Tales of Tomorrow – Read to Me, Herr Doktor (03/20/53)

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Professor Kimsworth is looking snappy in his smoking jacket.  He goes to his bookshelf and carefully makes a selection.  He holds it very close to his face like a man with presbyopia or a Hustler subscription.  Confirming it is the desired volume, he hands it to someone just out of frame.  The person begins reading A Scandal in Bohemia and the game is afoot.

Not as sophisticated as the robot on the new Netflix Lost in Space, but less robotic than the new John Robinson.

A former student, Sidney Strong, rings the bell at the remote house and Kimsworth’s daughter Patricia lets him in.  She takes Sidney into the reading room.  He relieves himself after the long trip, then they go to the room where the actual reading is happening.  Sidney doesn’t want to interrupt, but Professor Kimsworth tells Herr Doktor to stick a bookmark in it.  Sidney is stunned when he sees Herr Doktor is a robot.

Some time later, Patricia calls Sidney.  She is worried because her father has started having literary conversations with Herr Doktor.  After first the reading, then the discussion, she wants to put a stop to this before her father asks for any other oral pleasures from Herr Doktor.  Of course, the primitive robot was not actually conversing; Kimsworth just seemed to be getting a little demented.  Sidney is more interested in making money.

She goes to the reading room, but finds her father has dozed off.  Herr Doktor says, “Wake him up, wake him up so that both of you can hear what I’ve got to say.”  Patricia is terrified as Herr Doktor has never appeared sentient before.  She tries unsuccessfully to shut him off.  It says, “What good are switches?  Switches are for machines.  Switches have no effect on men.”  The professor says to him, “That will be all for now.”  Herr Doktor replies, “On the contrary, that will not be all for now.  In fact, we have only just begun.”  That’s about as good an act break as you’re going to get out of this series.

When we return, Kimsworth is still proclaiming that this is impossible.  Herr Doktor condemns Kimsworth, “You made a man.  A man but not a man; a half-man.  And then you fed it romance and adventure.  You filled its coils with love for living.”  This is shockingly good stuff from this series.  Herr Doktor tells Kimsworth he must finish the job.

Oh, the irony:  Herr Doktor forces the professor to read to him.  He drives the old man to exhaustion.  It really makes no sense as the robot could have absorbed this info much faster than a human could read it to him.  But the symmetry of the master becoming the slave is just too delicious to worry about that.

While Herr Doktor is taking his final exams — no, really — Sidney comes back.  He rings the bell, which alerts Herr Doktor.  He strangles the professor and demands that Patricia send Sidney away.  She sends him away, and Herr Doktor releases the professor so he can grade his exam — no, really.

When Herr Doktor and Patricia are alone, he apparently decides it is time for post-exam Spring Break.  He begins quoting a Shakespeare sonnet to Patricia.  OK, not exactly Beach Blanket Bacchanalia, but he is clearly looking for love, using the ideas he has learned while reading the classics.  He laments how the professor built him as a machine to read, but exposed him to ideas of love and romance.  “He gave me beauty to read and beauty to look at.  Don Quixote, D’Artagnan, Romeo — men who loved, and a machine can love too.  And to the machine, you were always the woman.”

Mind blown.  Did this inane little series actually just circle back around to A Scandal in Bohemia?  The famous first line of that story, read aloud by the professor earlier, is “To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman.”  And who better for Herr Doktor to identify with than the emotionless Sherlock Holmes?  If this wasn’t a coincidence — and it might well have been — then bravo!

Unfortunately, Herr Doktor must have also read de Sade as he starts getting rough with Patricia.  He then clubs the professor when he tries to help.  He insists that Patricia must love him because he fought for her.  He must be referring to the brief clubbing of the 90 year old professor.  There isn’t much honor in that, but credit again to the writer.  The classics he read taught him a woman must be fought for, or won in a duel.  How many people have to die before we put warning labels on these books!

She yells at him, “The books are wrong!” and this rocks his world.  Herr Doktor stumbles back to the reading room und ist kaput.  The professor opens him up and removes the defective part.  “The heart of the machine is broken . . . like Don Quixote, he was a man in love.”

Of course, by any objective standard, the episode is dreadful.  Judging it within the series, though, it is a winner.  Yes, the robot is Ludacris, but whaddya gonna do?  They had no money.  However, I appreciated the signs of life in the writing.  It was more ambitious than almost any other episode.  Even this was uneven, though.  What was the point of Sidney even being in the episode?  He comes, he goes, he comes back, he leaves, he returns, Patricia gets rid of him.  I really expected him to peek in a window, see there was trouble and break in for a proper duel.  But no.

