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.

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.

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.

“The Crenshaw Foundation has at its disposal millions dollars to be spent in projects involving the arts, science and the humanities.”  In other words, everything.  Focus, people!  Did we learn nothing from Sears?

Dr. Cole receives a phone-call and sends for Dr. Burton.  He tells Dr. Burton that Dr. Keller has died.  Burton says each age gets only one such genius:  “Aristotle, Darwin, Newton . . . Keller.”  Does he think they came in that order?  Cole wants to be sure none of his work is lost.  He sends Burton to casa de Keller to catalog his papers.

The next day, Burton goes to Keller’s house.  Keller’s “lifelong servant and companion” Thatcher shows Burton to the secret laboratory.  Burton is intrigued by an electronic telescope.  Keller had used it to take pictures of celestial bodies more detailed than any before, especially the blonde in 2G.  Burton figures it is 200x more powerful than any telescope in existence.

A woman storms in and begins nagging Burton immediately.  He asks who she is and she replies, “I’m Nina Keller, daughter of Dr. Charles Keller and everything here belongs to me.”  Burton says Keller didn’t have any children.  When she insists on taking Keller’s papers, Burton physically removes her from the lab.  Even Thatcher was unaware of the daughter.

Burton finds a postcard from Barcelona with the idiotic equation PQ – QP = 1H⁴ .  Oooh oooh, I got this one!  H = 0!  Thatcher also is clueless on who Keller knew in Barcelona.  Nina comes back the next day with Sheriff Olson who has a warrant for Burton’s arrest.  The next day, Burton returns to the Institute where they determine that Keller really does have a daughter, and she had the legal right, if not upper body strength, to throw Burton out of the house.

Burton says the real find is the pictures Keller took through his prototype telescope.  He has found pictures of an asteroid heading toward earth.  Of more concern to me is that giant spear zooming our way.  Burton shows Cole the postcard.  He recognizes PQ – QP = 1H⁴  as Keller’s Sub-Quantum Theory of the Universe. ^[1]  The postcard is suspiciously dated 1 year before Keller announced his KSQ breakthrough to the world.

Keller’s reputation takes another hit, as does the series’, when a 2nd postcard from Barcelona is found with another formula as the only message.  Cole reads the formula, “NA²CC⁸CC” and Burton translates it as  “Sodio Ethylene Dibroxide, the new miracle drug!”  Or did he say “the numerical drug” because this is more anti-science bullshit. ^[2]  This postcard is also dated a year before Keller announced a big discovery.  Cole wonders aloud if it could be possible that someone smarter than Keller lives in Barcelona . . . the racist!

The narrator says, “The already strange life of Dr. Keller had became an enigma wrapped in a mystery to Dr. Cole.”  Wow, those are some appropriatin’ MFers over at the Crenshaw Institute — this is 2/3s of Winston Churchill’s description of Russia.  Burton and Cole offer to help Nina sell the life story of her father in exchange for the rights to all discoveries in his house.  Hmmm, let me mull this over:

• Cole and Burton want to act as negotiators; a skill there is no evidence that they have any experience in or aptitude for.
• They will be dealing with the publishing industry, having never written anything other than a peer-reviewed article.
• Cole says a publisher has already offered $300,000 for the rights without their help.  That’s $3M in today’s moolah for the story of an unknown science geek.
• Burton demonstrates his lack of negotiation prowess by saying that in exchange for doing nothing, risking nothing, and sacrificing nothing, “We retain the rights to any inventions we might discover in your father’s papers.  That includes an electronic telescope which is the finest instrument of its kind!”

I guess Nina accepts their Ludcris offer because they are working for the next 3 days on the electronic telescope to learn more about the asteroid.  They finally locate it, but discover it is not an asteroid.  Cole says it is a “man-made” object; although I think he just means it was fabricated, rather than occurring naturally.  “Man-made” includes aliens; just not alien women.  Suddenly, they lose sight of the object and get a message on the radio:  Say nothing until you hear from Barcelona.

A few days later, a postcard arrives from Barcelona.  The only message is a block of ones and zeroes.  Cole recognizes it as “the language of cybernetics”.  Burton feeds the 1s and 0s into an electronic calculator.  The message is translated as

 Dear friend, this message from Barcelona comes to you through an intermediary from another world system.  We established this space platform 1,500 miles above the earth to observe and study your planet.  Dr. Keller discovered ours secret, but he agreed not to reveal it to the rest of the world.  He realized that this knowledge might throw the world into a panic and a guided missile might be fired upon us.  He tested our goodwill and we have given him information periodically that was vital to your scientific development and helped your world.

This is just absurd.  He read more words than there even were characters on that card.  It’s just not possible, even if — oh Christ, he’s not finished . . .

We make you the same offer.  Do not reveal our existence and in 3 months time you shall receive a staggering new scientific concept that will benefit the population of earth.

Burton says Keller was an even better man than they knew.  Well, he did sign his name to these great discoveries, but I guess the valor was in keeping the real source a secret.  Also, he was doing this work for a charitable foundation rather than pocketing the rewards personally.

Not much here, but at least it did have a story and a mystery.  Sadly, the cast did not help.  Walter Kingsford was fine and credible as Dr. Cole.  Christine Larson was angrier than seemed necessary, but that might have been due to weakness in the screenplay.  The killer was Burton.  His line deliveries were maybe the dullest, flattest, most wooden acting I have seen in years (and I just saw Gabriel Byrne in Hereditary!).  His performance truly must be seen to be appreciated.

Other Stuff:

• [1] OK, they didn’t have to cover a blackboard like Good Will Hunting, but did no one recognize the absurdity of this formula?  Obviously the Commutative Property reduces the left side of the formula to nothing.  The 1 on the right aide is completely unnecessary.  This is basic stuff.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe people aren’t getting dumber every generation.  Naaaaaah.
• [2] Congratulations to the producers on getting NA right for Sodium (close enough to Na) — but why does Burton pronounce it as Sodio?  Ethylene exists, but not with that formula, although Cs and Hs are involved.  Maybe Cole says H instead of 8, but it would still be wrong (but better than C¹¹ being written as CC⁸CC).  And surely one of those Cs must be Carbon; or the speed of light.  Dibroxide, I got nuthin, but there is an Ethylene Dibromide.
• The simplicity of E = MC² always intrigued me.  Can it be true that a concept so huge reduces down to something so simple?  Just seems like a cover-up by Big Physics.
• PQ – QP = QPQPQ