It’s 11:30, do you know where your sofa, chair and bookcase are?  If you are Natalie, they are piled up in front of the door.  She next goes for the phone.  It is connected to the wall by some sort of cord, though, so she instead uses it to make a call looking for her husband Michael.  Even without Caller ID, he is able to avoid her call.  Shortly thereafter, Natalie does get a call from Michael.  He got a room at a hotel after they had a fight.

Natalie seems crazy as she says that someone is coming to get her.  And that he said he was going to “close her account” which seems a little too metaphorical even if she is being threatened by a rogue CPA.

Michael foolishly asks her what happened, when did it start, triggering a flashback. Seems like just 2 weeks ago . . .

Natalie gets a letter from a new bank in the neighborhood seeking “prompt, reliable depositors.”  They have no cash to spare, but apparently in the 1950’s people personally followed up on every piece of junk-mail, so she visits the bank.^[1]

She meets the temporally-named Mr. Tickton, the bank president, who assures her there has been no mistake.  This is a different kind of bank.  Besides actually being solvent, it takes deposits of time rather than money. For example, one customer found a new route to work so was able to bank a few extra minutes every day.  Many other male depositors cut their foreplay time in half.  Kudos to Tickton for being honest with Natalie, telling her that the bank staff is not of this world.

Their world is a million light years away with a civilization much like our own . . . except they are able to travel a million light years.  Their society has begun to crumble and decay; so I am starting to see the resemblance.  Their society needs this extra time to rebuild.  After depositing a minute here and an hour there over the years, Natalie would receive back her saved time plus interest at the end of her life in order to be a more prolonged burden on her children. It could be years!

Natalie gets fanatic about saving time — doing her housework more quickly, skipping lunch, avoiding friends, getting rid of Michael’s dog. Natalie’s efficiency and dog-napping are too much for Michael — he walks out on Natalie.  After Michael drives off, Mr. Tickton makes a house-call.

He has come with bad news.  The transference of time back to his people is not going fast enough. Cosmic pressure and nebula gasses have made drastic action necessary.  Natalie’s account is being closed, and the fine print of the agreement allows them to “borrow” all the time remaining in her life.  She will die at midnight, but get to keep the toaster for opening her account.

Tickton shows up punctually that night to collect Natalie’s time.  There is some ambiguity in the way she is killed, but it was appropriately set-up . . . just not worth detailing.

Kind of a goofy premise, but the kind of high-concept nonsense I like in my 1950’s sci-fi.  Tickton was suitably creepy and the bank was pretty surreal. For a change, the lack of budget was perfect for the stark set design.

I rate it 20 out of 24 hour.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] To be fair, junk mail in the 1950’s would not have required a trip to Nigeria to meet the Prince.
• Natalie (Sylvia Sidney) played Mama Carlson on WKRP.
• Mr. Tickton was portrayed by Robert H. Harris, last seen in The Safe Place.
• IMDb
• YouTube

Bill suggests to his young son Walt that it is time to go to bed, and that it might be better to go now rather than wait for his “old lady” to say so.  Walt is engrossed in his studies but takes the time to help his old man ^[1] with a physics problem.

Walt points out that Bill has made a simple mistake in converting, from Fahrenheit to Centigrade ^[2].  To be honest, this hits close to home — I screwed up that 9/5 vs 5/9 thing on a test in high school and am still bitter about it.

Walt’s old lady Rose enters and indeed orders him off to bed.  Bill smacks him on the butt and tells him to head upstairs.  Walt seems to need no sleep, but his mother insists that he go to bed and not play pup-tent with his textbook; or copy of Spicy Adventure.

Rose is appalled at Walt’s behavior, but Bill defends him as just being a normal boy with an IQ of 240!  Just like me, except for the IQ part.  Rose insists there is something wrong with him.  “Half the time he speaks a language that makes no sense.  He uses words an ordinary person can’t even comprehend.  And those horrible books with the strange markings.”  When Rose asks him what they mean, Walt says she is stupid.

