According to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour, “Whisper” is among the best scripts Night Gallery ever produced.

Then who is to blame for the piece of shit as it aired?  Serling had long ago had his power in the series usurped.  Director Jeannot Szwarc?  Certainly not, he went on to direct Jaws 2, and Somewhere in Time.  Maybe the answer is on one of the pages hidden by Google Books.

Sally Field allows spirits to enter her body.

Dean Stockwell has a ridiculous afro.

There is a lot of talking directly to the camera.

I watched this episode twice, so I feel like I’ve done my part.  Really an awful experience.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Dean Stockwell was in A Quality of Mercy where he played a Japanese Soldier.
• This 3rd season episode oddly appears in the 1st season collection, but it is almost bad enough to put me off marching 4th into the 2nd season.

Another time-warp entry in the “Complete First Season” collection.  This one is the premiere episode from Season 3 and I am struck immediately with bad news and good news and bad news.

• Bad news:  Seeing there was a single title for this episode, I feared a 60-minute slog padded out by Serling-penned monologues.
• Good news:  The episode was cut down to a 30-minute slog.
• Bad news: Nothing could ever match the iconic TZ theme, but the original NG theme was more than adequate; the new 3rd season theme is dreadful.

Bill Bixby answers an ad placed by Vincent Price to translate an old text.  Price gives him a month’s salary up front to move into the mansion and begin translating immediately.

Bixby gets his gear and Price’s 33 years-younger wife Fern shows him to his room, then lays a kiss on him.  The actress is pretty much a blank with empty, dead eyes; she had a pretty good run in TV, though, so maybe it was acting.

Frankly, the whole thing gets pretty tedious.  Other people have rated it highly, though, so it might just be that I was never a Vincent Price fan.

The episode looks great with lots of deep reds and and blacks.  The atmosphere is solidly established by the mansion and candles.  There is also a lot of smoke swirling through the hallways.  Yes, it ‘s atmospheric, but when I see smoke inside a house, I call the fire department.  Outside, in a ghost story, it makes sense, but this is just goofy.  Bixby and Price are both great in their roles.  Sadly, Fern drags the show down a notch.

Just not much here to keep me interested.  OK, the goat at the dinner table was pretty good.

Post-Post:

• TZ Legacy:  None.  Maybe this reflects Serling’s continuing loss of influence in the 3rd season.
• The Fern character is not in the short story.

One of the less hideous NG paintings.

For some unknown reason, the Season 1 box set includes 3 episodes from later seasons.  Why would this be?

Shame?  Because they hooked rubes like me into buying the “Complete First Season” box set without stating on the box that it was only 6 episodes? Unlikely.

Teaser?  Because they wanted to demonstrate that the show got better in later seasons inducing people to buy the future box sets?  Well, The Diary was good but the rest of the episode — three brief sketches — only range from OK to God-awful.

Incompetence?  Seems like a stretch.  Printing the episode order wrong inside the box is one thing, but I can’t imagine they just screwed up that badly.  Although, there is also a sleeve for a booklet in the box set which mocks me in its empytude.

Patty Duke is a TV gossip columnist dishing dirt on has-been movie star Carrie Crane (played by has-been ^[1] movie star Virgina Mayo).  Patty is expressing her disgust at Crane for being busted last night for drunk and disorderly conduct on Sunset Strip.  This is back in the day when such a thing was not actually considered a publicity coup.  She is very dismissive of the aging Crane and reminds her that she is an “old broad,” not an “ingenue on the rise.”

We see this scene on the portable TV of Duke’s condo doorman.  He is shocked to see the real Carrie Crane walk up to his desk . . . mostly shocked that she is walking in a straight line.  She asks to go up to see Duke. She charms him and crashes Duke’s New Year’s Eve party.  Duke is no more civil in person. She berates Crane and threatens to have the doorman fired for letting her in the building.

Crane is far classier, having brought Duke a gift — well, a gift that will tear apart the fabric of her realty, but still a gift.  Duke calls her a “grandmother” and boots her out. Duke does open the gift after she leaves, though, perhaps intending to re-gift it.  It is a diary with January 1st already filled in in Duke’s handwriting — it describes the suicide of Crane.

Duke hears screams and sees from the balcony that Crane has been run over and killed. OK, that one’s a gimmee — it’s not tough to predict your own suicide, Nostradamus.  Although why walk down all those stairs when there is a balcony right there.  Maybe that lack of flair for the dramatic is why she is a has-been.

The January 2nd entry automatically writes itself — OK, that is starting to get spooky.  It predicts Duke’s vacation plans and her phone being broken — and this is one of the old AT&T-issued phones that could withstand an atomic blast.  The diary is 2 for 2.

BTW, mother of Samwise Gamgee.

She describes the diary to her $35 / hour shrink who has plausible explanations for the diary’s predictions.  In his office, she notices the entry for January 3rd — it describes in her handwriting the death of her boyfriend.  But in such a way that she could not cause, or have caused it, or will have caused it.

She finds that the January 4th page is blank.  In the entry on the 3rd she had wondered — well, her handwriting wondered — how she can live with herself after the lives being lost due to her cruelty.  She takes the blank next page as evidence of her suicide.

