Trollheart

Title: “People Are Alike All Over”
Original transmission date: March 25 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, based on a story by Paul Fairman
Directed by: Mitchell Leising
Starring: Roddy McDowall as Sam Conrad
Susan Oliver as Teenya
Paul Comi as Warren Marcusson
Byron Morrow as First Martian
Vic Perrin as Second Martian
Vernon Gray as Third Martian


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Some time in the future (not specified)
Theme(s): Fear, loneliness, animal cruelty, imprisonment, isolation, betrayal
Parodied? Many times. By Futurama, for one
Rating: A++

Serling’s opening monologue

You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads, whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one. They're taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them.


Two men stand looking at a rocket ship, on which they will both soon be blasting off on a (sorry) mission to Mars. One of the man, Sam Conrad, a scientist, is apprehensive about the mission, scared even, while the other, Warren Marcusson, has a firmly-held belief that, should they encounter Martians, they will be just like them. Conrad foresees disaster, but they are three hours from take off now and there is no way to back out. Turns out he’s right to worry, as they don’t land so much as crash on Mars, and Marcusson is badly injured. Conrad revives him but he’s still quite weak, and when he tries to open the hatch it seems to be stuck. Conrad tells him the hydraulics are out but Marcusson says that’s all right - the auxiliary power will allow it to open.

Conrad, though, for some reason, does not want to open the hatch. He seems very scared.

Marcusson seems to realise he’s more badly wounded that he thought, that he is in fact dying, but he says he wants to see what he’s dying for, and pleads with Conrad to open the hatch, saying that if there is life out there the aliens will surely help them. God made everything, after all, and if they have hearts they have souls, so why wouldn’t they help them? Conrad though is still reluctant, still terrified. As Marcusson collapses back into unconsciousness, Conrad retreats into his own private world of fear and dread and panic. Suddenly, the hatch begins to open. Conrad grabs a weapon and waits.

Outside is a large assemblage of… people. Humans. Men and women, dressed in a vaguely Roman/Greek style, togas and the like. They don’t say anything but they seem friendly and Conrad is relieved, putting away his gun. One of them goes to check on Marcusson, but he has passed away. Now they do speak, and in English, or, as they explain to Conrad, he is in fact speaking in and understanding their language, through a sort of - well they call it hypnosis or unconscious transfer - I guess we’d say telepathy. They offer to bury Marcusson and also repair Conrad’s ship. He is amazed to see that the late Marcusson was right: these are people, just like them.

They take him to a special house they say they have constructed overnight, using images from his mind, and ask him to remain there for a while. He’s happy enough - it’s a perfect replica of a 1950s suburban house, but the woman he has been talking to - and seems to have become attracted to - seems sad, preoccupied, ashamed even, though she says nothing.

Okay, for we sophisticated veterans of science fiction, it’s clear where this is going, but it’s still a shock when Conrad realises he is locked in, that the curtains that have been hung do not cover windows but bare walls, and as his euphoria dissolves into panic. Then the walls seem to move aside, showing a barred window through which people stare and point, as we learn that the house is really a cage, and that Conrad is now on display in the Martian zoo, a sign above his house reading EARTH CREATURE IN HIS NATIVE HABITAT.

Serling’s closing monologue

Species of animal brought back alive. Interesting similarity in physical characteristics to human beings in head, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet. Very tiny undeveloped brain. Comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself Samuel Conrad. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

First time I’m sure it’s shocking, but the signs are there. Not to the actual truth perhaps, but it’s pretty clear the Martians are not what they seem. A nice eco-comment on the way we treat our animals and our zoos, and quite striking for its time.

The Moral

The more intelligent (presumably these are) creatures will always try to cage and tame the less so, and there’s always a buck to be made.

Themes

From the beginning the overriding atmosphere is one of fear, dread, worry, the terror of the unknown, the speculation about what may await them out there in space, on Mars. This fear only increases when the worst happens and they crash, and paranoia takes hold. Then this gives way to relief, joy, disbelief as Conrad sees the Martians are just like us, and are friendly. Emotions go from contented to worried again and finally to full-blown panic as he realises what has happened, and finally a fatalistic sense of acceptance.

The treatment of animals, or at least lower life forms, is dealt with here too. Not surely for the first time - Tarzan and other series had been helping man get back to nature and seeing animals in a new light for years before this - but cleverly putting humanity in the place of the lions and tigers and bears, and showing us that, to a higher civilisation, we are but animals, and they would treat us as such.

Man’s fear of confinement, of imprisonment comes up here too, and surely also loneliness and the need for a companion, as Conrad, though furnished with everything he needs to live his life, is left without the one thing he cannot survive without, human company. A sense of callousness, too, on the part of the Martians, who probably don’t know any better you could say, but have been able to ascertain that this creature is a sentient, intelligent species, as they have talked to it. Would we imprison a bear or a gorilla or a snake if we knew we could converse with it?

If there was a buck in it, you can be damn sure we would!

Oops!

Conrad steps out onto the Martian surface without any sort of space suit, and has no trouble breathing. Nor do the inhabitants, yet we know Mars’ atmosphere is poisonous to at least we humans. There’s also no sign of the red dust that we now know covers the planet.

And isn’t that…?


Roddy McDowall (1928 - 1998)

Who doesn’t know the star of the Planet of the Apes movies and series, who also appeared in the movie Fright Night (the original) and its later sequel as well as The Longest Day, Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and series like Columbo, Barnaby Jones, Ellery Queen, Wonder Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Fantasy Island etc etc etc.



Susan Oliver (1932 - 1990)

Perhaps best known for her role as Vima, the girl on Talos IV in the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage”, she appeared in the usual run of series - Mannix, Cannon, Streets of San Francisco, Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and was also a pilot, having originally had such a fear of flying that she refused to travel in any aircraft, overcoming this to become Pilot of the Year for 1970 and being only the fourth woman to fly a single-engined plane over the Atlantic when she made the trip in 1967.



