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.

The bridge crew of this White Star Line ship sees a small boat in the middle of the ocean with a single passenger.  I don’t know if the White Line caps were just an error, or if Serling was trying to lead viewers to believe this was the Titanic.

As they move closer, the Captain spots the name Titanic on the bow of the small boat, so the cap ruse wouldn’t have lasted long anyway.  The survivor, who the Captain thought to be a woman, is brought on board and taken to the infirmary.  It actually turns out to be a man who put on women’s clothing to escape the sinking ship.

Or . . . maybe it was a dude who thought, “Gee, I don’t know anyone on the ship, we’re 1,000 miles from land, my parents are dead, I’m alone in my cabin, and I like to wear women’s clothes.  So dammit, I’m putting on this dress and parading around my stateroom singing showtunes.”  Then, BAM!  They hit the iceberg and he is stuck in the dress until he is rescued.  Curse the luck!

Another officer comments that the boat was all barnacled up to the waterline as if it had been in the water for 3 years — the time since the Titanic sank.  The Captain’s theory is that this is some sort of wartime deception.  It’s only then that we learn this ship is the Lusitania.  Of course, if this were remade today, no one would have any idea what the Lusitania was, or what her fate was.

The survivor describes how he put on the dress, put a muffler over his face and knocked people aside to board a lifeboat with the women and children; completely foregoing the less embarrassing scenario I conjectured.  John Calicos chews the bulkheads describing the sound of the collision, the sinking, the tilted decks, the water rushing in, the screams.  In a nice touch, he is in the dress for the whole episode — however, to be fair, it is a simple, understated number.

He describes himself as a Flying Dutchman fated to be picked up by doomed ships.  He tells the doctor the Lusitania will be hit by a torpedo and sink in 18 minutes.

The doctor therefore concludes that the crew must all be phantoms just playing roles in the survivor’s never-ending damnation.  The Captain protests that he is not a ghost, but the Doctor and the rest of the crew disappear. Fittingly, the Captain disappears last; even fate adheres to maritime tradition.  The survivor runs on deck and sees a periscope.  Then a torpedo.

Another ship spots the survivor in a small boat with Lusitania painted on the bow.  A crewman helpfully turns to the camera sporting a cap that says Andrea Doria.  Again meaning nothing to most people today.

All of the casualties on the Andrea Doria were killed upon impact, and it took 11 hours to sink.  Passengers were soon rescued by lifeboat and helicopter.  If the survivor was in women’s clothing for that one, he’s got some explaining to do.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Judgment Night, where a U-boat commander is doomed to experience the fate of his victims.
• The survivor is played by John Colicos, the Baltar of the 1970’s Battlestar Gallactica.  However, he was known as Count Baltar, and did not have the ironic name Gaius.
• Andrea Doria was a man, man!  The Italian Navy has commissioned 2 ships named Andrea Doria after the passenger liner sank in 1956.  Typical government thinking — I doubt you will see the Carnival Cruise Line christening a new Titanic.
• There actually was one non-impact death, but it is too sad to mention in a cesspool like this.
• The Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket.  Shockingly, no Kennedys were at fault.
• That permanent cigarette holder in Serling’s teeth is getting on my nerves: