“This is where our story begins, Washington DC, present day capital of the free world.  Here in the city that never sleeps, scientific decisions are being formulated that will affect not only our lives but our children and their children to come.”

Oh for the love of God, I have things to do today.  Can’t I get through five seconds of this show without pausing it?

1. I’ll be charitable and assume that “present-day” crack was to establish the temporal setting of the episode (this is Sci-Fi, after all), and not giddy gleeful anticipation that the USA will not be #1 forever (this is Hollywood, after all).
2. When was DC ever “the city that never sleeps”?  Sorry SFT, that’s New York City.
3. “not only our lives but our children and their children to come“: “lives” is the subject, so “children” should have been possessive.  Or better, say “the lives of our children . . .” ^[1]

Dr. Joel Kerwin and Mrs. Dr. Joel Kerwin are getting into formal wear to attend a reception with the vice-president.  SFT, much like President Eisenhower, does not mention Nixon’s name.   Kerwin’s boss, Dr. Matthews, calls and asks Kerwin to come to Room 246 to discuss some problems with his new scientific formula.  He suggests their wives should go on ahead.

Dr. Matthews smokin’ hot wife Wilma stops by to pick up Mary.  She tells Wilma that her husband just called and said they should go ahead.  Mary asks, “Didn’t he tell you?”  Wilma says, “No, I haven’t seen him all day.  He’s all wrapped up in a new theory.”  So why did Wilma come to the Kerwins’ room alone?  And if Matthews is staying in Room 246, how did Wilma not see her husband?  Did she get dressed in the hall?

At 12:30, Mary Kerwin returns to their room alone after the reception.  The narrator says, “Mrs. Kerwin was no more than normally annoyed by the fact that her husband did not show up at all.”  Dr. Kerwin is also not in the room.  No wonder he’s avoiding her; the narrator seems to say she has a normal baseline of perpetual annoyance.  I feel your pain, doc.  She assumes the two scientists just lost track of time.

After 3 am, Mary begins to get worried.  She calls Room 246 but there is no answer.  Then she has the operator ring “Tom Matthews’ room.”  OK, so I guess 246 is just a workroom.  Wilma suggests having the house dick look for them.  Here’s an idea, you’re in 312; walk your ass down one floor and knock on the door.

A little later, Dr. Matthews finally comes home — hey, they are in 314, right next door to the Kerwins.  Seconds after he arrives, Agent Randall knocks on his door.  Dr. Kerwin was found murdered in Room 246.  Matthews says the last time he saw Kerwin was at lunch.  He claims he did not make the call that Mary received.

Well, that’s about the first 7 minutes.  The remainder is trying to figure out how various voices were electronically duplicated in phone calls.  Unfortunately, the murder mystery is hardly mind-blowing, and the tech is as about as futuristic as a Las Vegas lounge act.

Footnotes:

• [1] In the light of day, this seems OK and less egregious than my use of the word egregious.

“Some men climb to the top of a mountain simply because it is there; these men are mountain-climbers.  Others because it puts their telescopes closer to the stars they observe; these men are astronomers.”

Is Truman Bradley suggesting the view of Jupiter is better if you are 1,000 feet closer?

Ironically, Seth and Barbara have gone up a mountain to get a better view of Los Angeles below.  These two are past their Lover’s Lane age.  Seth is 30 and looks every bit of it with his Gutfeldian receding hair, jowls, and rumpled suit.  Barbara is a mere 25 — in age, and on a scale of 1 to 10.  They see a Flying Saucer that looks like Gilligan’s hat.

A weirdo in a suit named Mr. Galleon approaches the car.  He says he also saw the hat and asks for a ride down the mountain.

Barbara’s father just happens to be an astronomer.  He asks why, after 30 years of watching the sky through powerful telescopes, he has never seen a flying saucer.  He thinks what they saw was just an optical illusion.

Sitting in a restaurant after a big argument with Barbara’s father, Seth figures they have about $275 between them.

Seth: We could do it on that.

Barbara: Oh, Seth, you mean it?

Seth: We could rent everything we need.

Barbara: We could find a Justice of the Peace.

Seth: A 16 mm movie camera.

Barbara: Sure, and take pictures.

Seth: Sound recording equipment.

Barbara: Sound equipment?

Seth: For a soundtrack.

Barbara: A soundtrack?

Barbara finally realizes that he wants to make a documentary about Flying Saucers rather than film their honeymoon antics (and why did the sound bother her more than the film?  Is she a howler?).  He sees this as a way to “get famous, then move right into television” where he expects to sexually harass a much hotter league of gals. ^[1]

Mr. Galleon enters the restaurant and the couple invites him to join them.  He has been checking the paper to see if the flying saucer was reported.  He tells Seth he admires his open mind.  Seth begins making his documentary.