Paul Comi (1932 - 2016)

Comi would show up later in Star Trek, in the episode “Balance of Power”, and also feature in future Twilight Zone episodes, as well as starring in the original Cape Fear, The Towering Inferno, Death Wish II and featuring in series like Fame and LA Law, and soaps such as Falcon Crest, Dallas and Knot’s Landing.



Vic Perrin (1916 - 1989)

Another who would make the transition from Twilight Zone to Star Trek, Perrin would guest in three episodes - “Arena”, “Mirror Mirror” and in “The Changeling”, in the last of which he would gain fame as the voice of the loopy probe Nomad. He also would be known for his stentorian tones announcing “Do not adjust your set! We are in control!” as The Outer Limits began.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

If this is a Martian zoo, where did the rest of the exhibits come from? We can assume, surely, that Conrad is not the only one caged here, so do the Martians have space flight technology? Given their power both to read minds and, apparently, construct a dwelling overnight, surely the answer there has to be yes. If not, how do they gather the rest of their specimens? Do they just wait in hope someone will crash on the planet? Seems unlikely.

And if they do have spaceflight, why have they not visited their nearest neighbour before, and taken samples of its life away with them? Have they done so? Are there other humans in the zoo, and can Conrad at some point hope to be reunited with them? A rather good extra twist would have been had the Martians consoled Conrad by telling him they had a female of his species, leading him to meet maybe a gorilla or something, Hey, they're all Earth creatures, right?

Iconic?

Absolutely. The idea of an alien zoo exhibiting humans has become a favourite theme in science fiction, though whether or not this, or at least Fairman’s story, was the first example of it I don’t know.

Personal Notes

Interesting that Tennya, the girl who assures Conrad, despite her own obvious misgivings and conflicted feelings, that everything will be all right is the same Susan Oliver who will a few years later play Vina, the girl on Talos IV who fulfils more or less the same role in “The Cage”. You can also see links here between this episode and McDowell’s later cult series, Planet of the Apes.

It’s also good to see that on this occasion they get the distance right: Mars is approximately 35 million miles from Earth.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

Okay, next victims...

Mirror Image: Another rare Zone where the female is the lead. Vera Miles is good as the panicked traveler who has seen her doppelganger. You forgot to mention Martin Milner, who would go on to star in two TV series, Route 66 and Adam-12. Also, if you like Columbo, both Milner and Miles appear in the series, Milner as the murder victim and Miles as the murderess (and of Martin Sheen at that.)

As far as the psychological part, maybe, but Milner sees his own doppelganger after Miles' character is essentially committed. Decent episode, very watchable (rating: B)

The Monster Are Due On Maple Street: This one goes down as a Twilight Zone classic and you seem to agree, Trolls. I do like the episode and I do like the idea that humans are their own worst enemy, a sad but true reality. I like Claude Akins in this one too as the lone voice of reason. Can't rate it quite as high as most TZ fans do but nonetheless a well written, if a little preachy episode. By the way, did anyone else want to smack the woman that kept pointing the finger at everybody? (Rating: B+ )

A World of His Own: This is indeed an interesting one. Is the reality Arthur Curtis who jumps into a Hollywood set or is he really screen star Gerry Raigan, possibly in the middle of a nervous breakdown. A very solid piece by Matheson. Howard Duff was, of course, a very established actor (movies mostly) who, as you mentioned, would star in Felony Squad in the late sixties. David White, of course, went on to play the befuddled boss in Bewitched (Rating: B)


Long Live Walter Jameson: Charles Beaumont is back and he does his own twist on The Picture of Dorian Gray. In some ways Walter Jameson (played expertly by Kevin McCarthy)seems a bit pathetic and certainly callous in how he dumps his women when they are no use for him anymore. You don't feel so sorry for him when his jilted wife exacts her revenge. Good episode and always enjoy watching this one but I'm not sure how you can turn a version of Dorian Gray into your own creation. Beaumont gives it the old school try though (Rating: B+)

People Are Alike All Over:
A very good take on life on Mars and again, a sharp critique of the human race. I especially like the ironic ending where Marcusson's optimistic view of the title is repeated by Conrad's bitter realization of the same thing. Of course, Roddy McDowell is the famous actor in this one and, besides his storied career, can also boast of having been one of Elizabeth Taylor's closest friends. Great episode (rating A)

And that's up to date. You're up, Trolls.

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Trollheart

Title: “Execution”
Original transmission date: April 1 1960
Written by: Rod Serling, from the story by George Clayton Johnson
Directed by: David Orrick McDearmon
Starring: Albert Salmi as Joe Caswell
Russell Johnson as Professor Manion
Than Wyenn as Paul Johnson
Jon Lormer as Reverend
George Mitchell as Elderly Man
Fay Roope as Judge
Richard Karlan as Bartender
Joe Haworth as TV Cowboy


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: 1880/Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Time travel, murder, revenge, justice
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A+

Serling’s opening monologue

Commonplace—if somewhat grim—unsocial event known as a necktie party, the guest of dishonor a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr. Joe Caswell, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr. Joe Caswell, in the last, quiet moment of a violent life.

A cowboy is preparing to be hanged, having been found guilty of murder. He seems to have no remorse, despite having shot the young man, according to the deceased’s father, in the back. But as the horse is urged away and the rope goes taut, there is no sign of Joe Caswell, ne’er-do-well and killer - the noose is swinging there, empty! Caswell, to his intense surprise, wakes up in New York, 80 years in the future, a man leaning over him explains that he has a time machine, and has brought him from the past. He’s a scientist, an inventor named Manion, and he is unaware that he has brought back a criminal and a murderer, though as he says himself, he doesn’t like the look of him.

