Category Archives: TV

Science Fiction Theatre – Before the Beginning (12/10/55)

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Host Truman Bradley opens the bible to Genesis 1:1, although this must be the September issue as there appears to be about a hundred pages of ads before it. He reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and every living creature that moveth” thus proving my theory that Brussels sprouts are the devil’s work.  This introduces this evening’s theme: What caused the first spark of life?

Wow, now this is a fascinating subject!  How can they possibly do it justice in just 22 minutes?  I mean, the physics, the biology, the religious implications, the philosophical theories, not to mention the ethics of trying to create life in a lab.  Probably the best way to begin is to spend literally the first 1/3 of the episode establishing that Dr. Donaldson works too hard.

After a rare good night’s sleep, he is up at the crack of dawn.  His associate Dr. Heller helps him with a piece of equipment, but is shot in the hand by a stream of photons.  His hand goes numb, so Donaldson takes him to the infirmary which is surely equipped for such an injury.  The doctor says the muscle structure has been destroyed and can’t be regenerated.

Back at home, Dr. Donaldson’s father, credited at IMDb as Dr. Donaldson Sr., tells him maybe man was not meant to explore such things as how to create life.  Junior tells Senior, “You’re acting like a comic book father-in-law.”  Well, wait a minute, that’s his father-in-law?  Why do they have the same last name?  But then he tells his wife Kate that the man is “my parent” so I guess . . . oh, who cares?  Donaldson feels like Kate and this older gentleman are ganging up on him so he goes back to work for some peace.

After the commercial, Truman tells us, “In the course of the following month, Kate Donaldson experienced another attack.”  Another one?  When was the first one?  Donaldson Sr. takes Kate to see Dr. Heineman.  For some reason, her father-in-law is in the examination room while she is getting dressed — to be fair, she is behind a screen.  Dr. Heineman says the results “are a little technical”.  Since Kate is apparently the only person in the city without a doctorate, she is sent out of the room so the men can have an important discussion.  Discussion about her.  About her life.  And boobs.

As the door closes, with almost comical bluntness, Heineman blurts out, “She’s dying.”  The examination revealed “a disproportion of the body chemistry” and “it is due to the malfunction of some gland.”  How do you even mock something like that?

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Heller says Donaldson has created “something from nothing, matter from energy.”  Isn’t energy something?  When it is Donaldson Sr’s turn to look through the microscope, the little crystal buggers have stopped moving.  More importantly, Kate has another episode and her oblivious husband is too wrapped in his work to notice.  She collapses.  Donaldson finally notices her and says, “What’s wrong with her, Dad?”  Dad’s reply to him is, “Mostly your blindness.”  Oh, and also a fatal disease caused by some gland.

Kate lapses into a coma and Donaldson hates himself for being so absorbed in his work.  After an unprecedented 3 days away from the lab, he returns.  He is shocked to find Heller purposely firing more photons through his hand.  Heller had tried firing photons through the crystalline entities and they were reanimated.  The next logical step was his hand, which is showing some signs of feeling again.

Since Heller was able to revive his lover, Donaldson wants to try it on Kate.  They bring her to the lab and begin firing photons at her.  Yada yada, her condition is upgraded — seriously — from coma to regular sleep.  The doctors feel she’ll be snoozing within 24 hours and catnapping by the end of the week.

Donaldson Sr. might have his own issues.  Rather than just acknowledging his son has discovered the secret of life, he suggests that it was partly Donaldson Jr. saying he loved her that revived Kate.

With such a massive premise, this is what they came up with.

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Hero (05/01/60)

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Sir Richard Musgrave, Chairman of Consolidated Trust, is about to board a ship.  A photographer is eager to take his picture, so he must be a big shot.  He is going back to South Africa after a few years away.  The photographer says there must have been a lot of changes.  I don’t know about 1960 but I think now, yeah, he might detect some differences.

