Well, they tried something different.  I’ll give them credit for that.

Most of the episodes of Tales of Tomorrow have offered simplistic plots which did not contain much more than a weak premise or a single unexplored event.  The episodes written by Frank De Felitta, however, seem to transcend the mediocrity more than the others.  He wrote the interesting Another Chance last week, and of course the fun The Window.  Even The Fatal Flower showed more depth than we usually get.  Sadly, there just isn’t much going on this time despite having a high concept and starring Burgess Meredith.  But maybe that’s enough.

The headline on the Kanasha Courier ^[1] takes up the entire front page:  THIRD DAY OF GREAT SILENCE.  We immediately cut to Washington DC where Senator Perkins is making a radio address.  He reports that in the Northeast, people have lost their voice and the phenomena seems to be spreading to all points of the compass.  “Government scientists and physicists charge this strange paralysis of the vocal chords to invisible hydrogenic particles in our atmosphere resulting the recent H-Bomb experiments.  They are agreed that this phenomenon is only temporary . . . and everyone affected will recover their voices.”  Way to kill the suspense.

Mountain man Paul (Burgess Meredith) is relaxing, listening to the report on the radio.  When his wife enters their cabin carrying a handful of wood, he pretends to be asleep (later in bed, when their situations are reversed, she will do the same).  She purposely drops the logs to wake him up, giving herself a good laugh.  He wacks her on the butt, which gives him a good laugh.  The she takes out a rifle and points it at him, giving me a good laugh.  At this point, it becomes clear what they are going for.

He comically hides as if he expects her to shoot him.  His goofy character and his serious wife are played so broadly, that this becomes a silent movie.  After much pantomiming, she communicates that she wants him to take the rifle and hunt something for dinner.

Viewing Tip:  Wishing to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I turned the playback speed up to 2X.  Not only did this knock a few minutes off the running time, it also further transformed the episode into a silent movie.  It ain’t no Buster Keaton, but the speeded up action did take the homage to a different level.

Paul finds the true cause of the vocal chord paralysis.  In the woods, he spots a flying saucer; but on the ground, not flying.  He tries to tell this to the government, but fails.  So, like a great American, he solves the problem himself.  Then they get their voices back.

Tales of Tomorrow is on a roll.  I suspect the episode would have seemed interminable without increasing the speed, but it worked as I viewed it.  46 years later, there was a similar episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ^[2]  I look forward to the musical episode of Tales of Tomorrow.  If they made one, De Felitta might have been just the guy to pull it off.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] There is no Kanasha.  The story seems to take place in Iowa or Montana due to judging from the map and the proximity to the Bitter Root Mountains.
• ^[2] There is even the same silent jerking-off joke at 14:07 on You Tube.  OK, probably not intentional on Tales, but it was hilarious on Buffy.

Harold Mason (Leslie Nielsen) wakes up sitting at the kitchen table where he fell asleep 1) playing cards, 2) reading the newspaper, 3) drinking coffee, or 4) tidying up.  Well, we can rule out #4 because the table is a mess, strewn with newspapers, cards, coffee and Harold’s noggin.

Finally, after a full minute of him nervously taking a drink and lighting a cigarette, he looks at the headline PRICELESS BROOCH STOLEN; DIAMOND CUTTER SOUGHT.  He pulls the brooch from his pocket and turns it over in his hands until he hears footsteps in the hall.  It is his wife Carlotta returning from the grocery store.  She berates her panicky husband, sarcastically calling him a “big brave man.”  He blames her for pushing him into this predicament “ever since we were married, always griping, never satisfied!”

He hands her the brooch, but she says, “This cheap piece of junk wouldn’t buy me a cup of coffee” and slams it on the table.  Harold says, “Not after I recut the stone.”  So, it’s worthless until cut; then it is priceless?  Wouldn’t the great potential of the brooch be reflected in its current value?  Hey, PV = C/(1+r)ⁿ, motherf****r!  She pulls a suitcase out from under the bed and begins packing to leave.  After much begging from Harold, she gives him 24 hours to sell the brooch to a fence.

Fortuitously, he sees an ad in the paper I’M SURE I CAN HELP YOU!  DR. JOHN BORROW.  Dr. Borrow helpfully tells Harold he’s “made a mess of things and there’s no way out.”  Furthermore, he recognizes that Harold will just go on making the same mistakes in his life unless there is a change.  He says he can offer Harold the titular another chance.