When Caswell is shown the new world he had been thrust into, he experiences severe future shock, as 2000 AD coined the term - the inability to assimilate all the experiences, sounds, sights and wonders of the time in which he finds himself, but when Manion realises what he has done, and declares his intention of sending Caswell back to face justice, the cowboy smashes a lamp over his head, grabs the gun the professor was reaching for, and leaves. Out in the new and unfamiliar world though, Caswell is lost, disoriented, helpless. He staggers along, neon signs flashing at him, traffic honking, people bumping into him - New York at its finest.

He blunders into a telephone kiosk, but spooked by the sound of the operator coming out of the receiver he locks himself in, and only manages to escape by smashing the glass and falling out. He next finds himself in a bar, where, having trashed the jukebox he has a drink, complaining of the noise - it’s too loud, there are too many lights, and all the “horseless carriages” are terrifying him, and when he sees a cowboy on the TV over the bar he shoots at him, thinking he’s being challenged. As the barman yells for the police he legs it back out into the street, where he shoots at a taxi.

Making his way back to the laboratory, he sees Manion is still unconscious (or dead) and realises too late in despair that he has no way to get back to his own time, no way to get home. Just then a robber appears, holding a gun on him. An opportunist, this guy had been watching Manion and knew he went to bed early, so had assumed he would have free rein to plunder the place, but finding Caswell there he trains the gun on him. They struggle, and as Caswell is punched over towards the window it breaks, and the robber uses the cord to strangle him. Searching around the room, he finds nothing of value until he sees the time machine. On entering it, the door closes and he is transported back to 1880 - right back into the noose intended for Caswell. Poetic justice.

Serling’s closing monologue

This is November 1880, the aftermath of a necktie party. The victim's name—Paul Johnson, a minor-league criminal and the taker of another human life. No comment on his death save this: justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. Tonight's case in point in The Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Masterful. Not only does a) Caswell kill the only person who could get him back and b) die by hanging, eighty years in the future, but the man who hangs him ends up deservedly taking his place at the end of the rope intended for him back in 1880. Superb.

The Moral

Justice can only be delayed, not avoided or outrun, and your sins eventually catch up with you.

Themes

The main one is of course justice, or indeed revenge, as a man who should have hanged in 1880 ends up meeting the same fate in 1960, and a man who surely would have fried in 1960 had he been caught, ends up dangling at the end of a rope eighty years in the past. Another time travel story, the first I think in the series to use an actual time machine (though there is absolutely zero attempt to even fudge an explanation of how it works), and probably the first, perhaps not only Twilight Zone but maybe even story to use a time travel episode as a tool of justice. Perhaps not, but I certainly think so here anyway. Murder, another theme that tends to crop up in this series is also explored here, in three ways: the alleged murder Caswell committed, for which is to be hanged, the slightly panicked murder of Manion by Caswell and the very cold-blooded and deliberate murder of Caswell by the thief.

And isn’t that…?


Russell Johnson (1924 - 2014)

You Americans will know him best as the Professor from Gilligan’s Island (means nothing to me; that show was never broadcast on this side of the water) though he also appeared in the classic science fiction movie This Island Earth.



Jon Lormer (1906 - 1986)

Apart from appearing in other Twilight Zone episodes, he would go on to feature in three episodes of Star Trek, also starring in Perry Mason, Lassie the Series and Peyton Place, as well as in the Stephen King anthology Creepshow. Of mild interest too is that he and the actor who played the robber, whom I have not featured here, both played parts in the 1958 movie I Want To Live! and both were uncredited. He also hooked up with Kevin McCarthy, whom we met in “Long Live Walter Jameson” on the set of If He Hollers, Let Him Go! in 1968.

A quick mention for George Mitchell, whom we met earlier as the gas station attendant in the opening scenes of “The Hitch-Hiker”.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Caswell stumbles out onto the street, having smashed up a jukebox and also discharged a firearm in a bar, in the heart of New York City. The barman has called the cops (though, rather breaking with tradition and not using the phone, simply yelling POLICE!) and THEN Caswell shoots at a taxi in the street. We hear sirens and whistles, yet he is able to make it back to Manion’s lab unimpeded, to meet his doom at the hands of the thief. Why was he not arrested? It’s not as if he could blend in, and he had the gun in his hand. Everyone saw him, so why did the cops not arrive? Gunfire on the streets of New York? And no cops?

How did the dictaphone start up by itself after Caswell had smashed it up? From what I know of those machines, you have to press play. It shouldn’t be able to just start playing of its own accord. And the full final recording is there, too? Unlikely at best.

Can you really hang or strangle a full-grown man with the cord from curtains? Would the string not snap if you pulled at it? Would the curtains not come down before your neck broke? I know children have been caught in those and died before, but a big, bull-headed, heavy, muscular man fighting for his life? Fair enough; he was probably weak from having already had the noose around his neck, but still - the robber is a weedy little guy, and yet Caswell can’t push him off while the guy is strangling him? It’s not as if he gave the cord a tug and Caswell went up, like with roller blinds or something. His feet remained on the ground. I think it would have taken longer, and a whole lot more brute strength, to manage to kill him with what is in essence a flimsy little piece of cord, not exactly anchored to anything.

Once Manion saw the rope burns, why did he not a) send Caswell back while he was out or b) send him back without saying anything once he woke up and the professor could confirm what kind of man he had rescued? Telegraphing his intention, essentially advising the man - a self-confessed cold-blooded killer - that he was sending him back to be hanged does not seem to me to have been a smart move on the professor’s part.

Iconic?

Ah yes, but time travel stories have been with us forever. A lot of the time (sorry) the Old West is a fertile breeding ground for setting such stories, perhaps because it’s just different enough for the future/past to be scary, but still recognisable.

That sound that would become famous through Star Trek is back again; listen to it when the robber switches on the time machine.

Personal Notes

This time machine is different from most in science fiction, which usually act as a sort of vehicle for the time traveller and are controlled by him. This one seems to operate as a kind of net, or homing beacon, something that can be sent into the past - or future - and come back autonomously, bringing with it whatever or whoever it has picked up.

