Chief Surgeon Dr. Foyle is chewing out his protegee Dr. Tyrell for his bold work in the operating room. The 67 year old Foyle says he has 25 years of experience, so maybe he ain’t such an expert if it took him until he was 42 to become a surgeon.
Nurse Martha overhears this unpleasantness. After Foyle leaves, she agrees with Tyrell that he has not kept up with the times. Now this is someone to pay attention to — she is an O.R. nurse at 19 years old! Plus, she’s 19 years old!
Martha takes a call from Foyle, that despite his outburst, he wants Tyrell to assist in a critical operation on Dr. Ross the next day. The patient is a nuclear physicist who has a growth on the frontal lobe. Hmmm, how could that have happened?
Martha says “he’s not just another patient,” he’s an important man. Much as that statement might concern the other patients, Ross is critical to our national defense. Tyrell goes back to his office and is greeted by Dr. Xenon.
Hmmm . . . Martha, Dr. Ross, Dr. Tyrell, Dr. Foyle, Dr. Xenon . . . which one is the alien? Way to blend! Xenon also stresses how important it is that Ross survive. Dr. Xenon has come to ensure that the operation is a success. He presents Tyrell with a pair of glasses “I have processed in a special way.” He also gives Tyrell some cleaning fluid in case the glasses get foggy. Tyrell tells Xenon he isn’t even performing the operation, Foyle is. Xenon seems to know differently.
That afternoon, Martha informs Tyrell that Foyle has gotten sick and that Xenon was right — he will be performing the operation. Tyrell wonders if Foyle is just faking it to avoid the responsibility for this 1,000 to 1 operation.
The next day in the eerily dark operating room, Tyrell is losing his patient. He fears he will have to perform a lobotomy when he begins thinking about Dr. Xenon. He sends Martha to get Xenon’s glasses out of his desk. She returns and places them on his face. They enable him to see at a microscopic level, able to differentiate good cells from bad cells.
Foyle gets the news that the operation was a success. He calls Tyrell to get an explanation of the crazy report he submitted about “miracle glasses”. When Tyrell tells him he got the glasses from Dr. Xenon of a university in Europe, Foyle says, “Don’t give me that, Doctor, I happen to know that legend.” He snootily says Tyrell wouldn’t know the legend because he never studied in Europe. Fearing this might lead to an interesting narrative twist, he never mentions the legend again.
When Foyle demands to see the glasses, Martha retrieves them and the cleaning fluid from the desk. Foyle looks at them and says, “These glasses have no lenses.” Tyrell theorizes that maybe the cleaning fluid dissolved the lenses after one use in this critical operation. Foyle questions whether there ever was a Dr. Xenon.
I have this feeling we’re being watched.
Tyrell says, “For that matter, do we three standing in this room really exist? Maybe we’re just the figment, the product, of someone’s fevered imagination. Someone from another world. Perhaps Dr. Xenon.”
This show, still in its 2nd season, is so primitive you have to grade on a curve. In its own way, it is one of the better episodes of the series. Sure, the writing was inept — dropping the Xenon-as-legend thread was a yuge mistake. However, the dark background in the operating room provided a great deal of suspense and atmosphere. The stock score was used effectively; more effectively than 1980s TZ ever does, anyway. I even enjoyed the open-ended resolution and Tyrell’s existential musing.
The episode wraps up with the host telling us the show has received the 1st Annual Television Award from the sci-fi magazine Galaxy. I believe the category was “Only Sci-Fi Show on TV.”
Other Stuff:
- Title Analysis: I kind of like the sound of it, but it’s nonsense. I guess they were playing off the phrase seeing eye dog. But we don’t give special viewing equipment to the dog.
- In 1994, Constance Towers (Martha) played a piano teacher who was Frasier Crane’s “first time”. This was her first credit on IMDb. Unlike most actors on Tales of Tomorrow, she is still working; also, still breathing.
- Bruce Cabot (Tyrell) starred in King Kong the year Constance Towers was born.
- Dr. Xenon, Dr. Xenon.
Dr. Boussard sends his kids Cassie and Louis out to play while he goes to deliver a baby. He passes a deputy painting the new population number (Pop. 103) on the Welcome to Tolomey [1] sign and makes a pretty good joke about delivering twins.
the community 12 years earlier which only killed the children.
I wouldn’t mind seeing London. I guess it would be interesting to see France. But in the opening shot of this episode, I did not need to see a little girl’s underpants; and she is literally credited as “Little Girl” on IMDb.[1]
Salesman Ed Fratus takes pleasure in grinding it under his shoe as he steps up on the porch. [2] When she starts to cry, he laughs and musses her hair. He obnoxiously tries to sell the cafe owner on various salacious products — key chains with nudie picture viewers, risque playing cards, 
Pine sits in the cafe day after day waiting for Fratus to return. He just sits and stares at the cafe door, even refusing a free beer. Eventually Fratus does return — and fortuitously on a day when Clay and Sam Jr are in the cafe. When he enters, Clay and Sam Jr go outside. Clay puts a hose in his mouth and starts siphoning the gas out of Fratus’s car. They leave him enough for 2-3 miles, which would have been about a gallon back then.
The perfectly-cast sweaty, fat-faced Fratus says, “You did poison me.” He screams that he still has time to get to the hospital. He takes off in his car, but darn the luck, Clay’s truck is blocking the road. Trying to pass Clay, Fratus runs off the road and is killed. Of course, it is revealed that there was no poison.
Sally Dobbs and her daughter Deidre are lugging luggage out to the car. The men-folk — Harry and his young son Jason — are downstairs practicing on the family pistol range. Sally calls Harry on an intercom to send Jason up. He tells her to send down another beer . . . his third . . . to the pistol range.
Harry’s pal Nick stops by. He mentions the news saying things are heating up in the Middle East. Wow, so that area was a powder keg even 30 whole years ago! [1] A 1980s linebacker-shouldered, big-haired reporterette says the President and First Lady have been taken to a secure location. Nick says Harry is right that “the whole world is going straight down the toilet.” Harry says we’re already there, “drugs, terrorism, pornography!” He thinks a bomb would set a lot of things right again. He says he and Nick don’t belong in a world of degenerate rock stars, hair-dressers and bureaucrats. He dreams of raising his son in a world with “all the scum burned off.” Uh, dude, you do remember Nick is not on the guest-list, right? Awkward!
While demonstrating his antenna system, they see a news report that all hell is breaking loose. Harry calls Sally and tells her to come back immediately. Her sister calls him Godzilla, and Sally mocks him before hanging up. Then the big one hits. Harry and Nick are in the shelter, but the antenna has been destroyed so they have no contact with the outside. Nick wants to leave to find his parents, but Harry physically restrains him and shows him the lethal radiation level, saving his life. Yeah, Harry is practically Hitler.
What happens next is a cheat, but like so much of Joy Ride, it is a good enough episode that I can overlook the flaws. It turns out, the blast was not global Armageddon, but an oopsy at the local Air Force Base. Somehow, within 10 months, the debris has been cleaned up, the radiation is gone, and parks are green, leafy and sunny, and the Women’s Olympic volleyball team practices there. All of the radioactive ruins have been bull-dozed into a heap, and a giant concrete dome built over them. It’s not quite as