chinese joints open at 6 am for breakfast?