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Trollheart

Title: “The Big Tall Wish”
Original transmission date: April 8 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Ron Winston
Starring: Ivan Dixon as Bolie Jackson
Stephen Perry as Henry Temple
Kim Hamilton as Frances Temple
Walter Burke as Joe Mizell
Charles Horvath as Joey Consiglio
Carl McIntire as Announcer


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Desperation, magic, hope, despair, last chance
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A

Serling’s opening monologue

In this corner of the universe, a prizefighter named Bolie Jackson, 183 pounds and an hour and a half away from a comeback at St. Nick's Arena. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who, by the standards of his profession is an aging, over-the-hill relic of what was, and who now sees a reflection of a man who has left too many pieces of his youth in too many stadiums for too many years before too many screaming people. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who might do well to look for some gentle magic in the hard-surfaced glass that stares back at him.

No, no, fucking NO! WHY does EVERY show, no matter how little it has to do with the sport, have to have a boxing episode? I can tell you right away that I hated this, but just ignore me: anything that has to do with boxing bores and annoys the hell out of me. Let’s get to it then.

(Note: Trollheart has gone for a cup of tea and a lie down. Normal service will resume shortly...)

A washed-up boxer prepares for the fight that will be his comeback, knowing full well he has no chance, but his friend, a little boy called Henry, says he’s going to make a “big tall wish” that Bolie, the boxer, will win. His mother tells him that her son made a wish last week that she could find the fifteen dollars she needed for the rent, and she got a cheque in the mail. Bolie smiles sadly, asking her when do kids find out there is no magic? At the fight, as he gets ready he talks disparagingly to his manager, who seems to think he’s wasting his time, but when Bolie finds out he has bet on his opponent he goes mad and punches at him, misses, hits the wall and damages his fist. Disaster!

As expected, he’s pummelled and it’s not long before he’s hitting the canvas. As he’s counted out, Henry presses his face up against the TV and calls Bolie’s name. On the count of nine, time stops, and when it starts again the positions are reversed: it’s his opponent who’s on the ground, counted out, and Bolie who is victorious, with no idea how it happened. Back in the dressing room, he marvels that his fist is not broken after all, like his trainer said it was, but the trainer denies having said that, and further, when Bolie wonders how he got up off the canvas the trainer says he never went down! He was in control all the way.

When he gets home in triumph, even though everyone remembers it the way his trainer does, Henry knows. He says he made the big wish, that it was magic, otherwise Bolie would have lost. But Bolie is too old and experienced in the disappointments of reality to believe in magic, and they quarrel. Henry tells him he has to believe, otherwise the wish won’t come true, but Bolie can’t make himself believe, and suddenly he’s back in the ring, on his back, being counted out.

Back home, he is still Henry’s hero, but the boy agrees that there is no such thing as magic, no such thing as wishes. Bolie sighs that maybe there is magic, but just not enough people to believe in it.

Serling’s closing monologue

Mr. Bolie Jackson, 183 pounds, who left a second chance lying in a heap on a rosin-spattered canvas at St. Nick's Arena. Mr. Bolie Jackson, who shares the most common ailment of all men, the strange and perverse disinclination to believe in a miracle, the kind of miracle to come from the mind of a little boy, perhaps only to be found in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

You know, not half bad at all. The obvious expectation is that the kid’s wish changes the outcome of the fight, but the twist is that because Bolie can’t believe, can’t bring himself to credit the existence of such a power, the magic can’t work and things go back to the way they actually are. It’s quite sobering, and brave as an ending when it could have been sickly sweet. Kind of a death of childhood and a realisation of reality, for both of them.

The Moral

As the great sage Homer of Springfield once put it, “well, wishing won’t make it so.” You can’t wish for things to be other than they are, just because you don’t like the way they are now.

Themes

They’re familiar ones, and in many ways this episode could take place on any other show. Hope, however ill-advised, as a black boxer who has taken too many hits to the head tries to make it big one last time. Desperation as Bolie tries to recapture his past glories and make the hood proud, regain his standing, despair as he realises he has lost so much to this sport, and as he says to Henry, the story of his life can be read in the cuts, bruises and scars on his face. An episode with magic at its heart, but magic that rigidly obeys the cardinal rule, that in order for it to work you must believe in it, making it sort of pragmatic magic I guess. As the unicorn said to Alice, “Now that you’ve seen me, if you believe in me I’ll believe in you.” Or to quote the beautiful Miss Estefan, it cuts both ways.

Oops!

Bolie says he has had his nose broken twice in the one fight. I don’t think that can happen, can it? Once your nose is broken it stays broken, which is why I believe most boxers do have broken noses.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Not so much a question as a comment. Considering how supportive all his “hood” were before the fight, and given that they must have known he had little to no chance, why are they all so cold when he comes back defeated, as if he lost on purpose?

Iconic?

Not really. There are stories in everything from Little House on the Prairie to The Naked City, probably, about washed-up boxers (usually black) trying to get one last big fight under their belt before retiring, and they seldom if ever work out well. This is a pretty hackneyed story, in other words, with admittedly a decent Twilight Zone twist.

The Times they are a Changin’

And this time, for the better. This has to be the first almost all-black episode of a series at this time. The hero is black, the kid is black, the mother, all the extras. In fact, the whites are conspicuous and stand out. Yes, it’s a stereotype - black boxer - but for 1960, this has to have been a bold and courageous move, and I bet Serling got some pushback from the studio, who would not have wanted to see black actors on their screens, much less heroic, human ones.

Actually, I’m right, as Serling himself said at the time: “Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission... Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called 'new face,' constantly searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose. This is the Negro actor.” As a result of this, and the inclusion of black actors in later episodes, The Twilight Zone was awarded the Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations in 1961.

