Inside the generically-named Consolidated Enterprises, president Henry Judson is fanning himself with a newspaper which states NEW H-BOMB TEST TODAY. It is a hot town, summer in the city, the back of his neck feels dirty and gritty.
A woman walks into his office, correctly sizing him up as a guy who will do anything for big money. She offers Judson $100,000 to perform a job for her. She hands him a list of things she wants him to steal — Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh.
Naturally, he thinks this is impossible. She says that she can give him the means to pull off the job, which makes me wonder why she doesn’t just do it herself. Keen-eyed observers will have noticed that the fan that Judson relied on has been stopped since the woman entered his office. Also, the deafening noise from the street has turned to silence.
She points out to him how quiet it has become. He looks out the window and the world has stopped. This is how she will enable him to pull the heists. She has a device which creates a 5 foot range where time is greatly speeded up. The world outside the perimeter appears to be frozen.
She gives him a 2nd device for an accomplice, but says not to get within 5 feet of anyone or they will speed up too, and witness his theft.
That night Judson goes to see his friend Tony. He offers him $5,000 to be his accomplice, as 5/95 seems fair. Luckily for Tony, he also got a visit that day. He is to go to the public library with his “shopping list.” Tony pulls gun on Judson to steal his device. Judson is too fast and turns his device on; then he is waaaay too fast and walks out as Tony is frozen.
He goes to his other friend Jack Warden. He finds him in the bar and surprises him by freezing the bartender. Together, they loot the museum of various paintings, books and objet d’art. As they finish up, the woman reappears.
They go back to Judson’s office. He asks if he can keep the device, and the woman agrees. She is from 1,000 years in the future and has come to save the art from the impending H-Bomb test which will destroy the world. She says the bomb will go off in 1 minute.
He is caught in a great Catch-22. He can turn the device off and die in one minute with most of the rest of humanity. Or he can leave it on and be trapped on a frozen earth alone, never being able to speak to anyone. He has plenty of time to make up his mind — all the titular time in the world.
Post-Post:
- Sponsored again this week by Masland, makers of the Carioca Carpet.
- Written by Arthur C Clarke. It aired the year before Childhood’s End was published.
- Similar to Twilight Zone’s A Kind of Stopwatch.
Michael Doyle (Randy Quaid) is lying in a casket with his eyes wide open. He can’t be 
His daughter is thrilled to see him and gives him a big hug. His wife Natalie just seems stunned, or maybe she had already used his insurance for a deposit on a Beemer [1]. BTW, kudos for him getting out to reveal a backless suit jacket. Is that how corpses are buried? What would be the reason? Doesn’t the family supply the suit? By that logic, why would he have pants at all? But it just feels right. 
Doyle just asks to left alone and goes out on the balcony to stare out at the city. After the gals go to sleep, he cuts up pictures, magazines, and wallpaper to make a collage of himself standing in a psychedelic landscape. When his daughter wakes up, he finally gets animated, telling her that is where he went when he died. Much like Season Six Buffy, he doesn’t understand why he was brought back from this paradise.
They tried something strange with his fall. It is one of the worst special effects I’ve ever seen, but I’m not sure if it might not have been intentional. It begins with him looking 2-dimensional like the picture in his collage, but it is a different pose (more of the series’ lack of focus — why use that effect and a different pose?). Then it becomes a really unnatural green-screen. They could have done more to tie this to the collage, but really it seemed pointless as it was.
Vicki, Sara, Tim and other guy are trucking along for a camping weekend. Inexplicably, Sara pulls over to offer a ride to a hitchhiker. She thinks Andy the hitchhiker is cute, so maybe other guy is her brother. Or maybe Tim is her brother and other guy is just some other guy. I’m really not interested enough to diagram this out.
Harry and Mrs. Adams are cruising down the highway when they close in a police car creeping along at 48. Hey, that doesn’t mean a MAXIMUM of 50, you idiots! Oh, wait. Rather than move at this glacial pace for 10 miles, Harry rockets past them at 57 MPH.
Adams mouths off and Matthau orders him to follow the police car back to town. Unfortunately, the Adams car is stuck on the rocks. What luck, a tow truck shows up almost like this was planned.
At first I thought the beginning had been a cheat, but in reviewing it they were pretty slick on the dialogue. Kudos for not blatantly trying to trick the audience in the pre-VOD days. Also, at 39 episodes a year, how were there ever any reruns?
Even though Rod Serling is revered as a master writer in TV’s alleged golden age, and certainly was the creative force behind The Twilight Zone, some of the other contributors really could write circles around him. Maybe it was just the volume of scripts he was committed to cranking out. In just the first few seconds here I was amazed at how real these characters were, and at the little pieces of throwaway business. The papers on the desk, searching for a cigarette, a broken chair, a “circulation” pun, and use of the word gloomcookie.[1] Just great at establishing a world and two likable characters.
Andy knows the paper is unlikely to survive now that the big, bad Gazette has moved into town. Even worse, Andy is going to work for them. Jackie really chews him out, but Winter understands. After they leave, Winter compares that day’s Courier to the Gazette. Both have as their main story the mayor’s daughter winning a beauty contest. Only The Gazette suggests there might have been fraud involved. Frankly I would subscribe to The Gazette over The Courier too. The Gazette is also tarted up with more pictures and larger headlines like USA Today. Meanwhile The Courier’s front page looks as interesting and as doomed as a phonebook.
his flaming finger, we get the idea he might not be just another 
Smith has a knack for having stories reported, written and typeset immediately after they happen or even sooner — a feat similar to current reporters who also use pre-written stories, although theirs are handed to them by politicians, lobbyists, activists, and corporate PR departments.
Smith goes on reporting tragic story after story, always minutes after they occur. He has rigged the linotype machine so that now any story it prints will come true in the future. He uses this to coerce Winter into giving his soul up earlier than planned. Winter outsmarts him with his own device, however, resulting in a happy ending for him and the newspaper; at least until the internet is invented.