After Rose goes to visit her mother, Bill goes up to Walt’s room.  He is reading one of those books with the strange markings.  Walt shows his father the book and he too can read the odd language.  I don’t know what the text’s symbols are, but I’d hate to try to board an airplane with it ^[3]. Walt says he got the book from the titular Children’s Room at the library. Bill remembers seeing no such room.

Bill takes the book to the library and is ridiculed for suggesting that it came from there. The librarian says, “Are you trying to tell me that these foolish hieroglyphics are readable!”  He asks for the Children’s Room and is told that there is no such place, but on the bright side, she doesn’t call the police.

There is a neat (for 1952) lighting effect where a wall of the library transforms into an entrance to the Children’s Room.  The librarian instructs Bill to read the book, as he is one of the few adults who can understand it.  The book tells him that he is a “mutation, a superior human being, a deviation from the normal.”  It informs him that such mutants must unite, because aliens are on the way to enslave us.  She says she needs to take Walt and that he can come with them.  Rose isn’t smart enough to join them, though.

The next week, Rose chews Bill out for going out the last five nights. Last night, she followed him to the library. Maybe he is into the librarian type — like, you know, a librarian.  Bill implores her to understand for just a while longer.  She snaps at Walt for reading books she can’t understand. He replies, “Poor mother, you’re not one of us.  You’re just plain, poor mother.”  Walt tells her he is a superior human being.  Maybe Bill is right — this is a typical teenager.

Bill returns home to find Rose in tears.  When Rose tried to take the book away from Walt, he slapped her.  They go to Walt’s room where Bill tears up the book — i.e., renders it unreadable by tearing out a couple of pages.  Bill says they will go fishing the next day and everything will be A-OK.  Walt seems to agree, but after his parents leave, he gets another volume of the book from the secret place where he hides the swimsuit pages torn from the Sears catalog ^[4].  Hearing the call of the librarian, he leaves a note and climbs out the window.

This is more ambitious than most of the episodes.  Tales of Tomorrow had already used the concept of evolving humans in The Dark Angel and The Miraculous Serum, but this one was more intense.  It was primarily children involved, they are turned against their parents, there is a clandestine cabal running things, and an alien invasion seems imminent.

Frankly, this last point was ill-conceived as it lends some positive purpose to the events.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Strange how “old lady” is offensive and disrespectful, but “old man” sounds warm and chummy.
• ^[2] Actually the name was officially changed to Celsius in 1948.  Like the Metric system, it just can’t seem to catch-on.
• ^[3] I mean like El-Al — there would be no problem in this country.
• ^[4] See, this was pre-Playboy.  And Sears was a huge chain of department stores “where America shopped”.  And a catalog was this 3-inch thick paper magazine they would send out with pictures of their products.  And teenage boys . . . yada yada.

Ol’ Cap Zanser is telling 12 year old Sally Burgess tall tales about Dune Rollers.  They are flaming hoop snakes that roll along with their tail in their mouth, taller than a man can reach.  Cap attributes the high number of deaths on this island to that fabled creature.  The fact that this is called Lightning Island and not Flaming Hoop Snake Island seems to undermine his theory a little.

Sally is going to the dock to meet her father on the boat that identifies as mail.  Before she leaves, she hands Sam some rocks she has collected.  He is paying her a dime each for these special specimens.  He files them away in his special rock file cabinet.

Sally returns from the dock with her father and sister.  When Sam hears Sally’s sister Jean is coming he frets about his appearance and says he would have changed his shirt. In a fitting microcosm of the times, Jean walks in with her arms full of groceries and her father walks in with an armful of science books.  Maybe Sam wanted to change his shirt so she could wash it.

Sam shows Dr. Burgess his rocks and is stunned to see the two rocks that he filed have fused into one pointy stone, and that the weight is now double the two stones combined.  Burgess theorizes that the stones are a mineral from a meteor.  The fragments are trying to recombine into the original rock.