Musgrave believes he recognizes a man on deck.  He goes to the purser’s office to see if a Jan Vander Klaue is onboard.  Gopher says there is no one by that name in First Class as if Mugrave couldn’t possibly know any of the rabble down in steerage with Arte Johnson and Charo.  But there is no record of him anywhere on the ship.

Musgrave catches a glimpse of the man signing a bar tab.  Musgrave asks the bartender who the man was.  In a shocking breach of bartender / boozehound confidentiality, Isaac shows him it was signed only as Room 23.  He goes to the room, but decides not to enter.  Later in the bar, their paths cross again.  Musgrave has an officer introduce the man, but his name is Keyser.  After a mysterious trip to the Radio Shack, he has a steward give Keyser a note to come to his cabin around eleven.

Musgrave paces his cabin like it’s the Promenade Deck, waiting for the man.  He opens the door to see if the man is in the hall.  We see that Musgrave is in Cabin 25.  Wait, so the dude is right next door?  He also notices a newspaper article has been slipped under his door.  The article slows a picture of the man with a caption identifying him as Jan Vander Klaue.  The story says he was “a prospector beaten and left for dead in the veldt.”

The next day, Musgrave sees Keyser in the bar — if you ever need to find either of these two guys, that’s a good place to start looking.  Keyser says he was playing Bridge and could not come to see him last night.  Musgrave asks Keyser to have lunch with him, but Keyser says he is meeting his Bridge group, and leaves.

That night, Musgrave happens upon Keyser out on the Lido Deck.  How small is this ship?  The passengers of the Minnow didn’t cross paths this much.  Musgrave finally accuses him of being Jan Vander Klaue.  Twenty years ago they were partners.  They got into a fight and Musgrave thought he killed him.  Musgrave stole his money and built an empire from it.

Musgrave’s argument to JVK is that while he 1) beat him almost to death, 2) stole his money, 3) turned that cash into a fortune while never kicking anything back to JVK’s family, 4) married and had his own fine family, 5) outlasted the Statute of Limitations . . .  it would just be, well, embarrassing if JVK were to bring this up.  Oh my word, what would the other Lords and Ladies think?  How gauche!

He makes JVK several offers to remain silent.  At the end of Musgrave’s speech, the man says he has nearly as much money as Musgrave, and walks away . . . to a door marked — naturally — First Class Bar.

Later that night, Musgrave is nervously drinking in his room.  There is a knock at the door and he finds the man standing there.  He notices pictures of Musgrave’s wife and daughter on the dresser.  I know it takes a while to cruise to Africa, but do people really take along framed 8 x 10 photos?  The man says Musgrave’s confession puts him in a bad spot and must have also been painful for Musgrave.

He tells a story that just popped in his noggin about a similar circumstance he heard about.  A man was down to his last £75 pounds.  His business partner beat him almost to death and stole the money.  The man had set the £75 aside for a operation needed by his wife.  Lacking the cash, his wife died (or is stuck with her original boobs — the screenplay is unclear).

The next morning, Musgrave is so consumed by guilt and the liquor is so consumed by him, that he throws himself overboard.  There are several witnesses, though.  Lifesavers are thrown after the Skittles prove ineffective.  400 pound JVK / Keyser standing nearby even leaps in the water to save him.  There is a struggle, as often happens in rescuing a drowning victim.  They don’t usually put their foot on your head and drown you, though.  It is not clear who was doing the killing — I think they used some stunt-bellies to make it ambiguous.

When they arrive in Cape Town, Captain Stubing presents a trophy “to Mr. AJ Keyser for his heroism in attempting to save the life of a fellow passenger.”

Well done.  My expectations shifted a couple of times throughout.  One could ask why JVK kept that article for 20 years, or why he brought it on the trip, or why he changed his name, or why he was on the veldt when his wife was so near death, or why socialized medicine did not save his wife for free, but one would just be churlish.  Good stuff!