Other Stuff:

  • Mercedes McCambridge (Patricia) went on to be the voice of the demon in The Exorcist.  Could this proper 37 year old low-budget TV actress have ever imagined that in 20 years she would be on the big screen telling a priest his mother sucks c****s in hell?

Outer Limits – Sarcophagus (08/07/98)

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Natalie is running an archaeological dig in Alaska with three dudes who are not her husband, but I think he has nothing to worry about with this crew.  As she sinks an explosive charge to map the underground caverns, her hubby Curtis drives up with supplies.  She has spotted a capstone.  Being a Hollywood [1] archaeologist, her first act is to destroy the ancient site.  Although, to be fair, she fell through the roof.  It’s not like she purposely knocked over a giant statue, destroyed a wall of intricate carvings, and stole an ark.

In the chamber, they find an alien preserved in amber.  Emmet thinks they need to bring in a bigger crew, but Natalie has had people steal her discoveries before even though her name was written right on the bag, and refuses.  She holds an eye-dropper of acid over the amber and squeezes out a few drops.  The amber sizzles and smoke puffs out of the site.  She repeats the test with the same results, then says, “Negative, no reaction to hydrochloric or carbolic acid.”   Well, it did sizzle and smoke; was she looking for fireworks?  I’m starting to feel sorry for Curtis.

Curtis tries to cut into the amber, but his mind is taken over by the alien.  From the alien’s POV, he sees primitive villagers and tribesmen being tossed about by the alien.  Curtis passes out and the group sees the amber rise like a great souffle, then fall like a lousy souffle.  An alien skeleton is revealed.

Twenty minutes in, this thing is a bit of a slog.  Lisa Zane as Natalie brings exactly the same adequateness as she did in The Nurse, but nothing more than that.  Her husband is a mystery.  He is also an archaeologist, but seems to be a slack-ass who just tags along with Natalie on her digs.  She jumps on him for wanting a cushy teaching job.  However, I understand her frustration — they have just discovered a bleeping dead alien, and the guy could still not be less enthusiastic.  Even with this historic find, he still wants to go back to the states.  Even their argument is boring.

Robert Picardo plays Emmet.  He’s a fun character actor, but I had the sudden realization that he always plays Robert Picardo.  Aside from some stubble, his Emmet is often indistinguishable from his holographic doctor on Star Trek: Voyager.  The other two crew-members are non-entities; like Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager.

Meh, it goes on.  Curtis and Natalie try to help the alien, and then it helps them.  The bad guys die, the good guys win.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] By Hollywood, I mean Vancouver.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Human Equation (10/15/55)

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We open on a cleaning woman cleaning, and the announcer announcing, ” . . . and a vacuum cleaner screamed its defiance at the usual quiet.”  The woman is pretty defiant also, screaming at the tenants over the noise, “I know it’s noisy!  Ain’t my fault the noise bothers you!  I can’t help it if you got sensitive ears!”  Then she just scream-screams as a man runs into frame and strangles her.  Thus far, he is the hero of tonight’s episode.

One of the neighbors recognizes the man as Dr. Finch, and the police haul him in.  He protests, “I am a man of science.  I have never inflicted pain on a single human being.”  C’mon, WWII was just ten years ago.  He claims he can’t even remember where he was that day.

Finch’s niece Nan takes his arrest pretty hard.  She and Finch’s associate Dr. Seward go to see the Governor rather then, say, an attorney.  The Gov has the facts, though.  He lists off the evidence: Finch was spotted at the crime-scene, the victim’s skin was under his fingernails, a hair on his coat came from the victim, particles of dust and carpet fibers were found on his clothes, and he was positively identified by an eye-witness.  The Governor’s case is undermined, however, by the ridiculous circular tuft of hair sticking out of the side of his head.

Seward argues that Finch’s record of service to medicine should get him a break.  Not only that, he implores the Gov to just think of the millions who will benefit from his future research.  However, Seward doesn’t offer up any new hard evidence or campaign contributions so the Gov leaves Finch on death row.

Seward assumes Finch’s position at the lab.  Nan is none too thrilled with this.  She barges into his office and says, “Why, your best couldn’t possibly equal the least of my uncle’s abilities!  You’re a fool if you think you can replace Albert Finch!”  She further accuses him of taking credit for her uncle’s research and storms out of his office.  Strangely, she was fine with it earlier that day.  You don’t often find such irrational behavior in fictional women.