Personal Notes

I don’t know whether it was due to broadcast restrictions or the fact that the producers knew kids could and probably were watching, but the actual fight is directed well. Mostly you see the audience in close up - perhaps making a comment on the need for people to watch other people be battered to bits for entertainment, a kind of “Gladiators” thing - with initially only views of the boxers’ legs. Eventually you see blows falling, but it’s relatively tame compared to, say, Rocky or Raging Bull. Quite tasteful.

I would also question to some degree the story used here. It’s almost - probably quite unintentionally - a case of “stupid backward savages still believe in magic”. Then again, Bolie is shown to be “less savage”, if you will, by refusing to give the wish any sort of credence, and we’re left with basically a little boy believing in magic.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Title: “A Nice Place to Visit”
Original transmission date: April 15 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Larry Blyden as Henry Francis "Rocky" Valentine
Sebastian Cabot as Mr. Pip


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Retribution, gambling, overindulgence, despair, the afterlife
Parodied? Frequently
Rating: A+

Serling's opening monologue

Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine, but he calls himself "Rocky", because that's the way his life has been – rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning.

A thief is at work, when he hears the police coming and legs it but is shot as he tries to make his escape. Waking up, he beholds a man in white who tells him he is his guide, and conducts him to a sumptuous apartment, which he tells him is his. Not only that, but clothes, food, music, money - everything he wants, and later women too. It seems everything is his for the asking, all his needs have been provided for. Suspicious, he demands to know what he has to do for all this, and is told by his guide, Pip, nothing: nothing at all. When he loses his rag and shoots Pip, and the bullet has no effect, he begins to realise something is wrong.

Pip tells him he is dead, and Valentine concludes he is in Heaven, suddenly much more disposed to believe everything that’s happening to him. But as he goes gambling, and wins every time, the shine begins to wear off this paradise he’s found himself in. The fact that he can’t have any company - can’t meet any of his old gang, as he’s told this place has been created specifically for him - further removes the gloss. And then he starts wondering how could someone like him get into Heaven? He reckons there must be some good deed he performed that somehow made up for all the bad things his life has consisted of, but for the life of him he can’t think what that could be. When was he ever kind or patient or considerate? When was he tolerant or gentle or loving? When did he ever do one good thing in his whole miserable, misbegotten life?

As he says himself, if there’s no thrill, no chance of losing, where’s the point? Pip tries to convince him - perhaps if he sets it up so he can lose occasionally? No, says Valentine, that’s no good. He would know. Well, how about going back to what he was best at in life? How about knocking off a bank? Yeah, that would be great, except… there’s no chance he could get caught, so again where’s the thrill, he moans? How could he have got here? What kind of mistake did those in power make to have sent him to Heaven?

Ah, but…

Pip begins to laugh maliciously. What ever gave Valentine the idea that this was Heaven?



Serling's closing monologue

A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he's ever wanted – and he's going to have to live with it for eternity – in The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Very clever. I don’t recall if I sussed it the first time, but your suspicions do tend to kick in when Valentine keeps winning. What worse kind of Hell could there be, where boredom is your constant companion, where a gambler always wins, a singer always goes to the top of the charts, an actress always lands the star role? To quote Kirk, man must claw and struggle for every inch, and if there’s no struggle, if everything is handed to you, well, that could be Hell.

The Moral

Be careful what you wish for; Hell ain’t always what it seems

Themes

Gambling plays a big role here. Rocky Valentine’s pathetic life has been one gamble after another, if not at the gaming tables (one would assume, while he was alive, those of a seedier, less salubrious order than the ones he now frequents) then every time he did a job, risking being taken, arrested, shot. When he goes to “Heaven” gambling is one of his only loves, and he revels in it, though quickly finds out that a gamble with no risk is no gamble at all. The thrill comes from the possibility, even the probability, that you might lose. Someone once told me gamblers don’t play to win, they play to lose. But what if you can’t lose?

Retribution of course is here too. A fitting punishment for a life badly led, a mean, miserable existence spent preying on others, living off the labour and efforts of others, and caring for nobody but himself. Retribution is meted out at the barrel of a police revolver, but continues in the afterlife, where Valentine learns a hard lesson about the dangers of not doing good in your life. There’s also indulgence, as Valentine sticks his nose in the trough and snorts and gulps his fill, and disillusionment, as he begins to weary of the place.


Iconic?

This storyline would be repeated, but perhaps not this exact outcome. One of the best examples of it I remember was in the series Angel, where the title character was to be taken to Hell via a lift, and when the lift doors opened, he was back on Earth. The symbolism as clear as could be. Hell=Earth.

The Times they are a Changin’

Even for the time it was recorded, I feel Valentine’s language, syntax and slang are from a previous era. He uses words like “broad” and “dame”, which to me seem more to belong in the late forties and early fifties, and he calls Pip “Fats”, which, while used as a sort of not-too-demeaning descriptor, was I think pretty phased out by the sixties. But I’m no expert: he comes across to me as drawing more on the likes of gangsters like Capone and Siegal, and actors like Cagney and Bogart, about a decade or so behind.

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Trollheart

Title: “Nightmare as a Child”
Original transmission date: April 29 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Alvin Ganzer
Starring: Janice Rule
Terry Burnham
Shepperd Strudwick
Michael Fox
Morgan Brittany
Joseph V. Perry


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s):
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A-

Serling's opening monologue

Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child's face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like—fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare.

Returning home, a schoolteacher meets what appears to be the child of a newly-arrived family, and since she is alone sitting on the step and quiet, invites her in to her apartment for a cup of hot chocolate. The child seems to know about her though, mentioning her aversion to marshmallows. Then she alludes to a scar the teacher, Helen Foley, has on her arm, where she got burned, but Helen says she doesnt’ remember how she got the scar. The child seems very serious and a little scary as she goes on, reminding Helen of a man she saw earlier, whom she thought she recognised, and who frightened her. The child says her name is Marky, or rather, her nickname, what people call her. Helen is getting very on edge, but then there’s a movement outside and the little girl runs out, saying she doesn’t want to meet whoever it is.