He films a minister who draws a picture of the flying saucer he saw which looks nothing like the film representation.

An airline pilot convincingly shows what his UFO looked liked by demonstrating how he pointed at it.

An air traffic controller claims in his career he has seen 500 craft of a type never seen before, although most turned out to be on-time Delta arrivals.

An air force major takes a lie detector test to confirm his story of UFOs over Mt. Palomar.  Hey, maybe he knows Bob Richardson!

After a week of editing his road trip into a documentary, Seth screens it for Barbara’s father.  Dr. Arnold finds it “interesting but misleading, more opinion than fact”  and, yet, the feel-good hit of the summer.  Despite the testimony of the trained observers in the film, he convincingly suggests science-based alternate explanations for every case.

“Oh yeah,” counters Seth.  “What about the fireball that Barbara and I saw?”  Dr. Arnold says he can not only explain it, he can reproduce the phenomena.  Seth asks Mr. Galleon to join them for the demonstration, but he can’t make it.  He does however, give Seth a photo that he wishes Dr. Arnold to analyze.

Dr. Arnold’s demonstration is pretty convincing even if, in reality, it doesn’t reach swamp gas authenticity.  Seth is embarrassed that they could have been so wrong.  Dr. Arnold consoles him that even though the conclusions were entirely unsupported, it was a “magnificent” piece of reporting.”  With this on his resume, he is thus encouraged to call his old college buddy Dan Rather about how to break in to network news.

Oh by the way, Seth hands Dr. Arnold the photo that Galleon gave him.  Dr. Arnold checks it with a magnifying glass and is stunned that it is “an authentic photograph of our sun and all its surrounding planets — our solar system.”  He says the photo could only have been taken from another solar system or a spaceship.

Seth calls the hotel where Galleon was staying, but he has checked out.  He left a forwarding address to be given to Dr. Arnold.  The hotel clerk can’t pronounce it, so spells it out C-E-N-T-A-U-R-I-6.  He explains that is the 6th rock in the Alpha Centauri solar system, 4.3 light years away!

OK, it is hardly a nitpick to say a single photo that made the entire solar system visible would have to be about the size of the universe.  If it fit into the photo Dr. Galleon provided, the planets would be smaller than atoms.  It would have been much more credible for the photo to be of the entire earth which would not happen until 1967.

In some ways, this was a companion piece to last week’s Project 44.  Both played with the form a little bit by introducing documentary elements.  In both cases, it made the episodes stand-outs in the series.

This did lead me to a mistake though.  Pat O’Brien (Dr. Arnold) was so terrible that I thought they had recruited another actual scientist to play the role.  He starts out OK, even in that stilted 1950s style, but gets worse as the episode unfolds.  By the end, I was convinced he was drunk or incapacitated by stage-fright.  He had a yuge career even extending 25 more years, so I am baffled.

As always in SFT, the scientist has a smokin’ hot daughter.  Though the show is often quite progressive, she is just eye-candy this time.  Seth is believable as the rumpled reporter.

So, one of the better episodes; but that is one low-ass bar.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Note to Seth — you will never do better.
• Title Analysis:  WTF?

Truman Bradley has a visitor.  Dr. Robert Richardson of Mt. Palomar Observatory has fortuitously dropped by the clubhouse to talk about Mars.  The doc is a real astronomer who actually worked at Mt. Palomar in the 1930s – 1950s.  I am very impressed that SFT gets the distance to Mars correct thanks to Dr. Richardson.  Even the great Twilight Zone could never be bothered to check an almanac or ask a 10 year old boy for accurate space data.  He opines about the atmosphere and life on Mars.  He is sure that, despite physical and mental challenges, men will someday go to Mars.  And by men, rest assured he means both white men and white women.

Truman shows us some of the stress tests astronauts must endure.  Sadly, after the factual opening, I have to call bullshit right away.  I know they test in centrifuges, but it looks like they would just fly right off of this thing.  He also says these men are tested up to 10 G’s (and the meter goes up to 25).  Maybe that’s why the Russkis beat us into space; we killed all our astronauts.

Dr. Arnold Bryan was one of the men on the centrifuge.  His fiance Dr. Janice Morgan is not happy about the risks he takes.  He tells her that is the last time because he has resigned.  However, he gets a telegram that he must be in Washington on Wednesday for a conference.