Seward goes to check on their new scientist, Dr. Clements.  Seward tells him he doesn’t think they could have found a better person for the job. [1]  He also conveys Nan’s pleasure that he was carrying on her uncle’s work.  Clements seems surprised by this news.

At the end of the day, Seward offers to take Nan home.  They hear a ruckus in the lab.  Clements has gone nuts and attacked a subordinate.  When Seward intervenes, Clements threatens to kill him.  After a mild defense, Clements runs out.  Seward is baffled by this.  “What’s the meaning of this?  Resentment one minute, a cheerful greeting the next.  And now this.”  He looks at Nan and says, “What about you?”  He confronts her about her earlier hostility, but she remembers none of it.  She suggests he’s the one who been acting strangely.  Yet, the sap still drives her home.

Back at Nan’s place, her son Kenny is mad at her.  While Nan is cooking dinner for them, Seward notices a bruise on Kenny’s arm.  Nan walks in and asks, “Who did this?”  Kenny says, “You know!  You did it!  You know you did it!”

The next day, after what must have been an awkward dinner, Seward goes to see Dr. Upton, a psychiatrist.  He needs Upton’s expertise to determine the effects of a fungus they have been developing as an antibiotic.  It is supposed to be more effective than penicillin.  What is it with fungus and infections?

With just hours until Finch goes to the gas chamber, Seward decides to test the fungus on himself.  Upton ties him to a chair and injects him with it.  After an hour, his heartbeat accelerates 10 BPM, his pupils dilate, and he begins to perspire.  So either the fungus was having an effect, or he kind of digs this bondage.

An hour later, he becomes psychotic.  After another hour, he begins to have visions.  Finally after four hours, he violently thrashes about trying to escape from his restraints so he can kill Upton.

Seward and Nan visit the Governor again to explain that he had proven that Finch had acted under the influence of the fungus.  Since they have compelling new evidence and witnesses, he calls the warden to stop Finch’s execution.

The announcer assures us this was a fictional story, however . . .

“The discovery of a similar fungus derivative that can produce experimental psychoses for study in the laboratory is fact!  The drug, known as LSD, has enabled science to relate mental illness to the chemistry of the body for the first time.”

Wow, I wonder if this was the first mention of LSD on TV?  I see it actually was available by prescription starting in 1947.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  OK, he says man, not person.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Hitch Hike (02/21/60)

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Twenty-Three year old Suzanne Pleshette . . .

Really I could stop tight there, give the episode a 10, and move on.  Unfortunately, this great natural resource is somewhat wasted.

No-nonsense Charles Underhill has just picked his niece Anne up at the courthouse.  She was hanging out with a car thief, but got off easy because Underhill is a city council-man and the judge knows him to be a model citizen and honest public servant.  Except for using his office to get his gangsta kinfolk out of the hoosegow.  Honest except for that.

The judge lets Anne off so as not to damage the sterling reputation of the council-man.  Underhill tells her she should be grateful, and she grudgingly thanks him.  To straighten her out, he tells her he is pulling her out of college and sending her to work in an office for one of his friends.  Probably the one that needs a loading zone in front of his store.

He pulls his land yacht over and runs into a store to buy some cigarettes, so I guess the example-setting only goes so far.  While he is gone, Anne notices a cute guy hitchhiking.  She certainly has a type.  Their eyes meet, but Underhill breaks the mood by returning.  Before he can resume his lecture, the car ahead of him backs into his car.  “Look at her!  Can’t even pull out of a parking space!” he says and lays on the horn.

Unfortunately, the horn gets stuck in the F-U position and won’t stop blaring.  Anne is greatly amused at his inability to stop the horn, and his discomfort at becoming a spectacle in the downtown square.  The good towns-folk stop and stare, but the hitchhiker takes action.  He comes over and disconnects the horn.

Underhill, being a proper gentleman, thanks him.  The twitchy punk says, “A noisy horn, it bugs me.”  Underhill compliments his mechanical skillz, and he says, “Either you dig a motor or you don’t.”  Len, a hipster doofus of the type inexplicably considered cool at the time, hits Underhill up for a ride to San Francisco.  Two-time County Safety Award winner Underhill takes a dim view of hitchhikers, or it might just his presbyopia flaring up.  Len reminds him that he did help the old guy out of a jam.  After initially refusing, Underhill relents and gives him a ride.

