Tales of Tomorrow (TV Series) The Miraculous Serum (1952) User Reviews

Maybe it's NOT best if science could cure all illnesses!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 16 October 2012]

This is an interesting episode of "Tales of Tomorrow". A doctor has created an amazing serum that he's successfully used on animals. In each case, the animals with fatal illnesses 'adapted' to the illness and overcame it--almost instantly. Not surprisingly, he wants to use this on people but is having trouble getting hospitals to let him try it out on folks. When he uses to save a woman near death, she is cured--and then comes the twist. Something unforeseen happens and they've created a bit of a monster.

While not among the very best shows in the series, it is very good and thought-provoking. If you want to see it, try following the IMDb links or go to archive.org and download the available shows from the series (about half of them). It's sort of like an early incarnation of "The Twilight Zone" but with MUCH cheaper special effects.

Pretty Far Fetched Medical Malpractice!

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 7 August 2013]

I thought this looked familiar until I checked the same story a few years later on Science Fiction Theater. The plots are identical. It involves an experimental serum used on a terminal tuberculosis patient, a young woman who has no other options. Not only does it work, it revitalizes her. Unfortunately, she turns bad, able to adapt to her situations through evil means. Now the men have a twofold problem. They must support her in her recovery (not to mention their medical chicanery) and yet must control her. She has also taken a shine to the doctor who invented the serum and is manipulating him. She actually ends up in Washington with plans to rule the world. The solution in both of the episodes is the same and equally unsatisfying. In addition to the title product, these guys seem to have the ability to do some pretty incredible things in the medical field.

Dated and a bit simplistic but worth a look

[jamesrupert2014 · 7/10 · 10 October 2023]

A scientist develops a serum from fruit-flies that transfers the insects' supposed 'extreme adaptability' to other organisms. This is the first of three 1950s versions of Stanley Weinbaum's 1935 short story 'The Adaptive Ultimate' (the others being TV's 'Science Fiction Theatre's: Beyond Return' (1955) and the low-budget film 'She Devil' (1957)). Besides its miraculous healing properties, the serum seems to make recipients ruthless, selfish, and avaricious (whether these changes are intended imply that 'adaptation' in a Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' sense is inherently amoral is never discussed). Like the other versions, the story misses the point that the studies of fruit fly 'adaptation' that likely influenced Weinbaum's story were genetic and not about changing traits in individual flies. This low-budget ToT episode is stripped-down, stagy and minimalistic - the story takes place in a couple of rooms and the only visible 'adaptive changes' in Kyra Zelas (the dying patient whose TB the adaptive serum cures, played by Lola Albright) is her increased beauty. Although dated and scientifically shaky, this episode of TV's earliest sci-fi anthologies is worth investing 20 minutes in for fans of the genre. The idea that the most successful 'adaptive change' that a woman can make is to get prettier is an entertaining comment on the times.

"Well, if it isn't Miss Pentagon herself!"

[classicsoncall · 3/10 · 18 April 2023]

I just recently discovered 'Tales of Tomorrow' on one of the streaming channels and so far have seen about a dozen. Some are clever, some are simplistic, this one was just plain stupid in its execution. A woman dying of tuberculosis is allowed to receive a controversial new serum concocted by Dr. Dan Scott (Richard Derr) after his boss Dr. Bache (Louis Hector) convinces him he could only use it in a most dire circumstance. Well, two incredible things happen after Carol Williams (Lola Albright) is cured. First, she falls in love with Dr. Scott for making her well again, perhaps not unusual but it happened with no build up to a relationship the same way a similar romance occurred in the story 'The Search for the Flying Saucer'. And then, in order to support her second chance at life, she 'adapts' (a word used a lot in this episode) by pickpocketing five thousand dollars from a guy who just withdrew that amount from a bank! I had to laugh when she showed up at Dr. Scott's home with Bache also present, and just walked into one of his rooms and said she was going to bed - What!!?? Not once, but twice!!

Aghast at the woman's behavior, Dr. Bache states that they have to return Miss Williams to normalcy, so they knock her out by siphoning carbon dioxide into the bedroom in Scott's house she was sleeping in. That would have been hokey enough, but to insure they succeed, Scott skulks around in the bedroom after she fell asleep to insert a candle so that they could tell when the oxygen in the room was depleted! I had to wonder which of these three characters needed a return to normalcy. Following a successful operation to do just that, an off-screen narrator explains how science might be able to solve the problem of a criminal mind, but if this was an example, the program surely failed.