Jean calls Dr. Burgess and Sam to dinner.  Sam says he needs to change his shirt.  This guy goes through shirts like Bruce Banner.  Dr. Burgess goes to check on the rocks before dinner and Jean tells him to get to the table.  She calls him Carl so maybe I have misjudged their relationship.

After dinner, they go to check on the rocks.  They find that two stones have burned their way out of the cabinet, fused together, and burned their way right through the front door leaving a scorched cutout like Speedy Gonzalez.  Later that night, Cap is attacked by the flaming stones and killed.

Instead of the usual commercial for Kreisler Watchbands, this episode has a bizarre break where a man gives the mission statement of the series.  “The stories may seem improbable but are they impossible? Nobody really knows.  We do know the universe that surrounds us is an enormous mystery.  Our stories try to break through the barrier of life as we know it through discovery and our imaginations what life beyond may be like.”  And if you understand that last sentence, you should be working for the NSA.

Dr. Burgess and Sam find Cap’s body and assume he was killed by lightning.  Sam says he looks like the “Japs” he saw in WWII who had been hit by a flame-thrower.  They realize that these rolling stones are the mythological titular dune rollers.  Dr. Burgess plans to blow up the main stone, but Sam volunteers to take that risky assignment so Burgess can get the girls off the island.

It isn’t even clear what this is supposed to accomplish.  Is he intending to blow up the main rock?  Wouldn’t it just reassemble?  And why did he drop some stones at the blast site? Was it to lure the master rock?  But the smaller stones seek out the big rock — the big rock isn’t like Uber conveniently picking up the kid rocks.

But the bigger mystery is why this young girl is living on a remote island with Sam and Cap.  At least Jonny Quest had his dad to keep an eye on Race Bannon.

The very end should have had one of those horror movie question marks at the end.  We pan to see a glowing dune roller.  But is it a large fragment from the blast?  Is it another one? The last shot is bizarre and difficult to describe.  It is not just a zoom-in on the rock — the soil below it is moving.  I think they were trying to create an illusion that it was growing.  It is pretty clever, but doesn’t work today. On a fuzzy 1952 RCA, who knows? ^[1] 

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Actually, the lousy YouTube version might be a good 1952 RCA emulator.
• Bruce Cabot (Sam) starred in King Kong.  No, the other one.  Before that.
• Sally is played by Lee Graham and is clearly a young girl.  Graham’s other IMDb credits include Storekeeper, Marine, Titanic Lookout, Crew Chief and a few more androgynous roles.  Back then these would have been traditionally male jobs.  If this were 50 years later, I would get it, but in the 1950’s, I can make no sense out of it.

Dr. Burroughs, his son Roy, and Roy’s fiancee Laura and are heaving over the side of a boat.  No wait, they are searching the sea with flashlights.

Burroughs hauls up a specimen of what appears to be seaweed. Burroughs and Laura go down to the lab to analyze this great find. Burroughs calls his son “junior” and tells him to stay on deck where he will not get in the way.

Burroughs dictates his findings as Laura writes them down.  He reveals the date to be in the exotic distant future of May 1952.  What the hell?  There really is no reason for this to be set in the future at all.  But why would you set it just 6 months in the future?  Well, the doctor has said that this deep sea vessel has collected this sample from a whopping 32 feet down.  So these aren’t exactly envelope-pushing visionaries we’re dealing with.

Laura tells Burroughs that he should be nicer to his son.  He is sensitive and wants to be a writer, she tells him.  The doc sneers and says, “A poet, no doubt.”  He says that Roy has never proven to him that he is a man.  I wonder if Laura has the same complaint.

Hearing a commotion on deck, they rush up.  They believe they see a meteor, but it starts zig-zagging before it crashes into the sea. Burroughs orders the ship’s diver to go down and take a look, but he refuses because he is chicken of the sea.  Roy sees his chance to look like a man in front of Laura and his father, so he puts on the skin-tight rubber suit and mask.