Well, we get a lengthy exploration of the generation gap.  A new age had arrived in Hollywood, so the dialogue is written to let the cool Len score all the points against the geezer Underhill.  But, ya know, when you dig into it, Len is kinda full of shit.

  • Len is the criminal here, let’s not forget that.  Sure, Underhill is old and stodgy, but Len is actually the parasite who stole the product of another man’s work.  They might present him as cool and charismatic, but he was in jail for theft.
  • Len talks about his dream of building a car and racing it around the world.  A little out-there, but respectable, especially the part about building it himself.  But what has he done to make it happen?  Instead, he whines about “insiders” like Underhill who have worked 40 years for what they have.
  • He goes on and on about knives.  Underhill understandably gets nervous and attracts the attention of a cop.  Len then complains that he had said he was talking about his cell-mate, not himself.  Granted, he did say his cell-mate was the knife aficionado.  But it seemed to have rubbed off on him, and Underhill was correct to be concerned, especially with his impressionable, dimwitted niece in the car.
  • As part of his “insiders” vs “outsiders” rant, Len talks about poet Dylan Thomas.  He tells the geezer Underhill he could never understand a young guy like that.  Well Thomas was born only 7 years after Underhill, dumbass. [1]
  • There is a twist in which Underhill compromises his “old-fashioned” values.  It is presented as a victory for the smirking Len, but really it is just a sad, early fracture of American standards.
  • In the final shot, Len is shown tearing up paper and throwing it out the window of the moving car.  So add litterbug to his charges.

So Len is really just one of the first in a long line of sanctimonious hippie blowhards that finally took over popular culture in Easy Rider.  But in his short hair and button down shirt, he probably smelled a lot better.

And what I mean by all this complaining is that it is a great episode.  John McIntire is great as the stodgy, old-school geezer.  He was so good that I’m not sure he was acting.  Robert Morse can frequently be cloying and/or obnoxious as he hams it up.  His persona worked in this episode, though, as the counter-point to the older man’s rigidity.  Really both were caricatures as they somewhat have to be in a 30 minute show.  Sadly, Suzanne Pleshette is given little to do; but she is very cute doing it.

No, I’m not 80.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Granted, their current ages are quite different.  But that is because the poet Len admires as the pinnacle of humanity drank himself to death at age 39 leaving behind a wife and children.
  • Title Analysis:  Why Hitch Hike rather than Hitchhike?  Why Hitch Hike rather than Hitchhiker?  The Hitchcock/Hitch Hike similarity doesn’t make sense.  I’m baffled.
  • The titular similarity to the dreadful Hitchhiker series also somewhat tainted the experience.
  • My general crotchetiness possibly due to being stuck in traffic today beside two motorcycles.  OK, you’re already riding a 100 decibel boom box.  Do you really need to blast a stereo that you can hear above that?  Plus they were fat guys with no shirts.
  • No, I’m really not 80.

Twilight Zone – Our Selena Is Dying (11/12/88)

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Dramatis Personae

Martha  Brockman

Selena  Brockman

Diane  Brockman

Debra Brockman

Kent  Brockman

What a mess!  Maybe there’s a reason this original story from Rod Serling never got produced.  At least in Number Twelve Looks Just Like You we didn’t have to meet all twelve; and they were hot!

Why would they start out with this shot of a girl in a B&W photo?  We don’t know who she is, and won’t know the significance until 2/3rds into the episode.  It sets us up for nothing.  Did any viewers really recognize the bandage on her arm that appears to be a sleeve?  Benedict Cumberbatch wouldn’t have noticed it.  I mean, Sherlock Holmes would have.  I just assume Cumberbatch is an average Joe (with occasional superhero tendancies) like me and probably would not have.

Young Doctor Burrell is making a house-call to check on elderly Selena Brockman, which might be the single most fantastic premise in this entire series.  But such personal care is why he went into medicine.  He quickly regresses to the medical mean by giving the old woman a fistful of pills.  Her niece Diane Brockman uses the opportunity to hit on the doctor.  No, wait, that’s why he went into medicine.

Another niece, Debra Brockman, has received a phone call asking her to come see Selena whom she has never met.  Diane greets her and introduces her to Orville the Handyman.  Diane calls him the village idiot but says it is OK because he is deaf and she had her head turned.  Debra sees another woman staring catatonically out the window.  Diane says that is her mother which I guess makes her Martha Brockman.