The conference room in DC is so close to the capitol dome that it must be on top of the senate.  SecDef Sturgis explains that a new fuel has been developed that will enable a man to go to Mars and return.  He is given one year to determine whether humans can survive in space.  If it is possible, Arnold will select and train the crew.  Janice is not thrilled about this.  However, Arnold explains how important it is and offers her a job evaluating the volunteers.

After several months, the project staff is whittled down to eight people with experience in various scientific disciplines.  Arnold tells them of the problems that might be encountered in space: the monotony and utter isolation.  According to Arnold, the trip will take two and a half years.  That is 8 months to get there, and 8 months to return, leaving 15 months to work on Mars.  I hope one of this group is a mathematician.  8 + 8 + 15 = 30?  Is that one of them hidden figures I’ve been hearing about?

He frankly tells the group of other dangers.  He name-checks Fred Whipple, another real astronomer, who estimates they would encounter only one meteor every 6 years.  So the odds sound pretty good.  They would sound better if he knew the difference between a meteor and a meteoroid.

One of the four women raises her hand.  “I’m almost afraid to ask this, but are we women just being included in the test or do we get to go to Mars too?”  Arnold assures them that if they pass the test they will go to Mars, prompting several sighs of relief; mostly from the four men.

Arnold is very progressive.  He points out that women are at least as able to work in different pressures, and “women adjust themselves better to drastic temperature changes.”  These tests were clearly not run any any freakin’ office I ever worked in.

Arnold reminds the volunteers that they have signed a contract to remain single.  However, the government is now encouraging them to pair off with other members of the mission.  Joyce has looked uncomfortable with this whole presentation, but this is just too much.  She says, “This project is insane, completely insane!”  She implores them — the group she recruited — not to throw their lives away.  “You won’t be heroes, you’ll be fools and lunatics!”  The volunteers stand by Dr. Arnold, and Joyce storms out.

The group is put into a small cabin to simulate the close quarters of space travel.  They quickly begin getting on each other’s nerves. They are subjected to other tests of physical stress and endurance.  Sadly, one of the women drops out, and one of the men is thrown out for sabotaging the tests.  The crew is not shorthanded, though, as Joyce returns and she and Arnold take their places.  The final shot is them blasting off to Mars.  It ain’t a train going into a tunnel, but this was 1955.

The domestic drama is the only problem with this episode.  When it stuck to the recruiting and training for the mission, it is pretty good (grading on massive curve as always).  In fact the stress tests seen here are no crazier than what would eventually happen at NASA (the clip from The Right Stuff is not available).  I can imagine a kid in the fifties digging this.

At the Pecos Proving Grounds, physicist Robert Barton and Carl Eberhardt are working on Operation Torch.  The goal is to light up the night sky, enabling glaciers to melt and fertile fields to wither even faster they do now.  Dr. Smiley has been dispatched from Washington to observe the test and determine if there is a way to tax the new illumination.

Carl shows Dr. Smiley the rocket which contains a “beautifully simple” method of producing light.  It is actually quite complex, at least in the number of words, but sounds good to someone who knows nothing about science, like me or the SFT producers.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Springdale, real estate developer Sam Gilmore is very upset about the latest person to buy in his new development.  He proudly proclaims, “I restricted against everything I could think of!”  Somehow, though, he neglected to restrict against “a convicted criminal — a jailbird!”  I’ll bet he thought the ** ahem** other restrictions would keep out the criminal element.

The resident who sold Matt Brander his house had to know he was a criminal.  His trial was in all the papers back when people read them.  The Trumpian Gilmore wanted this to be “the finest development anywhere, with the finest people.”

Afraid that property values will plummet, he plans to run Brander out of town.  His partners point out that this is illegal.  Mr. Law N. Order now says, “The law has nothing to do with this!  We’ll use my truck and we’ll dump his stuff right out in the desert!”  Self-awareness is not among Laurel Manors’ amenities.

Gilmore picks up a baseball bat and asks his partners how they can care so little about a scumbag living in their community. Then he pulls a nylon stocking over his head and insists they join him in the attack that night when no one can see their identities.  Self-awareness is not among Laurel Manors’ amenities.

His partners agree to help him terrorize Brander into leaving.  Gilmore isn’t sure of their loyalty, though, so demands that they take an oath.  They repeat after Gilmore, swearing their loyalty like a couple of kids, or Masons (Free, not Brick).

The next morning we see Brander — hey, it’s Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy! — and his wife standing amidst the horrific mess, the debris, oh the humanity!  Wait, the Gilmore gang has not attacked yet; it is just moving day mess.  Brander vows to his wife they will not be run out of their new home!