Other Stuff:

  • Oskar Homolka came off as such a brutish dick in The Ikon of Elijah and Reward to Finder that he appeared to just be playing himself.  Here, he was totally credible as the accused businessman.  Acting!

Twilight Zone – The Cold Equations (01/07/89)

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Tom Bartin has been piloting Emergency Dispatch Ships for five years.  The computer tells him that there is a “computational error” due to an “unauthorized payload”.  This unexpected extra 100 pounds is enough to put the precisely calculated mission in jeopardy.

He searches the ship and finds a teenage girl who presumably weighs 100 pounds, 20 of which is pure exposition — she spews out names and dates like a fire-hose: she was going to Mimir to the linguistics academy, but then heard this ship was going to Groden, so she stowed away to see her brother Jerry who works on a government survey team, and who she has not seen for five years, and it was just the two of them growing up, and she just couldn’t wait another year to see him, but she’s not a freeloader, she has a class-B computer license and a background in linguistics, and her name is Marilyn Lee Cross.  Whew!

She stops the data dump to ask if they are going faster.  Tom says that he cut the engines that were decelerating the ship to save fuel; although, wouldn’t that require even more fuel later to stop the ship in a shorter remaining distance?  He calls Commandeer Delhart for instructions on how to handle the stowaway.  He asks whether there are any other ships that Marilyn could transfer to but, like every Star Trek movie, there is not another ship within a zillion light years.

Marilyn can tell from the base’s questions that something might be wrong.  When Tom is asked for the “time of execution”, she is pretty sure.  She is told that she must be ejected into space.  There are 35 sick men on Groden who will die without the serum that Tom is transporting, and the ship does not carry an ounce of extra fuel.

They try to find 100 pounds of junk in the ship to jettison, but can only find half of that amount.  If she were a Victoria’s Secret model, they would have made it.

Of course, this is based on the classic, widely-read short-story.  That puts the producers in tricky spot.  They must either change the brutal ending which is the main reason it is a classic, or plod inexorably toward the ending everyone already knows.  It’s a tough call when the best option is to plod.

There is a certain amount of tension baked into the mathematically beautiful premise, so it is still a good episode.  Our sense of fairness tells us there has got to be a way for her to survive, but the laws of physics just won’t permit it.  In a way, kudos to the producers for being faithful to the short story.  However, making that decision seems to be where they stopped the heavy lifting.

I seem to make this comparison constantly, but it is no Trial by Fire.  In that Outer Limit episode, the countdown is filled with dread and tension even though the doomsday ending is less pre-determined than in this episode.  Here, the ending just sort of plays out.  Christianne Hirt does a fine job as Marilyn.  Terence Knox as Bartin, however, brings nothing to the role.  It is almost as if the producers were making a deliberate effort to keep everything minimalist.

Bartin is not much of a character.   Marilyn’s whole character is thrown at us in 30 seconds.  The effort to strip the ship lacks urgency.  No effort was made to present the ship as 100 efficient — there’s junk everywhere.  Marilyn is good on a video call to her brother, but her bro is pretty stoic considering her imminent death.  The score is merely adequate.  Even the scene of her being sacrificed to the laws of physics, at first, seems squandered.

She silently walks into the airlock with a few tears running down her cheeks.  But this is actually pretty effective as it seems like an authentic reaction of someone who is in shock and powerless to change her fate.  There are no last words or begging or hysterics.  The door just closes over her face.  We get antsy for her — scream, do something!  There is no window and we get no exterior shot of her zooming through space like Leia in SW:VII.  The minimalism works here, but might have been better if it were more of a contrast with what preceded it.

Bartin pulls the switch to open the airlock into space with the emotion of a dude flushing a toilet.  He does start crying when he gets back in the pilot seat, but it doesn’t come off well.

Once again, I am in the position constantly bitching and moaning about an episode I kind of liked.  There was no question that Christianne Hirt was effective, and the story is deservedly a classic.  It just seems like it could have been so much more.

