Tim Hathaway is knocking back the hooch.  This show is so old, you could only get 3-year old scotch back then.  Heyoooo, I’ll be here all weekend!  I mean right here, on the couch.

The doorbell rings and he gets a visit from Det. Will Jethroe of the 24th Precinct Jethroes.  There has been a shooting and eyewitnesses described a man looking just like Hathaway.  Without the benefit of counsel, he blurts out, “The woman I shot was my wife.”  I feel a flashback coming on.

Five years earlier:  Joanne Hathaway is struggling with some buttons on the back of her blouse and calls Jim up to help.  Dr. Farleigh drops by with x-rays he took of Joanne a few days earlier when she broke a rib.  Realizing she had additional insurance, he took additional x-rays on Monday, and discovered the injury had completely healed.

After Joanne goes up to bed, Farleigh shows the x-rays to Tim.  Farleigh recalls that in her previous check-up, Joanne had a healthy heart and now it is only half the normal size.  Her appendix has vanished completely.

Tim confronts Joanne about the mysteries and she admits that she has changed.  She has also discovered that she can control objects with her mind.  As proof she makes a statue topple over and shatter — pretty racy for 1951 TV, the statue was topless.  She believes she is evolving to “a brand new kind of human being.”  Her night table now groans under the weight of thick books on physics.  Say, a woman reading science books — that is crazy!

She worries that she is outgrowing her husband and that soon her love for for him will be like the love she has for “a lower species” like their dog; or veal.

Commercial Break:  The episode is once again sponsored by Kreisler Watchbands.

The next morning, Joanne is gone.  Jim scours the papers day after day searching for her. She finally appears in the paper for discovering a new radiation process.  The picture is blurry, the name is slightly different, and the article says she was 15 years younger than Joanne.  Jim gets on a plane to California to reunite with his wife, or at least hook-up with this younger look-alike hottie.

In the Berkeley Electronic Lab, Tim begs her to come back to him.  She says she is the first of a new race, a new kind of being.  In a nifty scene, she goes through a door to get her coat.  A few seconds later, Jim checks the door and sees that it is just a broom closet and Joanne has disappeared.

She did not reappear, but over the next 4 years he would see reports of her discoveries in newspapers and scientific journals.  Finally, tonight Tim sees Joanne again in their old hang-out.  He puts his arms around her, but she says Tim means nothing to her anymore, that she is waiting for someone else. She ominously says, “Our time to rule is coming soon.”

The bartender overhears this and drops a glass.  Joanne induces a heart attack in him and feels nothing at his death.  Tim sees that she has too much power, has become “ruthless, hard, cold” and will destroy anyone who stands in her way.  Continuing that she is “a menace, a terror, Godless” he puts four slugs in her.  He then runs home and is soon-after visited by the detective.

Tim defends his actions saying that she would have made the world unfit to live in. Jethroe tells him that the bullets could not harm Joanne.  Not only that, but Jethroe is also one of the new race.  Proving that Joanne really was too smart for him, Jim stupidly pulls a gun on Jethroe.  He suffers the same fate as the bartender.

A great deal of potential was squandered in this episode.  The idea of the woman evolving was a great concept.  In fact, it was so great that they used it again in another episode in the same season. However, they could have made it the basis for apocalyptic story, an alien invasion, or an allegory for women’s post-war liberation from the kitchen. Sadly, it just became a cog in the wheel of a murder mystery.

On the plus side, Ms. Hathaway finally hooked up with Jethroe.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis: The title reminds me of a TV-movie called Dark Angel which aired in the previous millennium.  Not otherwise relevant here, it just always amused me that Roberts’ character was named D’Arcangelo.  On the tortured scale, that is somewhere between water-boarding and the SHIELD acronym.
• The title was recycled 4 years later for a short-lived series starring Jessica Alba.
• Dark Angel is used in the title of several other productions.  My favorite usage has to be as the name of an actor in Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires: The Curse of Ed Wood.

The Arrow B76 took off 2 days ago. Radar tracked it for 76,200 miles then it disappeared.

For 48 hours there has been no sign of the AR-76 (which apparently is what we’re calling it now, 30 seconds later). Major Dozier tells Congress-man Burns perhaps he can figure out who repealed the law of what goes up must come down. As it was tracked 76,200 miles, the officer would have been better off heeding Newton’s 1st Law of Motion rather than the drug-addled musings of a 60’s pop song that had not been written yet.  

Congressman Burns says they are past the point where they can laugh at the waste of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.  After all, a graft-mine like that doesn’t come along every day.

Inexplicably, he says their calculations indicate it should fall to Earth within 50 miles of where it was launched.  He is interested to see what happened to the passengers, some mice which the men have nicknamed the Flying Mice Brothers^[1], even though the obvious gag would have been The Wrat Brothers.

Out of the blue, Burns zings the officer by saying his father would have known how much it cost. They get word that the rocket has came down nearby at the ol’ Baker Ranch.  We don’t get to see the spacecraft, but it returned containing a block of ice large enough to contain a thing from another world.

Sgt Paul Newman runs in and tells Dozier and Burns that a man has died from exposure to the block of ice.  Burns complains that in 3 days, the block of ice has turned 75 miles of desert into the Arctic.  Not to nitpick, but the Arctic technically is a desert.  His complaints are understandable, however, as congressional fact-finding missions tend more toward Hawaii than the Arctic Rim.

The block of ice is impervious to any attempt to melt or destroy it.  The military even believes it could be attempting to send a signal to outer space.  They are concerned that the effects of this giant ice cube could extend to other farms and cities around the world.