Diane takes Debra upstairs to meet Selena.  Debra tells the old woman she will be helping to take care of her.  Selena takes her hand so firmly it hurts.  It leaves a mark which the doctor later tells Debra is a liverspot, but he might have just been flirting.  When the doctor next visits Selena, he is surprised she is dressed and sitting up alert in bed.

That night, however, the doctor gets a call from Debra who asks him to come to the house.  When he arrives, she is sitting in the dark.  He takes her to the hospital, but they can find no reason for her apparent premature aging. You know what I can find no reason for?  Not showing her aged face.  At the house, her face is kept in the shadows.  She is not shown at the hospital at all.  This is the point where her older self should have been revealed.  We know what is happening, and Debra thought it was severe enough to call the doctor.  Instead, we see her a few minutes later, after we have gotten used to the idea.  And she is not hideous enough to warrant any suspense that might have built up.

Back at the house again, the doctor is taking Diane’s blood pressure.  She says she is fine and her mother Martha is fine also.  He notices a nasty burn scar, which she says is from an accident when she was a child.  Selena rolls her wheelchair in and says they are both fine.  Dr. Burrell notes the irony that Debra is aging as Selena is getting younger.  She tells him his services are no longer needed.

Orville catches Burrell outside and shows him a diary.  There is the photo inside of the girl wearing wearing a bandage in the same spot as Diane’s scar, and it is dated 1940.   But the entry says it is her mother Martha in the picture.  The camera pans away from them in a textbook camera move guaranteed to create suspense — who is around the corner . . . did they overhear the doctor . . . is Orville in danger for ratting the Brockwomen out?  But no . . . yawn . . . the pan stops on a statue.  Hunh?  There’s actually a good gag to be had there, but I don’t think they realized it.  Also, it was aleady sorta used on the original TZ’s A Penny for your Thoughts.

Back at the hospital, we finally get our first look at the prematurely aged Debra.  That night, Burrell sneaks back to the house.  He rolls up the catatonic Martha’s sleeve and sees no scar.  He says, “You’re Diane!  You’re the daughter!”  Diane walks in and Burrell accuses her, pointing out that Martha has no scar.  Also that she had green eyes like Diane did.  “How old are you really, Martha?”

He busts into Selena’s bedroom and shouts, “It’s not right!  Give Debra back her years!”  His pleas fall on deaf ears.  Literally.  Heh heh.

Selena says, “What do you know about it doctor?  The game is longevity.  You play at it with your medicine and your stethoscopes, but we’ve won.  There’s one rule doctor.  It has nothing to do with morality or love.  When illness approaches, the trade takes place.”

Diane tries to brain him with a fireplace poker, but they get into a struggle.  While they wrestle, Martha enters with a oil lamp and cries, “Mommy”  Diane backs away from her saying, “Get away from me!”  the lamp falls and breaks and the wild fire spreads like . . . er, wildfire.  Only Burrell gets out alive.  Maybe.

The police say that neighbors saw one woman escape, clothes on fire.  Debra returns to the house looking young and cute again.  Meanwhile at the hospital, an old indigent woman with massive burns has been admitted.  A nurse notes that Jane Doe’s left arm seems to be healing quickly.  Another nurse in the hall shows a friend a burn mark on her left arm that she doesn’t remember getting.  Well gee, it couldn’t have been from Jane Doe — her hands are shown completely bandaged over.

The old greedily leaching youth from the young is nothing original, but that’s OK.  It’s one of those tropes that are too good to leave alone; especially as I get older.  This production, however, just seems a little busy.  I think dropping one of the Brockmans would have tightened the story up nicely.

Maybe it would have made this crazy family less dysfunctional.  Debra has never met her aunt Selena or her aunt Martha?  OK, I guess families move away or split up.  Why is Martha being abused by her mother as the walking fountain of youth?  It is demonstrated at the end that it need not be a blood relative.  For that matter, why did they recruit cousin Debra at all?  Couldn’t they just have placed an ad for “Hot nurse wanted.  Must provide uniform” like I do?

Other Stuff:

  • Sweet Jeebus, I haven’t watched a TZ episode in weeks.  Was the new guy’s narration this insipid before, or is he going a new way?  Why do they try to make this show so . . . what, normal?  Melodramatic?  This is the MFing TZ, bitches!  Where is the edge, where is the menace?