This ad ran during the commercial break. Now, this looks like a guy who knows what teens like.

Borrow has invented a machine that can give people such an opportunity.  He says it is based on amnesia.  “With this machine, I am able control the degree of forgetfulness.  I can erase from the mind only those things I wish to erase.  A man’s conscience, his associates, his friends, these are the things I can erase.  But the ability to think, to work, to talk, to construct, to earn a living, these things remain.”  Borrow tells him that after the treatment, he will awaken in a room 1,000 miles away . . . and back 7 years in time.

Wait, is Borrow now claiming he invented a time machine?  “You’ll have no memory of these past 7 years.  The slate will be clean.  You’ll be able to start a new life.  You’ll have another chance to try life over again.”  No, I guess it isn’t a real time machine, Harold just won’t remember the past 7 years.

Harold is worried that the cops still will recognize his face.  Borrow holds up the brooch.  “Yes, but seven years ago, none of these things had happened.”  What the hell?  Is it back to being a time machine?  Manipulating memories isn’t that big a deal, but if he has invented a time machine, that should be his lead.  Anyhoo, Borrow straps him in the chair and begins the procedure.

Harold awakens in a Chicago hotel room.  A card left for him informs him that in his new life, he will be known as Jack Marshall, which is an improvement already.  There is a 1946 calendar, so I guess he really did go back in time.

After the commercial, a title card tells us it is 7 years later, back in present day.  He wakes up flopped over the table just as he did in the opening scene.  This time, the headline in the paper says SECURITIES STOLEN; BANK TELLER SOUGHT.  As before, he has the stolen goods with him.  As before, he has been hiding out in a room for 5 days.^[1]  As before, his wife (Regina this time) enters and berates him as a coward.  As before, he blames her for nagging him into the heist, “always griping, never satisfied.”  As before, she pulls a suitcase out from under the bed and begins packing.  As before, he asks her for 24 hours to unload the securities.  As before, she goes to the movies.  As before, he sees an ad from Dr. Borrow in the paper.

He goes to see Borrow again.  Borrow refuses to help him this time because the securities are non-negotiable.  Harold presses the button on Borrow’s desk that opens the door to the time machine.  So I guess that memory wipe procedure has not been perfected yet.  Borrow refuses to divulge Harold’s previous life, only saying he has made the identical bonehead choices in both lives.  On the plus side, he says this is the result with all his clients.

Borrow further explains that people are who they are.  If they go back in time, they will make the same dumb mistakes.  He says the key is not to change your past, but to change your future.  Not to nitpick, but if you are sent back seven years and don’t retain your memories, that is your future.

So he goes home and strangles Regina.

This is one of the better episodes.  There is a thought-provoking story and the music isn’t as canned and awful as usual.  At first, Leslie Nielsen’s performance just seemed bizarre.  His portrayal of the paranoid, twitchy Harold seemed hammy and affected.  Gestures were exaggerated and a lot of time was spent on him doing nothing but writhing in fear, taking a drink, or lighting a cigarette.  It all came together for me when he was in the Chicago hotel, though.  I could feel his horror at not knowing who he was.

The same actress portrayed Carlotta and Regina.  I’m not sure why other than to illustrate that Harold made that same mistake twice too.  Of course, on the second go-round, she would be seven years younger than him.  A couple more iterations and they will be a typical Hollywood couple.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] Having been in the room for 5 days, I am unclear why he would be wearing a necktie.

Professor Leland Russell is getting frustrated.  He is working on his new invention which is giving him static.  And, he lives with his sister Madeleine; who is also giving him static.  Leland took in Madeleine and his niece Pat after his brother-in-law died.  Pat is now married to Steve, but Madeleine still lives with Leland.

Leland bitterly toils away in this remote house to escape from the kinds of people who stole his ideas and profited from them.  Meanwhile, he lives in a cabin on an island he owns, which, frankly sounds pretty sweet to me.  Pat and Steve show up, having braved a hurricane.  Steve hangs up their coats, but they fall to the floor as he turns away.  This is not listed as a Goof on IMDb probably because I’m the only one dopey enough to watch this since 1952. ^[1]

When Leland steps off-camera to chew out his agent for getting him this gig, Steve turns on the device to see what it does.  OH MY GOD, IT’S A BOMB!  Oh, wait, it’s a radio which picks up conversations that took place earlier.  Leland returns and is furious at their snooping, and the reveal that he voted for Wendell Willkie.