Dozier secretly sends the AR-76 up again, taking the ice back to outer space.  To be sure it is destroyed in space, Dozier went up with the rocket.  Burns regrets that two Doziers have given their lives for their country.

Kind of a simplistic tale.  Spacecraft returns a block of ice, it is bad, so it is sent back to space.  It really baffles me why this series is so infantile.  People weren’t stupid back then.  To the contrary, this is when the foundation for space exploration was just starting. I guess the powers that be at the network just weren’t ready for anything challenging.  This aired an hour after Ozzie and Harriet and opposite Our Miss Brooks.  But 60 years before The Kardashians and Real Housewives of Yada Yada.

I give this one 16 out of 32 degrees.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Worst title since Billy and the Cloneasaurus.
• See also Ice-Nine.
• Paul Newman had a small role; sadly too small for me to work in puns on Sting, Hustler, Butch, Hombre, Nobody’s Fool, Verdict, Absence of Malice, Exodus, Newman’s Own, etc.
• The rocket program is headed by Dr. Meshkoff who has a heavy accent — I’m no expert, but he sounds like a Russki. Of course, had the producers been prescient, he would have been a German.  As everyone knows, our Germans were better than their Germans.
• The sponsor is again Maslin Carpets.  They are humping their new Cantata which is shown available in the following colors.  They knew this was B&W, right?

Dr. Scott barges in on Dr. Bache proclaiming that he has “a whole new approach — the thing all medicine has been waiting on.”  He just needs a warm body to experiment on.  Scott (I didn’t go to college for 7 years to type “Dr”) illustrates his theory by saying that if you cut a worm in two, the worm grows a new front end.

I was prepared to call bullshit on this, but actually learned something.  While it is true that an earthworm can’t grow a new front end, some flatworms do have this ability.  In fact, they can be disgustingly cut into 20 pieces and regenerate into 20 disgusting new flatworms.  Scott calls this adaptation whereas I might just call it regeneration (but then, I can’t even type doctor).  In any case, modern medicine is studying this just as Scott is doing here.

The serum Scott has synthesized was used on tubercular guinea pigs who overcame  their tubercular bacillus to the point where they could live in an ass for days.  Rabid dogs were also cured, as was a cat with a fractured spine.  He further claims it will work on “arthritis, pneumonia, spinal meningitis and toothaches.”  Bache agrees that if he gets a desperate enough patient, they will give it a try.

He soon finds such a patient.  Because she is fully insured, he must find a way to prolong her life.  He calls for Scott and his serum. Carol Williams has only minutes to live, so agrees to test the serum.

Some time later, back at casa de Bache, he and Scott are waiting on Carol to arrive.  Bache asks Scott if he might have paid more attention to Carol if she had been beautiful. Scott says he isn’t really interested in things like that, which is possibly what prompted his guinea pig research.

Hours later, Carol finally shows up.  She is now a fabulous babe, although she wasn’t exactly hideous when she was in the hospital.  She is so thankful for Scott “giving her the world” that she lays a kiss on him.  She burns her hand lighting Bache’s pipe, but is not harmed.  Bache ignores this super-human feat as he is more interested how Carol afforded her new dress.

She is quite proud of how she lifted a man’s wallet and got away with it.  Bache considers this part of the adaption that cured her.  She needed the money, so she just instinctively took it with no regard to ethics or morality.  She claims it was $5,000 so this must have been a pretty big wallet.  Bache suggests that she go to bed, as I do to all women with no ethics or morality.

Scott is protective of Carol, but Bache says she has to be “taken care of” like an outbreak of the Black Plague. Scott claims that her adaptability has made her safer than any human being in history.  Bache points out that the rest of the world might not be so safe from her.  They discover that she has fled the house.

The two men are tracking Carol. They discover newspaper reports from Washington of “a 10th cabinet member” ^[1] further illustrating her descent in lawlessness. She seems to crave power.  Carol unexpectedly shows up in their office.  She is back because now she knows “who I am and what I want.”  She wants Scott to join her in conquering the world.

Bache suggests that they will have to kill her.  He believes her fancy adaptability would not protect her against the laws of physics, “like being run over by a steam-roller”.  Sadly, they forego this option in favor of suffocating her with CO2.  They are only going to knock her out, though, and get her to a hospital to be cured.  Scott lights a candle in her room, and watches from outside to see when it goes out, indicating the room is full of CO2; also to see if she is naked.

Carol wakes up in the hospital.  She claims to have had a change of heart and realizes that stealing was wrong. We cut to a newspaper headline: Brain Operation Fails to Cure Thief. Just a complete botch, but maybe partially due to the time it was filmed.

First, the headline is very confusing because it is not referring to the operation on Carol. It is referring to a lobotomy which she does not seem to have gotten.  And it refers to an unsuccessful attempt to “fix” a criminal, whereas her operation seems to have been a success.  So, the headline and voice-over are offering a general commentary on scientists “working toward the day when crime will end.”  Maybe another cabinet position will help.

Second, a more modern telling would have not had such a happy resolution.  She would have taken over the world.  Or the doctors would have sacrificed her life to protect humanity.  Or maybe they would have used the steam-roller.

I like the potential of the concept, it just wasn’t well executed.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] There were indeed 9 cabinet positions in 1953, after Health and Human Services was added that year.  Now there are 15, thus explaining why things are so much better now.
• Written by Theodore Sturgeon famous for novels, Star Trek and Tales of Tomorrow.  But mostly novels and Star Trek.

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.