This episode is again sponsored by Kreisler watchbands.  I’ve said about all I can about about these commercials, but I did notice something new on this one.  As the watchband is shown on a rotating display, there are little hairs caught in the metal band. Nothing says comfort like having hairs pinched out of your arm by a watchband, fellows!

After the commercial, Roy surfaces and reboards the ship. He tells his father that it really was a meteor.  The zig-zagging must have been an atmospheric condition or an optical illusion.  The old man admits he thought it was a spaceship.

Down below, Laura discovers that Roy has murdered a crewman.  He also says, “Roy is dead, too.”

Shockingly, this is not the invader.

He is an alien who has assumed Roy’s form and left in dead in his spaceship below.  He then kills Laura.  When confronted by Burroughs, he admits that he plans to destroy the human race.  “You Earth people are no use to us.  You’ll be as primitive as animals.  We are a superior race.”  Burroughs dowses him with acid and opens the nozzle on some poison gas.

That’s it.

Just an utter nothing.

Post-Post:

• Not worthy of any further effort.
• I could pad it out to 500 words, but to what end?  491.

The sponsor is still Kreisler Watch bands.  Their new jeweled band will be popular with the ladies because ladies “love jewels from their forehead to their fingertips.”  What? But on to the show . . . .

Dateline Las Palmas, New Mexico — population 860.  At Mother Walker’s Boarding House, Vic Russo finds an old geezer playing with himself — or to clarify, playing a game of chess against himself.  Vic asks for a room and the geezer says they are particular about strangers, which seems like a problem in the booming field of hotel / motel management.

Luckily, a woman who must be Daughter Walker comes into the lobby wearing a bathing suit.  At $25/week, this must be a Motel .06.  Ginny Walker guesses that Vic is a newspaperman looking into the flying saucer reported in their little town.

Vic finds the locals afraid to discuss the reported flying saucer.  He comes back to his room to find the old geezer going through his stuff. He has learned Vic’s true identity — an army pilot who was grounded for talking too much about flying saucers.

Trivia:  it was only four years earlier that the Air Force was split off from the Army in order to more efficiently execute missions and distribute congressional graft.

Ginny figures out that Vic is not a reporter because he doesn’t have a typewriter with him.  Also because he doesn’t smell like whiskey and has an “I Like Ike” bumper sticker on his car.  The geezer enters the lobby carrying a hunk of metal that he says is from a saucer.  The old man tries to tell his story, but Ginny cuts him off.  She is a champion debunker.

At 1 am, Ginny comes to Vic’s room.  They had apparently had a 1950’s hook-up.  Vic admits that he is a grounded pilot and not a reporter.  She still refuses to accept his stories of flying saucers.  He lists off witness who have seen saucers, but she will not believe.

He goes with the geezer to see a flying saucer.  The geezer takes him to a shack, but the occupant disappeared after seeing the saucer. After he goes to look for the saucer, Ginny tells a confidant that there are too many people on their literal alien tails.

He decides it is time for them to leave earth.  Ginny breaks down in tears sobbing, “They didn’t send me here to fall in love.”

The performances were good — Jack Carter and Olive Deering were especially good. Jack Carter was a nightclub comedian at the time, and not known as an actor.  Despite this being only his third IMDb credit, he seemed more natural and competent than many veterans on this early live series.

I had high hopes just based on the title.  Sadly, this is just an utter nothing of a story. Most UFO reports hold more water than this story.  This is swamp gas.

Post-Post:

• Written by Mel Goldberg who also gave us The Crystal Egg, Test Flight and Sneak Attack.
• Olive Deering went on to play Moses’ sister in The Ten Commandments.  If it wasn’t so late, I’d work in the ancient aliens building the pyramids.
• 63 years after this aired, Jack Carter (Vic Russo) was a guest on Norm MacDonald’s podcast.
• The episode is available on YouTube, but why would ya?