Leland explains, “This is a machine that picks up and recaptures the sounds of the past.”  He demonstrates by turning on the machine again.  It picks up the ear-piercing sound of an opera.  Madeleine recognizes the singer as [unintelligible] who retired years ago.  Cynics might say it was just picking up a radio station.  But this was pre-PBS and no profit-seeking station in America would have broadcast this caterwauling.

He turns a few knobs and picks up Roosevelt’s “All we have to fear is fear itself” speech.  I get that they wanted to use a familiar speech and speaker, but they undermine the device’s power by using something that was so widely broadcast and replayed so often.  It would have been better to use something that everyone knew about, but was not recorded or broadcast.  Like when Thomas Jefferson said, “Hey, Hamilton, leave room for everyone else!”  Or when John Wilkes Booth said, “[BANG] Sic Semper Tyrannis . . . Ow, my f****ing knee!  Well, I’m done now.  They’d have to be complete idiots not to capture me before I even get off the stage.”

Leland starts getting static again.  The dial starts swinging wildly . . . back past the middle ages.  Madeleine begins to hear something through the interference.  She steps back in horror and shrieks, or maybe it is the opera fading back in.  She faints for approximately the length of a commercial break.  When she awakens, she says they were the most glorious sounds she ever heard. She heard and understood, and snottily tells Leland he should be asking himself why he didn’t understand.

Steve leaves to see if he can get the boat ready to take them back to the mainland.  Pat tries to get an explanation, but Madeleine says, “It is a message no one can escape, if they will only listen.”  She asks Pat to read the bible to her.  She opens it randomly to the “blessed are the peacemakers” chapter and reads aloud.  Madeleine asks Pat if she remembers any of the Aramaic that her father taught her.  She remembers only, “My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?”

Steve returns and says they can escape by boat, Leland is touched that he risked his life to save them.  Leland doesn’t want to abandon his invention, though.  Like all sci-fi break-throughs, he has no plans, no back-ups, no prototypes, and it can never be duplicated.  He turns the device on again and is amazed that he can now hear through the interference.  He is overcome as he realizes that he is listening to the crowd sounds at the crucifixion.  Leland stares into the camera and describes the scene.  It would make sense if he were quoting the voices being transmitted, but the writer opted to have him quote the bible.  At length . . . this guy knows his bible.

Hey professor, was you born in a manger? Shut the freakin’ door !

The storm gets so bad, they decide to flee the island.  Leland is a changed man.  He says, “Those sounds meant nothing to me until I had faith in people.”  He takes a last look at the machine that provided his salvation, this priceless device that could lead the world to peace and love.  Then he walks out into the hurricane and doesn’t close the door.  The end.

I kind of like what they were going for even if the botched it in a few places.  Using the “fear itself” speech was the first mis-step.  It was also a mistake to have Pat remember a few words of Aramaic (and have her late father apparently be fluent).  This opens up the possibility that Madeleine understood the transmission because she picked up some of the lingo from her father.  That certainly was not the intent, so why muddy the narrative?

Madeleine was the first to understand because she was already woke enlightened to the goodness of people.  Leland began to understand when he witnessed Steve’s selfless act to help every one.  Maybe Steve was too busy saving the group to pay much attention to the transmission, but why didn’t Pat understand what was being said?  Is she an asshole?

I was suckered in because I didn’t realize this was a Christmas episode.  Normally I skip them because they are so sappy and mawkish.  This was OK, though.  Wait, I understand now!  I see the error of my ways!  My heart is no longer hard!  I’m going to go back and watch that Christmas episode of Night Gallery . . . naaaaah.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] At least 3 other people have seen it based on the Comments at IMDb.
• Actually this is more a tale of yesterday than a titular tale of tomorrow — it aired the day after Christmas.
• The first IMDb credit for Joanne Woodward.  Her husband Paul Newman had his 2nd IMDb credit on another ToT episode.