Back at the Pecos Proving Ground, the boys launch their rocket successfully,  However, it doesn’t fall to earth as scheduled.  That night, Springdale is illuminated by a “substitute sun”.  Washington instructs them not to self-destruct the rocket.  It goes on lighting up the sky all night.

Well, old man Gilmore sees this localized phenomenon as a sign.  He tells his posse, “Last night we were going to pull a dirty trick.  But it didn’t get dark, you see!  It didn’t get dark!”  He sees this as an opportunity to do the right thing.  He calls off the attack.  Maybe he’ll also get out of the real estate developer business and shave off that pencil-thin mustache.  He leads his bois in a new more inclusive oath.  Coincidentally, the rocket burns out at just that moment, plunging Springdale into normal nighttime darkness.

The episode was nothing special, although I did like how they tied the stories together.  But it was worth it just to hear Pencil Thin Mustache again.

Other Stuff:

• Yesterday’s AHP about a guy who couldn’t go to sleep starred the same guy who was in a TZ episode about a guy afraid to go to sleep.  Today’s SFT is about an unnaturally lengthy day; there was a TZ about an unnaturally lengthy night.  I got nothing for this.

Host Truman Bradley opens the bible to Genesis 1:1, although this must be the September issue as there appears to be about a hundred pages of ads before it. He reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and every living creature that moveth” thus proving my theory that Brussels sprouts are the devil’s work.  This introduces this evening’s theme: What caused the first spark of life?

Wow, now this is a fascinating subject!  How can they possibly do it justice in just 22 minutes?  I mean, the physics, the biology, the religious implications, the philosophical theories, not to mention the ethics of trying to create life in a lab.  Probably the best way to begin is to spend literally the first 1/3 of the episode establishing that Dr. Donaldson works too hard.

After a rare good night’s sleep, he is up at the crack of dawn.  His associate Dr. Heller helps him with a piece of equipment, but is shot in the hand by a stream of photons.  His hand goes numb, so Donaldson takes him to the infirmary which is surely equipped for such an injury.  The doctor says the muscle structure has been destroyed and can’t be regenerated.

Back at home, Dr. Donaldson’s father, credited at IMDb as Dr. Donaldson Sr., tells him maybe man was not meant to explore such things as how to create life.  Junior tells Senior, “You’re acting like a comic book father-in-law.”  Well, wait a minute, that’s his father-in-law?  Why do they have the same last name?  But then he tells his wife Kate that the man is “my parent” so I guess . . . oh, who cares?  Donaldson feels like Kate and this older gentleman are ganging up on him so he goes back to work for some peace.

After the commercial, Truman tells us, “In the course of the following month, Kate Donaldson experienced another attack.”  Another one?  When was the first one?  Donaldson Sr. takes Kate to see Dr. Heineman.  For some reason, her father-in-law is in the examination room while she is getting dressed — to be fair, she is behind a screen.  Dr. Heineman says the results “are a little technical”.  Since Kate is apparently the only person in the city without a doctorate, she is sent out of the room so the men can have an important discussion.  Discussion about her.  About her life.  And boobs.

As the door closes, with almost comical bluntness, Heineman blurts out, “She’s dying.”  The examination revealed “a disproportion of the body chemistry” and “it is due to the malfunction of some gland.”  How do you even mock something like that?

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Heller says Donaldson has created “something from nothing, matter from energy.”  Isn’t energy something?  When it is Donaldson Sr’s turn to look through the microscope, the little crystal buggers have stopped moving.  More importantly, Kate has another episode and her oblivious husband is too wrapped in his work to notice.  She collapses.  Donaldson finally notices her and says, “What’s wrong with her, Dad?”  Dad’s reply to him is, “Mostly your blindness.”  Oh, and also a fatal disease caused by some gland.

Kate lapses into a coma and Donaldson hates himself for being so absorbed in his work.  After an unprecedented 3 days away from the lab, he returns.  He is shocked to find Heller purposely firing more photons through his hand.  Heller had tried firing photons through the crystalline entities and they were reanimated.  The next logical step was his hand, which is showing some signs of feeling again.

Since Heller was able to revive his lover, Donaldson wants to try it on Kate.  They bring her to the lab and begin firing photons at her.  Yada yada, her condition is upgraded — seriously — from coma to regular sleep.  The doctors feel she’ll be snoozing within 24 hours and catnapping by the end of the week.

Donaldson Sr. might have his own issues.  Rather than just acknowledging his son has discovered the secret of life, he suggests that it was partly Donaldson Jr. saying he loved her that revived Kate.

With such a massive premise, this is what they came up with.

Other Stuff:

• Judith Ames (Kate) was quite lovely.  She has shown up several times, in The Hidden Thing, YORD, and The Strange People at Pecos.