Cannot go to Phineas's Science Lab, keep crashing on load

[Jakobb]

I cannot seem to enter Phineas's lab. Sure, I have completed almost two days' worth of gameplay, and never yet visited him, but I don't see why he should be THAT offended.

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions?

Okay, after about 5-10 minutes, it finally loaded, but it's very ftzzy, the sounds are intermittent, the music comes in and out, and the sub-titles of him speaking appear looooong before he does.

What in tarnation is hecking-well going on?

ADDENDUM: My D-drive, my Steam drive is running at 100% according to Task Mangler performance tab, yet the same Task Manager Process tab adds up to a paltry 500kB/s; when the game crashes, the disk drops to literal zero usage.

The game is showing as "Not Responding" but is running 15-35% of the CPU in circles, there's music. When I attempt to play, it'll go for a time, but in the middle of Phineas's speech about the Minister this and chemicals that, the game crashed.

I tried it this time without companions, thinking that they were the reason for the game glitching out, but suuuuuuuuuuuurely the designers must have allowed for that situation.

tl;dr game crash on Phineas lab; make player sad; no able finishy game; cue tears

ADDENDUM's Addendum: Yes, I have been playing for ages and just bought the DLCs. Is that why? Does Phineas have to say something special if you have the DLCs but my save game won't permit this? I don't have to start this whole game all over again, do I, because that's some serious Bethesda-tier bullsh-t.