Experimental Plant Station

Tropical Division

Brazil

. . . reads the sign on the door.  If you are standing in front of this door, do you really need to be told you are in Brazil?

Botanist Dr. Alden is feeding flies to a carnivorous plant as he rhapsodizes to his band of assistant Merriman about its superiority.  “While man fiddles around with his petty problems, the vegetable kingdom is silently on the march.”  If they are so smart, why don’t the march their asses to Taco Bell instead of being fed dead flies?

Merriman just arrived a month ago and can’t stand the Amazonian heat.  He is also bored to death as Dr. Alden is not much of a companion.  He spends all his time studying the plants.  His pride and joy is a hybrid carnivorous plant the size of Audrey II.  Merriman doesn’t see the point.  Alden asks, “Do you honestly say that you don’t realize the worth of such a discovery?”  Sadly, Alden does not clue Merriman or the viewer in to what that worth might be.

At breakfast the next morning, Merriman is still bored to death.  He mopes around whining like an eight year old.  No wonder Alden prefers the company of plants.  A batch of mail is delivered from a cargo ship, but Merriman has not been there long enough to receive any, and frankly, who would be writing to this loser?  He envies the stack of mail Alden receives.  Depressed and lonely, he offers Alden $10 for a random unopened letter he can call his own.  Alden eventually agrees and this seems to perk Merriman up.

The next day, Alden says he opened all of the mail he had expected.  He asks Merriman what was in the $10 letter?

A: Who was it from?

M: I hate to say this doctor, but it’s none of your business.

A: You must be joking.

M: I’m sorry doctor.  I’m not joking.  I paid $10 for that letter and I’m not going to share it with anybody.

Unfortunately, I find this premise much more interesting than the mopey Merriman and the carnivorous plant.  However, there is reason to hope the two threads will come together in an interesting way since this episode shares the same writer / director team from The Window.  The two men struggle, but Alden has a heart condition that impedes him.  He collapses into the lap of the giant plant.  It closes its branches around him.  He escapes but smiles.  Hmmmmm.

The next day, Alden slaps a lock on the lab.  He tells Merriman to be on the next cargo ship out and his insubordination means he will never mope in his chosen field again.  Merriman suddenly changes his attitude.

M: If I give you the letter back, will you forget about all this?

A: (Laughing) No, you keep the letter.  It’s yours. That letter is your property, not mine.  (Laughing) You paid for it.  It’s legally yours.

Alden continues feeding the carnivorous plant larger and larger meals.  Finally, it gets so big that he decides to name it.  He decides on Emily after his “beautiful, captivating, wantonly cruel” estranged wife.  Hey, maybe that’s who the letter is from.  Even better, maybe it contains some candid photographs.

Alden goes to Merriman and says he has decided to give him another chance.  Merriman senses he has the upper hand and tells the doctor that returning to the US sounds pretty good to him.  Alden demands the letter, bit Merriman reminds him of his earlier words.  Alden’s heart starts acting up gain.  He begs Merriman to at least tell him if the letter is from Emily.  Merriman claims to have not read the letter yet.  “Maybe tomorrow. It just takes patience.”  Alden walks away clutching his literal and figurative broken heart as Merriman laughs.

Well, you can kind of figure what happens even if you didn’t see it coming when the plant first groped Alden . . . or when you first saw the man-sized carnivorous plant . . . or when you saw the first, baby-sized carnivorous plant . . . or when you saw the title of the episode.

The team of director Don Medford and writer Frank De Felitta from last week again elevate the series.  The wacky premise of last week couldn’t be matched.  They do, however, inject more imagination into the episode than we usually see.  A typical Tales of Tomorrow script is single-minded, and barely that.  There is no room for nuance, misdirection, or twist endings.  I think in the hands of most of the ToT staff, the story would have ended with the plant eating Merriman.  This team had the wit to also bump off Alden.  That is not so extraordinary, but they also provide both a twist and a motive in the mystery letter.  Even the simple act of fore-shadowing Alden’s heart problem seems Shakespearean in this series.

Of course, it is still objectively terrible.  However, it is such an improvement over their usual productions, that I have to give it some credit.

Other Stuff:

• Don Hanmer had some excruciating early scenes as Merriman.  He plays cockiness much more effectively than boredom.
• Maybe he was just pissed that they misspelled his name in the credits.  But, really — Hanmer?
• I wonder if his character’s name was ironic, because “he was not a Merry Man.”

