From 1955 to 1957, Science Fiction Theatre, a semi-documentary television series, explored the what if's of modern science. Placing an emphasis on science before fiction, television viewers were treated to a variety of complex challenges from mental telepathy, robots, man-eating ants, killer trees, man's first flight into space and time travel. Hosted by Truman Bradley, a radio/TV announcer and 1940s film actor, each episode featured stories which had an extrapolated scientific or pseudo scientific emphasis based on actual scientific data available at the time. Typically, the stories related to the life or work of scientists, engineers, inventors, and explorers, the program concentrated on such concepts as space flight, robots, telepathy, flying saucers, time travel, and the intervention of extraterrestrials in human affairs. With few exceptions, the stories were original concepts based on articles from recent issues of Scientific American, issues of which can be seen on Bradley's desk in a number of episodes.[1]
The first season was filmed on 35mm Eastmancolor negative, which was then not considered the best color available for television, often fading over time due to vinegar deterioration.[citation needed] Syndication packages for a second season were renewed at an 80 percent retention ratio, borderline for color production. In March 1956, producer Ivan Tors agreed with Frederick Ziv to produce the program in black and white to offset production expenses in return for a second season.[1]
Each episode was introduced by a stirring brass, string, and woodwind fanfare (most likely composed by Ray Bloch, longtime music director for Ed Sullivan), while the camera panned over a science laboratory. Then, Truman Bradley showed a simple scientific experiment which was related to the topic of that week's show. Bradley's demonstrations were often staged, but yielded results consistent with the outcome of true experiments. He was always careful to point out that the story presented was fictional: that "it did not happen".
The pilot episode was filmed in July 1954, but Bradley's on-screen duties were not filmed until September 11, which also included off-screen narration for the pilot and the second episode produced, "Y-O-R-D-", which did not go into production until December 1954. Bradley's duties included visits to the studio for hosting assignments, often filmed in batches of two, three and four episodes in a single day. On February 28, 1955, for example, Herbert Strock directed Bradley for all the pick-ups and off-screen narrations for episodes three, four and five. Bradley returned to the studio two weeks later for pick-ups and off-screen narration for episodes six and seven. After the first two episodes were filmed, an oversight was discovered: Bradley wore a different tie on September 11, 1954 and December 1954. Afterwards, Bradley followed instructions to wear the same suit and same tie for every episode moving forward.[1]
Because of the limited budgets and intense production schedules of ZIV episodic television shows, most of the scientific, and not-so-scientific apparatus appears again and again as props with many different functions. A few of the electrical gadgets such as the computerized chess game, were fake—magnets inside the chess pieces with a technician under the table to move the pieces. One anti-gravity device featured in the episodes "Beyond" and "Y-O-R-D" was a primary device for a key scene in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). Posters, paintings and electronic gadgets appeared that were used previously as props in producer Ivan Tors' The Magnetic Monster (1953), Riders to the Stars (1954) and Gog (1954). The Bendix Aviation Corporation supplied computer equipment seen in the episode "Survival in Box Canyon". Garco the Robot, used to publicize the Rocky Jones, Space Ranger television series, and featured prominently in a 1957 Disneyland episode, was featured in the episode "Time is Just a Place".[1]
Broadcast
The program never aired over a network. All 78 half-hour episodes were syndicated across the country in package deals of 39 episodes each. This meant the program could air on Saturday evening over a television station in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while the program aired on Wednesday evenings over a station in Newark, New Jersey. Every station featured regional sponsorship and depending on the price tag, Truman Bradley was hired to film commercials for those local spots as inserts. The program was re-titled Beyond The Limits for later syndication in the 1960s.
From 1996 to 1998, Science Fiction Theatre aired weekly on Friday evenings over the Sci-Fi Channel on cable TV. The picture quality was above average and the same provided to PBS stations in the 1980s. While PBS aired the program uncut and unedited, Sci-Fi Channel aired the episode in abbreviated form (21 and one half minutes instead of 26) to make more room for commercials.
Influence
In the 1985 film Back to the Future, Science Fiction Theatre is mentioned as George McFly's favorite television program, from which Marty McFly gains the idea to dress up as an alien in order to scare George into asking his mother Lorraine to the school dance.[2]
A young couple discovers that their neighbors, who possess a sonic broom and many other technologically advanced household items, are fugitives from the future who have fled to the past to escape an oppressive government. Adapted from Jack Finney's short story, "Such Interesting Neighbors".
When bats begin colliding with skyscrapers, the Continental Air Defense Command is alerted. They fear that the "radar" that protects bats from collision has somehow been deactivated.
Story by : John Burnett Teleplay by : Jerry Sackheim and Stuart Jerome
June 18, 1955 (1955-06-18)
While doing field work in a desert, a mining engineer finds the payload from a high altitude rocket experiment. He takes it home and leaves it in his wife's care while he goes into town to contact the authorities. As soon as he's gone, his wife examines the payload and inadvertently releases a toxic gas.
Professor Richard Sheldon has been returned to the United States in a confused, altered state of mind after enemy agents hypnotized him in an environment of absolute silence while visiting Milan. His friend, psychiatrist Dr. Elliott Harcourt, reasons that placing Professor Sheldon in a similar environment will reverse his condition. He is placed in a wheelchair in the "Cone of Silence", consisting of a raised circular platform suspended by 3 wires tied to a common vertex. Although the cone's surface is open, anyone sitting inside would experience silence due to the phased ultrasonic noise generators located just below the vertex. Anyone speaking inside the cone could not be heard outside. With Dr. Harcourt's guidance, the treatment works, and Sheldon regains his memory.
Story by : Ivan Tors Teleplay by : Robert Schaefer and Eric Freiwald
October 22, 1955 (1955-10-22)
A freak super-hurricane, more powerful than any hurricane than has ever occurred before, threatens the Miami coastline. Then, just when it seems that Miami is doomed, a freak high-pressure system forces the storm back out to sea, where it dissipates over colder waters. Subsequent tests reveal that the storm was triggered by the explosion of an exceptionally large meteor when it splashed into the ocean, whose unusually warm waters were unable to drain off the meteor's excess heat energy (built up by atmospheric friction) fast enough to prevent the blast. The prevailing weather conditions at the time combined with the blast to produce the super-storm.
A scientist dies suddenly from heart failure. While examining his laboratory and unfinished work, workers of his institute discover he had been receiving his discoveries from extraterrestrials orbiting 1,500 miles above the Earth.
A medical researcher isolates a compound that regenerates damaged tissue. When he tries it on a terminally ill patient, she recovers completely in three days and now has the ability to change her appearance and fingerprints seemingly at will.
Story by : Ivan Tors and Arthur Weiss Teleplay by : Arthur Weiss
December 10, 1955 (1955-12-10)
An obsessive scientist is unaware his wife is gravely ill as he works to develop a machine for generating high energy photons. He believes the photons, similar to those ejected from the Sun, were the origin of life on Earth. When his "photon gun" generates living matter, he uses it to treat his wife's degenerated endocrine system with positive results. But was it the technology or his renewed love for his wife that caused her to rally?
Story by : Teleplay by : George Fass and Gertrude Fass
December 17, 1955 (1955-12-17)
"Project Torch", an experimental missile containing an artificial sun, is launched during early evening over a desert. When the craft mysteriously fails to return to Earth, the intense light creates artificial daylight. Fortunately, the extended daylight prevents an unscrupulous housing developer from attacking an ex-convict's family to force them out of his newly constructed neighborhood. The developer sees the light and has a change of opinion. But what caused the artificial sun to remain in the sky long after it should have fallen?
A new rocket fuel makes interplanetary travel possible. But the effects of the hostile environment of outer space on mankind are still unknown. "Project 44" gives a husband and wife research team one year to determine if a select group of specialists can travel safely to Mars. But something seems to be undermining the project. Is it bad luck or sabotage?
"That which we do not understand sometimes causes apprehension." A reporter and the daughter of a respected astronomer, watching the stars one evening from their parked car, see what they consider a flying saucer. A stranger appears at the door of the car saying he too saw the light in the sky, and asks if he can be given a lift down the hill into town. Later, the astronomer refuses to believe the couple saw anything more than an optical illusion. To prove the existence of UFOs, the reporter films a documentary of witnesses, while the astronomer promptly demonstrates scientific explanations for each witness's sightings. But the mysterious stranger has left a photograph at the astronomer's lab- a photograph of our solar system taken from space. The stranger has disappeared, but left a forwarding address: Centauri 6. The sixth planet of the star Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years from Earth.
The senior scientist of a top secret government project is found murdered in a hotel room. The notes and formulae for the project have been stolen by foreign powers. The project's brilliant engineer is arrested and imprisoned for the murder, and for espionage, because a number of witnesses heard him asking by telephone the senior scientist for a meeting in the hotel room shortly before the murder occurred. To prove his innocence and his theory of how the crimes were committed, the accused engineer constructs a voice synthesizer. He uses it to have himself released from prison by duplicating the voice of a government official by telephone. The engineer also calls the other members of the team to the government official's office and uses the machine to trick the guilty team member into confessing.