She has herself locked in a sanitarium and insists that she be given no sharp instruments in order to survive the day.  Natch, there is a twist that I’m not sure makes sense.  But it does press enough buttons — at least on me — to make me squirm a little and still be thinking about it.  Your mileage may vary.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  David Wayne was in Escape Clause.
• The nurse in the sanitarium is Lindsey Wagner in one of her first roles.  For some reason, she just seems amazing in this nothing of a role — far better than Diane Keaton in Room with a View.
• Also included in the episode: The Big Surprise — well executed and written by TZ master Richard Matheson, but really no meat there.  A Matter of Semantics — very short one-note sketch, interesting only if you want to see the guy who played the Joker on TV against Adam West’s Batman.  Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture — unbearably awful in execution and a dreadful punchline despite the presence of the usually great Carl Reiner.
• ^[1] Has-been is pretty harsh . . . I feel just terrible.

This was considered by most to be the high point for Night Gallery.

It is after 3 pm and Sales Director Randy Lane is not back from lunch.  His ambitious worm of an assistant Harvey Doane suggests that he might be out drinking.  When the owner Mr. Pritkin needs some info, Doane jumps in and throws Lane under the bus.

Lane’s secretary Lynn tries to cover for him.  She mentions today is Lane’s 25th anniversary with the firm, so he might be at lunch celebrating.  At 3:05, he finally rolls in, drunk and disheveled.  He spent the last hour standing on the sidewalk looking at the shuttered Tim Riley’s Bar.  How he got drunk standing on the sidewalk is not mentioned.

He gets very nostalgic about the bar which will soon be gone with no one to remember it with flowery speeches about the war and rumple seats.  After work, he goes back to the closed bar and reminisces with a beat cop about the old days after the war when they were young.  After the cop leaves, Lane has his first hallucination, of a celebration in the bar when he returned from the war.

The speechifying goes on a little long as Serling has always done, but the performances make the show.  There is really no horror or shock to be found in the episode.  I’d have to call it good for what it is.  It just isn’t what I’m looking for in Night Gallery.

William Windom is great as Randy Lane.  Diane Baker was also great as Lane’s secretary.  She was completely convincing in her support for Lane; also pretty hot, reminding me of a young sexier Kate Mulgrew.

Post-Post:

• This episode also contained a short called The Last Laurel starring Jack Cassidy.
• This episode was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Single Program of the Year.  It was beaten by The Andersonville Trial, also starring Jack Cassidy.
• Twilight Zone Legacy:  William Windom and Henry Beckman were each in two episodes.
• Mr. Pritkin played George Costanza’s father in one episode of Seinfeld before being replaced by Jerry Stiller.
• Don Taylor also directed Escape From the Planet of the Apes, and The Final Countdown.

Nothing going on here. I just liked the shot.

Night Gallery has a thing about Colonels lately.  First in Clean Kills, and now in The Doll where Col. Masters has arrived home from his assignment in India.  He is greeted by his homely niece and her comely nanny, Mrs. Danton.

He notices that his niece is holding a really unattractive doll; and next to this homely girl, that is saying something. The nanny assumed Masters had sent it to his niece due to the India return address; and smell of curry.  He did not, and is concerned over the source.  He promises to get her a replacement, but she likes this one.

Masters gets his niece a new doll, but his niece refuses it saying that the other doll hates it and that it has to go back.  Masters says she must take the doll, and assures his niece that the other one can’t really speak.

That night, he hears crying in his niece’s room.  He enters with Miss Danton and sees that the new doll has been torn to pieces.  The first doll now has a toothy evil smile.

Masters is having a drink when a man wearing a turban enters.  Just as in Make Me Laugh, the ethnicity does not seem to fit the turban.  His brother was executed in India by British soldiers after leading raids against the outposts.  He sent the doll to avenge his brother’s execution.

Masters goes upstairs to destroy the doll and sees it sitting at the top of the stairs.  Off-screen, he takes a fall down the stairs and gets a nasty gash on his arm.  I suppose we are to believe it is a bite.  He has the nanny bring the the doll into the study and  he tosses it in the fire.  It had been indestructible up to this point, but now its mission has been fulfilled.

Massaging his wound, Masters says the doll has done its job and he will be dead soon.  Although since he is about 1,000 years old and just fell down a flight of stairs, this doesn’t make him Nostradamus.

He is prepared, though, and tells the nanny of a package in his bedroom.  It must be sent to the Indian man it is addressed to.

The turbaned man receives the box which contains a doll that looks like the Colonel.

This was a highly regarded episode — maybe because it was a few years before the modern standard was set in evil jagged-toothed dolls.

Sadly, this episode did not age well.  John Williams is always reliable, but the attack occurring off-screen is just unforgivable.  And the ending lacks a certain symmetry — it’s great that the doll resembles the Colonel, but the first doll did not resemble the Indian so the edge is taken off the punchline.

Bottom Line: Talky Tina was more menacing.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  John Williams played William Shakespeare in The Bard.  Not really on-point, but he was also in 10 Alfred Hitchcock Presents.