User Reviews

This effort is about a federal investigation into the leaking of the details of a very important meeting. An FBI agent comes to check on a man (Ray Collins--Lieutenant Tragg of Perry Mason fame) who has always been above reproach. He has done incredible service for the government, but now falls under scrutiny. He has an incredibly tiresome blonde daughter who fills up way too much screen time. She starts to fawn all over the live-in agent who turns out to be a pretty good guy. The focus turns out to be on the ability of crystals to absorb sound and act like primitive tape recorders. This is real Cold War stuff as are many of the SFT productions. Still, I saw this when I was a teenager and was quite taken with the concept. I really wished it was possible.

After a transcript of a highly classified meeting is found in the hands of an enemy agent, an esteemed professor will remain the primary suspect unless a method by which the meeting could have been surreptitiously recorded is found. Truman Bradley's introduction includes demonstrations of how sound waves can force crystals out of solution and of the piezoelectric properties of quartz - interesting, but far from rationalising the highly improbable capacity of crystals to record sound (and even preserve it for thousands of years) that is central to the episode's plot. Not much happens in this simple 'spy-fi' outing, too much time is spent on the clichéd triptych of the professor, his daughter, and the handsome federal agent/doctor sent to investigate the leak, and the final scene, when the traitor explains his motives, seems forced. Not one of the better episodes of the early sci-fi anthology.

I saw this episode when I was six. I became an archeologist. Enough said.