Other Stuff:

  • Another site says that CBS found this ending too much of a downer.  One of their suggested alternatives was for Marilyn to have her arms and legs amputated.  That’s less of a downer?  That would have been awesome.

Tales from the Crypt – Let the Punishment Fit the Crime (10/31/94)

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Superlawyer Geraldine Ferrett — kudos on that last name — is hauled into the Stuecksville Courthouse for driving an unlicensed vehicle.  She calls her office to let them know where she is.  When she pronounces Stuecksville the way any sane human being would, a local corrects her that it is pronounced Sticksville.  No, it is clearly not.  If ever a situation cried out for an umlaut . . .

As Geraldine is looking over photos of public executions that should be de rigueur in every courthouse, Austin Haggard introduces himself.  The town has appointed him to take Geraldine’s case.  She just wants to pay the fine, but Austin advises against that because “this is a very strict town.”

. . . I could tediously recap all the working parts and short scenes — you know, as usual.  But time might be better spent just stating up front that this episode was a lot of fun.  There were a lot of fun ideas, the roles were well cast and performed, and it had a nice comic-book look to it.  Really, one of the best.

That said, there were several choices that confused me.

For unknown reasons, Austin Haggard is wearing Buddy Holly glasses, a big mop of hair, a bow tie, and a too-plaid, too-small, two-button jacket.  No one else is so strangely costumed.  I can think of two reasons why, one serious and one not funny.  1) the suit is a shorthand visual clue for a switcheroo that comes later, and 2) this somewhat masks the presence of Peter MacNicol who has a Jack Blackian talent for ruining nearly any project he appears in.

Geraldine talks to a local who is on trial for Felonious Auto Sales, i.e. rolling back the odometer.  Her first clue that this court means business is that he is found guilty and they cut his nose off.  Hunh?  I expect — nay, demand — a little more irony from TFTC.  I dunno, just spitballing here, maybe they could have rolled his eyes back in their sockets.  Ya get some “rolling back” irony, and a neat white-eyes visual.  I mean, that vagina they left in the center of his face was swell, it just lacked that extra level.

There are three courtrooms, A, B, and C.  A different judge presides in each.  All three are played by the same actor.  Again, I don’t see the point of this choice.  Tim Curry pulled off a triple-play in an earlier TFTC episode, but he’s Tim freakin’ Curry!

Geraldine is charged with driving an unlicensed vehicle because they say her license plate has an invalid number of characters.  Since the state has a monopoly on distributing licensess, wouldn’t this be impossible?  Nitpicky, but it just seems like an odd choice to build the episode around.  It did, at least, give them a chance to show off her SUE EM license plate.

For her heinous crime, she is immediately put in the pillory.  She can hear screams of agony from the other cells, but at least she has a private room.  Wait, a couple of figures emerge from the corners.  A man with hole in his chest says she killed him by suing his pacemaker company into bankruptcy.  For some reason, the hole seems to have teeth like Norris’s chest in The Thing.  Why?

A filthy, bloody woman complains about not being able to afford a doctor because lawyers cause them to pay so much for malpractice insurance.  OK, but what does that have to do with her being slimy?

There is another man beside her with his arm twisted behind his neck —  likewise no explanation.

Austin shows up and the figures disappear.  He says her appeal was granted.  I’m not sure what means as the judge still summarily pronounces her guilty.  However, her community service punishment is to become the new public defender . . . in hell!  This is where the wacky costume pays off — Geraldine is now dressed in Austin Haggard’s zany outfit, except with a mini-skirt.

So we have an episode with several lazy minor choices which still turns out to be one of the best.  Even the casting works in spite of expectations.  Peter MacNicol, usually insufferable, is a hoot as Austin.  Catherine O’Hara is not usually cast as a sexy babe, and wasn’t believable as a lawyer so evil that she went to hell.  And yet, she too was great.