It turns out to be the man Helen had seen and thought looked familiar earlier, and he is an old friend of the family. He introduces himself as Peter Seldon, who used to work for her mother. He reminds he she had some sort of accident or episode which blocked her memory of the details, but says to her she was in the room when it happened. She doesn’t know what “it” refers to, and he seems loath to elaborate. Hints come out though that Helen’s mother was murdered and the man responsible never found or caught.

When Helen mentions the little girl, and what her nickname is, Seldon is surprised, telling her that was her nickname was she was a child. From somewhere she hears a girl singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” though she seems to be the only one who can hear her. When he shows her a picture of her as a girl, it’s her: the little girl who came in and drank chocolate and seemed to know all about her, is her. When she goes back out and the little girl, Marky, is sitting on the step again, singing, she finds that she too has the burn mark in exactly the same place. Memories are beginning to come back about her mother’s murder, and when she looks up Seldon is there. He confesses that he is the murderer, and that the only reason she is alive is that she could not remember anything about the incident, but now that she has begun to regain her memory, he’s going to have to take care of her too.

As they struggle out in the hallway, Seldon loses his balance and falls down the stairs, breaking his neck. Now that she has recovered her memory, and the murder is solved, the child is seen no more.

Serling's closing monologue

Miss Helen Foley, who has lived in night and who will wake up to morning. Miss Helen Foley, who took a dark spot from the tapestry of her life and rubbed it clean—then stepped back a few paces and got a good look at the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Decent enough. We’re left to decide whether her younger self travelled forward in time somehow to jog her memory, or whether the child was buried deep in her mind, but if the latter, then why did she suddenly start remembering now?

The Moral

Really not sure what this one is trying to tell us, if anything. Might be one of those without morals. Or maybe it’s that your sins eventually catch you up.

Themes

The overriding theme here is one of lost or suppressed memory; we're not sure whether the trauma of seeing her mother murdered has been too much for Helen and she blocked it out, or whether she suffered a form of amnesia and really doesn't remember. or didn't anyway, until Selden showed up. There's a sense of something just... not right about the little girl. How does she know so much about Helen? And that in itself leads to fear, fear that is irrational because she can't say why she's afraid, but this does not make the fear any less real. Murder again rears its head, after coming up against it in "The Execution" recently, and a sense perhaps of justice too, in that the killer finally gets his comeuppance.

To some degree maybe there is time travel here too, but that's never confirmed, nor is the appearance of Marky ever explained, so it's left up to the viewer to decide, if they wish to, the circumstances that lead to Helen seeing herself as a child. My own feeling is that Marky exists only in her mind - Serling is careful to show her interacting with nobody else - and has been buried there since she witnessed the murder. That however does not explain why it's only now, after so long, that the memories surface

And isn't that...?

Well, weirdly the only semi-famous face here is of the little girl, unnamed, seen right at the end.

Morgan Brittany (1951 - )
Played Katherine in Dallas, also ran her own line of clothing for children, was spokesperson for the Gayle Hayman Cosmetic Company and sold Victorian porcelain dolls on the shopping network. She is now a conservative political commentator.

Okay, not the only one, but another bit-player only seen again at the end.

Joseph V. Perry (1931 - 2000)
Best known for his role as Nemo in Everybody Loves Raymond.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

As they struggle out on the hallway, Helen bangs on two different doors. Does nobody hear her?

Iconic?

Nah

Personal Notes

Kudos to the actress playing Markie. It’s not too hard, probably, for a child to play a child (like yer wan in “One For the Angels” for instance, or the kid that wails “That’s him mommy!” as Arthur Curtis/Gerry Raigan speeds away in “A World of Difference”) but it’s a whole other thing to play an almost adult role. To keep her face so serious, almost sneering, and impart an air of menace to a small child: quite a feat, and Terry Burnham does a great job.

I wonder if it’s coincidence that the murderer is called Selden, the same name given to the convict prowling the moors in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”?

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Trollheart

Title: “A Stop at Willoughby”
Original transmission date: May 6 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Robert Parrish
Starring: James Daly as Gart Williams
Howard Smith as Oliver Misrell
Patricia Donahue as Jane Williams
Jason Wingreen as Train conductor
Mavis Neal Palmer as Helen
James Maloney as 1888 Conductor
Billy Booth as Short Boy
Ryan Hayes as Engineer
Butch Hengen as Tall Boy
Max Slaten as Man on Wagon


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Pressure, modern life, desperation, time travel, suicide
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A++

Serling's opening monologue

This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams' protection fell away from him, and left him a naked target. He's been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment, will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.

Driven to distraction when his protege absconds with an important account, Gart Williams tells his boss to shove it and seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Heading home, he is tormented by the sound of his boss’s voice haranguing him, and falling asleep he wakes up to see the train stopped at a town called Willoughby, a town he has never heard of before and knows is not on this line. More than that, it seems to be summer out there and when he left the office it was November and snowing. Everyone looks so peaceful and friendly though, and the conductor assures him this is a place where a man can slow down and take it easy, take a break from the pressures of modern life. He also mentions that it’s 1888, a detail which seems to elude Williams: maybe he thinks he didn’t hear properly. How could he have?

Before he can leave the train however there is a jerking shunt, and he wakes up. The conductor on his train - not the same, old and white-haired one who had spoken to him about Willoughby - does not recognise the name of the town, and it’s snowing again, and dark outside. At home, his wife is a harsh, grasping drunk, who obvously has nothing but contempt for her husband and does not mind showing it. She makes it very clear she believes she hitched her star to the wrong wagon, and regrets it very much. She tells him he was born too late, into the wrong century. He’s the kind of man who would be happy with the simple things, and he agrees, but knows there is no such chance.