• Question:  How is this episode of Tales of Tomorrow like Mother!?
• Answer:  I liked it, but will never watch it again and will never recommend it to anyone.

I applaud Tales of Tomorrow for some major fourth wall breakage.  It might be giving them too much credit to point out the irony of breaking the fourth wall with a window, but I was just so happy to genuinely enjoy an episode that I’m feeling generous.

Something seemed immediately amiss when the announcer said, “Starring William Coburn and Merle Albertson.”  IMDb also lists Rod Steiger and Frank Maxwell — two much bigger names at the time — for the episode.  Kudos to the producers for completely subverting the form.  The episode, unbeknownst to the audience, began before it began.

Otherwise, the episode begins pretty typically with a white man working at a desk in an office and an overwrought score.  He brings Martha in and tells her, “At this time tomorrow, the earth will be one flaming white inferno.”  So maybe the score was appropriately wrought.  I would like to think this was a meta-gag based on how often the series destroyed the world.

That’s not the shocker, though.  Our picture goes all staticky, then shows a window in an apartment building.  We overhear the director say, “What happened?  That’s not our show.  Where’s the picture coming from?”

Two men (Steiger and Maxwell) and a woman are sitting in a Kramdenesque apartment swilling beer.  Al is warning Hank not to get married because all dames are like his wife.  Dude, she’s sitting right there!  I can certainly understand why she’s drinking.  He is upset because he just got out of the hospital and she wasn’t there to pick him up.  I must agree, that is pretty lousy.

Our screen goes hinky again and resolves to a PLEASE STAND BY title card.  We hear a crew-member say, “We were cut off.  That picture in the window is going out in place of our show.”

The cameras then show what is happening behind the scenes in the TV studio.  The actual Tales of Tomorrow director tells the actual stage manager — among the many people credited as “himself” on IMDb — he needs to make an announcement to the audience.  Fearing the Announcers Local 306 more than the possible alien invasion, he stalls until he sees the program’s actual announcer.  All he gets out is the standard “Due to circumstances beyond our control” before the screen goes crazy again.

Dude, I was going to sit there!

The POV switch between the TV studio and the apartment happens several times, but it would be tedious to document each instance.  The fascinating thing is how much is going on in this hitherto dimwitted series.  The breaking of the fourth wall had to be almost unknown to a 1952 audience.  Sure, Orson Welles did something similar with War of the Worlds, but that was just on radio and I’ve always suspected the effect was vastly overblown.  Comedians like George Burns might address the camera, but TV was still basically vaudeville at that point.

This could easily have been a mere stunt but for the story-telling.  The brief scenes in the apartment are often individually innocuous, but build to an inevitable conclusion that the observers race to prevent.  In the studio scenes, there is believable chaos in trying to figure out how this is happening.  At the same time, they logically work on a way to locate the apartment and prevent the crime.  We see everyone getting involved: the actors, the sponsor, the network, the crew.

• The engineer gives his scientific theory on the air.  When someone brings two chairs out for him and the announcer, the engineer puts his foot up on one.  The announcer looks at the chair like “what the hell, dude?”  Very minor, but it adds to a great sense of unscripted chaos.
• The actors walk in front of the camera and are hustled away before they can say how much they don’t Like Ike (elected 3 days before this aired).
• During one interval when the studio is being received, they do a live commercial.  Priorities, ya know.  Kudos to them for suddenly cutting it off a few seconds early to have the apartment take over the transmission again.

The ending is a little anti-climactic, but I’m not going to let that ruin a great experience.  In truth, there wasn’t anything Tomorrowy about the Tale.  It would have made a kick-ass Twilight Zone in a few years, though.  Maybe I was too harsh in the first two lines of this post.  I’m sure part of my appreciation of this episode is due to low expectations, but there is no denying this is something special for 1952 TV.

Great credit goes to writer Frank De Felitta, but greater credit goes to whoever approved this crazy script to air in 1952.   Easily the best of the series (sadly, I doubt I need to add “so far”).

Available on You Tube.

Other Stuff:

• Both IMDb and the DVD case mention an alternate title of The Lost Planet.  I have no idea how that could possibly fit this episode.