Despite my bellyaching, there were some clever moments in the writing.  I especially appreciated how they finally nabbed Geraldine for soliciting a handicapped client.  Only later do you understand his responses about how he was injured.

This is what TFTC should be more often.

Outer Limits – In Our Own Image (12/18/98)

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Oh Outer Limits, you sly fox.  You want to dump a clip show on us, so you schedule it right after an episode with the odious Ron Perlman.  What would have been merely a decent outing becomes, relatively, a classic on the order of Trial by Fire. [1]

OL shamelessly tries to have it both ways from the first second.  Even before the picture comes up, over the dark screen we hear, “It’s gone crazy!”  Then we hear, “What did you do to him?”  The patient shows robotic gestures, but then it is referred to as him again.  After a security guard shoots him with no injury, it is clear we are dealing with a robot. [2]  The robot breaks out of the lab and jumps into a car with a woman just pulling into the parking lot.

The Mac 27 forces Cecilia Fairman to drive to an industrial area that is deserted because in 1998 America had not yet been made great again; not even the part in Vancouver.  He drags her into an old building and kudos all around for the head-smack she gives him with a crowbar.  It sounds like a small thing, but it was staged beautifully, following through to Celia’s astonished reaction that it did not harm Mac 27.

He chains Celia by the ankle and tells her she will have to repair him.  Very coolly and fortuitously, he has a repair kit in a secret compartment like the tinker toys they give you to fix a spare tire now.  His repair kit includes a headset that allows him to project visions into her noggin.  It apparently shows the future too — the first vision he shows her is a clip from an episode set hundreds of years in the future.

He exposes his chest, which is more than Celia has done for us.  Four panels slide away to reveal his damaged “flesh” and mechanical innards.  The headset shows her schematics to make the repair, but she says she is just a secretary; although if she used that crazy-ass DOS WordPerfect back then, she had to be sporting a 150 IQ.  Celia accidentally crosses some wires which causes Mac 27 to have a flashback.  Unlike previous clip shows, there is no effort made to fit the clip organically into the narrative.  They literally could have pulled any 2 minutes out of the series.

Back at Innobotics, a pair of incredibly unlikable actors — playing a lab geek and a security thug — detect a signal they can use to locate Mac 27.  It would have been nice if this signal were the result of Celia’s “error”, but there just doesn’t seem to be that much effort put into this last episode of the season.

Celia continues her repair job.  Mac 27 shows hints of emotion, and so does she.  She asks him to show her clips of a simulation where a sexy Virtual Reality companion became emotionally attached to the programmer.  OK, they did make an attempt to justify this one and it has the beautiful Natasha Henstridge in it, so objection overruled.

The security thug and a couple of goons show up.  In no time, Celia grabs the thug’s gun and blows away all three men!  I did not see that coming!  There is a lot of talk about emotions, what is life, and slavery.  Good stuff, though.

Yada Yada, things get twisty from here, and there is a lot more philosophizing.  It is very well done, though.  However, the commenters at IMDb are right — this would have been a better episode without the clips.  But that would have defeated the purpose.  They wanted to fill 42 minutes at a discount, and that’s what they got; in addition to the budget, the quality was discounted..

Despite an excellent performance from Nana Visitor as Celia [3], your time would be better spent watching the episodes the clips were taken from.  Valerie 23 and The Camp were very good.  Bits of Love and Identity Crisis were also stand-outs.  But none of them were Trial by Fire.

PS: I can’t get Nana Visitor’s amazing performance out of my head.  I’m anxious to see her in other projects now.  But not enough to watch Deep Space 9; let’s not get crazy.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Not really — the episode is sadly undermined by its form.
  • [2] When the cops show up it is an it again.
  • [3] Her name is Cecilia, but I know a Cecilia that I always call Celia.  I never asked her if she liked it either.
  • C’mon, in 1998 you named a computer Mac?