Though the conductor confirms he has checked through all the old timetables and there never was a stop called Willoughby, he falls asleep again and ends up outside the town. Again, thinking he is dreaming again, he stays on the train, though he does make a move, but too late and Willoughby vanishes again. “Next time,” he tells himself. “Next time I’m going to get off.” Back at the office, things are not going well, and he decides that’s it: he’s walking out. He phones his wife to let her know but she hangs up on him. On the train, he waits, waits in hope, in anticipation, in desperation to hear the words.

“The stop is Willoughby.” Finally! This time he gets off, and everyone seems to know him, everyone is friendly. He can breathe again. Next scene shows his dead body in the snow, and the younger conductor claiming he just said something about Willoughby and jumped out. As the hearse moves off, we see inscribed on the doors WILLOUGHBY AND SON, FUNERAL DIRECTORS.



Serling's closing monologue

Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things—or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Absolutely first class. At first it’s a little so-so; you know how it’s going to end. Life slows down at Willoughby, and maybe it exists and maybe it doesn’t. But the final scene, where Williams is dead and the hearse - pure genius.

The Moral

Modern life can be challenging, and sometimes you need to escape, leave it all behind, take a chance.

Themes

The pressures of modern life is the main theme here. Williams works in the high-flying, high-intensity world of advertising, for a boss who is a slavedriver and who does not like him, as he has lost the company a major contract, but fears to fire him in case Williams takes business with him. So the ad man is forced to work at a job he is getting increasingly less fond of, and which is slowly killing him. The nineteenth-century Willoughby, with its much slower pace of life and friendlier atmosphere is just what he needs. In many of the Twilight Zone episodes, the perils of working at a high pressure job would be addressed, as from the early 1950s on is when the rise of the business executive really began to take place, with people not just working for a wage but for a career, and competition for jobs fierce.

Desperation figures here too. Williams feels that if he doesn’t get out of his job he will be seriously ill, and at one point contemplates (though jokingly, we assume) suicide. He is, however, shown to be suffering bouts of pain in his stomach, no doubt an emerging ulcer.


And isn't that...?

James Daly (1918 - 1978)
Most famous, apparently, for his role in the TV drama Medical Center, Daly also played Flint in Star Trek’s “Requiem for Methuselah”, and guested in shows like The Invaders, Mission: Impossible, Ironside and The Fugitive.

Howard Irving Smith (1893 - 1968)
Starred in, among others, series such as Green Acres, Hazel and Bewitched, and was part of the famous radio broadcast by Orson Welles of The War of the Worlds.

Jason Wingreen (1920 -2015)
Claims to fame include his role in All In the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker’s Place, as Dr. Brody in Airplane! Another doctor in the Star Trek banned-for-years episode “The Empath”, but we’ll know him best as the voice of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back.


Parallels

There are so many similarities between the two episodes that this seems basically a rewrite of “Walking Distance”, but handled far better.

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Trollheart

Title: “The Chaser”
Original transmission date: April 13 1960
Written by: John Henry Collier (teleplay by Robert Presnell Jr.)
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: George Grizzard as Roger Shackleforth
John McIntire as Professor A. Daemon
Patricia Barry as Leila
J. Pat O'Malley as Homburg
Marjorie Bennett as Old Woman
Barbara Perry as Blonde Woman
Rusty Wescoatt as Tall Man
Duane Grey as Bartender


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Love, desperation, magic, be careful what you wish for
Parodied? I would imagine so, though no examples spring to mind.
Rating: A

Serling's opening monologue

Mr. Roger Shackelforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love - with a young woman named Leila, who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment, you'll see a switch, because Mr. Roger Shackelforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short, but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone.

A man who is madly in love with a woman who has not the faintest interest in him is given a card, told to go see a man who will sort out all his problems. Dubious, but desperate, he goes to see the man, and finds himself in what appears to be a library, where he is told the man can give him a bottle which will make the woman, Leela, fall helplessly in love with him. He warns Roger that if anyone gets hurt it will be him, and seems to have gone through this plenty of times before, knowing the outcome. He asks if Roger would like to purchase some “glove cleaner”, a euphemism, it would appear, for poison, but Roger is blissfully unaware what he means.

The potion works, all too well. Leela falls so totally in love with him that she becomes cloying, clinging, driving him mad. She won’t leave him alone, she wants to do everything for him; she is virtually his willing slave. Eventually he goes back to the shop and after some farting around he buys the glove cleaner. The professor tells him it is odourless, tasteless, painless and undetectable, but he must use it immediately, and he must use it all, as if he falters just once he will never have the courage to use it again. It costs a thousand dollars (whereas he took only a single dollar for the love potion), but at this point Roger is desperate in a whole new way, a way he had never expected to be. He used to be desperate to have Leela’s love, now he’s desperate to get out from under its strangling, suffocating influence.

At home, he’s all ready to do the deed when Leela drops her bombshell - she’s pregnant. In shock, he drops both glasses, and his chance is gone forever.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. Roger Shackelforth, who has discovered at this late date that love can be as sticky as a vat of molasses, as unpalatable as a hunk of spoiled yeast, and as all-consuming as a six-alarm fire in a bamboo and canvas tent. Case history of a lover boy, who should never have entered the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Clever. It could have gone plenty of ways - Roger getting the glasses mixed up and drinking from the wrong one, she having visited the professor herself and having her own potion, something as simple as him being seized by a sneezing fit and spilling the champagne. But at the end, after he has dropped the glasses he admits he could never have done it; he truly is in love with Leela, even this kind of all-consuming, exhausting love.

The Moral

Love doesn’t necessarily make the world go round, or as Brian May sang, too much love will kill you.

Themes

Well there could only be one major one, couldn’t there, and love frames the theme of many a Twilight Zone episode. Here, it’s originally unrequited, then achieved by nefarious means, then no longer wanted, and finally something the guy is stuck with. Shows how too much of any good thing is never wise, and how easily love can turn to hate (although in fairness Roger just gets really stressed out and annoyed at Leela’s devotion, he never says he hates her). Obsession would be another, at least at the start; the desperate mission, the seemingly unattainable goal, to win Leela, and then remorse, when everything works out, but not as he had expected.