A group of scientists from many disciplines are met in secret conclave to develop a method to mine the Earth's oceans. But as they begin to share their theories and devices, the materials suddenly vanish. They notice that not only equipment and files are gone, but time has also disappeared. A brief conversation begun at 11 pm ends more than an hour later, with no awareness of the intervening time having passed. A spy has found a way to move among the scientists at will and take what he wants without anyone perceiving him. In an effort to capture this thief, "Operation Flypaper" is organized. A false laboratory is outfitted with hidden cameras and microphones, and technicians begin simulated work on another piece of vital equipment. As the room is observed, the occupants suddenly freeze in mid-stride. A man enters with a device that can put subjects into total sleep with no after effects, and begins to steal the equipment. The observers reveal he is being watched, and in a rage he shatters his machine and is captured. The man was a brilliant but paranoid scientist who wanted to be recognized for contributions to science and was stealing mining ideas and equipment he would later "invent". Ironically, his sleep machine, now totally destroyed, would have insured his place in scientific history as the greatest method of surgical anesthesia ever invented.
A research scientist is forced to perform a strange experiment on an ailing young orangutan. When its success is publicized, a man kidnaps the doctor's wife and son and forces him to repeat the experiment on his son who is dying.
A pair of metallurgists is approached by an escaped convict with samples of a light and flexible metal that will stop bullets. He claims to have gotten the metal from a spot where a UFO landed to make repairs.
A project to decipher signals from the brain gets a boost when an aging scientist suffers a stroke and offers use of his dying brain to decode the brainwaves.
A scientist builds a transmitter that operates in a never-before attained frequency band. Using the new device he and his colleagues receive new scientific information from a voice that refuses to identify itself or its country of origin.
An experimental atomic powered aircraft explodes over the Pacific Ocean. The crew is assumed lost, but the captain appears six months later after having been treated by an anonymous expert surgeon. As soon as he returns to work on the project, classified information begins to leak.
A mysterious and vaguely menacing medical researcher develops a vaccine that both cures and prevents all microbial infections known to man. The entire world is to be inoculated when it is discovered that the drug has a side-effect: All offspring of vaccinated animals are female.
Two scientists working on a top-secret rocket fuel are murdered by high-frequency sound beams. Government security agents manage to track down and destroy the sonic projector, but the only recoverable part of the debris is melted beyond recognition and is composed of a material unknown on Earth.
Story by : Ivan Tors and Ellis Marcus Teleplay by : Ellis Marcus
August 25, 1956 (1956-08-25)
A graduate student attempts to reproduce the conditions on the surface of Venus in a large bell jar. His experiment results in the creation of a ball of light that acts like a living being. A curious student inadvertently allows it to escape. It returns and others appear. They seem to be trying to attack people with ultra violet light. He destroys them by increasing the vacuum in the bell jar until it explodes. He resolves to try again with more secure conditions with the assistance of the university.
Dr. Barlow and his wife believe they have spent the night on one of Jupiter's moons. They were enveloped by a strange mist while at the beach the night before and awoke the next morning after having had the same "dream." On the moon they encountered a Dr. Wycauff, who had disappeared without a trace ten years before. He explains that he went to the moon to try to help inhabitants stabilize their atmosphere. In exchange, he was to get a chemical called "Jupitron" that would show scientists back on Earth how to grow an unlimited supply of food for the growing population of the Earth. Barlow was summoned to bring it back, but they are returned before they can obtain the substance from Wycauff.
The inventor of several innovative image projection technologies is murdered. His wife says an unknown caller threatened his life unless he surrendered his current project. His laboratory assistant is found dead in a car wreck with plans, but all the plans are for inventions patented long ago.
Story by : Ivan Tors and Sloan Nibley Teleplay by : Sloan Nibley
October 13, 1956 (1956-10-13)
A scientist takes two weeks off from his current project to develop brain-acceleration technology. With his accelerated brain, he finds the solution to his original project.
Story by : William R. Epperson Teleplay by : Lou Huston
January 26, 1957 (1957-01-26)
A stranger arrives in a remote dwelling with a small suitcase. It has an electrical outlet on the outside and, in the stranger's absence, the homeowner's son plugs his electric train into it. He is scolded by his father but, after the stranger disappears without the suitcase, the man refers it to scientists because the energy the suitcase emits seems unlimited. Unable to pierce the material of the suitcase, the scientists use the suitcase's own energy to break it open. They do not fully understand what they find inside (a block of solidified hydrogen) and the suitcase no longer produces energy. A "killing the goose that laid the golden egg" tale.
Timeless Media Group released the complete series on Region 1 DVD on May 12, 2015. While the episodes on the DVD box set are uncut, they include new video transfers using a "one-light" system causing the episodes to appear slightly darker than telecasts of the past two decades.
References
^ abcdeGrams, Martin. Science Fiction Theatre: A History of the Television Program, Bear Manor Media Publishing, 20202011. ISBN 978-1593936570.