And magic. Magic is here too. This episode could not work without magic - or maybe it’s science, though if someone ever came up with the proper equation to distill love into a bottle he’d be a millionaire, and not hanging out in some dingy, dusty bookstore.


And isn't that...?

George Cooper Grizzard Jr (1928 - 2007)
Had roles in Hawaii 5-0, The Golden Girls, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Spenser: For Hire, The Cosby Show and Law and Order, among others.

John Herrick McIntire (1907 - 1991)
In addition to being in films like Herbie Rides Again, Rooster Cogburn, Psycho and The Incredible Hulk, he was in Diff’rent Stokes and also the lead in The Virginian and Wagon Train. Hmm. Both roles came to him on the sudden deaths of the previous two leads. Just sayin’...


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

Okay, this is New York. When the guy in the telephone kiosk is constantly making calls and there’s an impatient queue behind him, you don’t think someone is going to haul him out? They all just stand there, waiting, as he makes call after call, with no intention of ever leaving the booth? I repeat: this is New York.

Iconic?

No. Stories about love potions - and, to some smaller extent but related to this, genii - are as old as time itself. You’ll find them in the writings of Arabic storytellers in the 1001 Nights, or Arabian Nights. This is an interesting little twist on the theme, but I don’t think it led to a slew of copies and could not claim to be the wellspring of this idea.

Those clever little touches

A little on the nose, perhaps, but the nameplate on the door says Professor A. Daemon. Hey, at least the number over the door isn’t 666!

Personal Notes

I have to be honest, I bloody hate both main characters here. Leela is horrible as the stuck-up, haughty, thoughtless and heartless woman as Roger pursues her, treating him like a puppy she can kick, and when she falls under his spell she’s twice as annoying. Roger is an idiot, let’s be honest. He doesn’t get the hint about the glove cleaner, he looks sappily at the next guy into the booth as he claims he has to keep calling his “girl”, he doesn't offer an apology. He’s just fresh-faced and very very annoying.

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Trollheart

Title: “A Passage for Trumpet”
Original transmission date: April 20 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Don Medford
Starring: Jack Klugman as Joey Crown
Frank Wolff as Baron
John Anderson as Gabe
Mary Webster as Nan
Ned Glass as Nate (Pawnshop Owner)
James Flavin as Truck Driver


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Desperation, suicide, loss, music, afterlife, second chances, love, redemption
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A -

Serling's opening monologue

Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure...Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, who, in a moment, will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground - the place we call The Twilight Zone.

A washed-up trumpet player is trying to get a chance to play again, but the bottle is in his way. He used to be great, a real star, but then he hit the booze and he’s been sliding down the ramp ever since, almost at the bottom now. He decides to hell with it, and sells his trumpet, drinking the proceeds, and then, even more in the dumps, throws himself in front of a truck. When he wakes up it seems nobody can see him, and finally he realises he didn’t survive the encounter with the truck. He is dead. He drifts back to the jazz club in which he was trying to get a gig, and meets a guy playing a trumpet, who seems to be able to see and hear him, to his surprise.

Turns out he’s not dead; all the people who couldn’t see or hear him, they’re dead, but he’s not. He’s in Limbo, and needs to make a choice as to whether he wants to live or die. He decides to give it another try, and as he gets back to the land of the living he sees himself being hit by the truck, but hardly even injured, just shaken up. The driver presses money into his hand, asking him not to claim against him. This gives Joey the means to redeem his trumpet from the pawn shop, and then meets a woman who has only just moved to New York, and things begin to look up.

Serling's closing monologue

Joey Crown, who makes music, and who discovered something about life; that it can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, just like the music he played, if a person would only pause to look and to listen. Joey Crown, who got his clue in the Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Meh, it’s a bit ham-fisted isn’t it? Kind of a cross between It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, but not anywhere near as good as either. He goes to Limbo, but is allowed return to Earth? I thought the only choice in Limbo was whether you go Up or Down (if you believe that stuff) and that the decision is not yours? Meh, again I say. Poor.

The Moral

Sometimes life may not suck bad enough to kill yourself? Meh.

Themes

Desperation once again rears its ugly head, as Joey Crown tries to get back into the groove, but is held by back Mr. B-O-O-Z-E. His desperation drives him to suicide, another recurring theme in some of these episodes, and then there’s a choice and finally redemption, a determination to try again. Oh, and love blossoms at the end. Bah.

And isn't that...?

Jack Klugman (1922 - 2012)
An instantly recognisable face, Klugman became known as Walter Matthau’s character Oscar Madison in the series spin-off of the movie The Odd Couple, and also as the eponymous pathologist Quincy ME, as well as starring opposite the great Jack Lemmon himself in the movie Days of Wine and Roses. He won three primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe during his career, almost all for The Odd Couple.

John Anderson (1922 - 1992)
Best known to us as Kevin, the alien in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Survivors”, he also played the governor in the movie Smokie and the Bandit II, and had parts in, among others, Little House on the Prairie, Voyagers! And M.A.S.H.
Mary Webster (1935 - 2017)
Notable only for being so far the only actor who not only reappeared in the series but was paired with the same actor, when she and Klugman starred in the season four episode “Death Ship”.


Iconic?

No, it’s as hackneyed a story as they come. And too much jazz. Ugh.

Ten or Less Things I Hate About You

1. Why is it that in a very large percentage of the episodes, when something happens that a character either doesn’t like or understand, or can believe, they always seem to use the phrase “someone’s having a gag”? I guess it was common parlance in the fifties and sixties, but man is it annoying.

2. Jazz. Why did it have to be jazz? Like the one with the boxer, this immediately set me up to dislike this episode, but unlike that one, where I warmed to it (kind of) this one just leaves me cold, as jazz always does. Klugman’s performance is the only bright light in it for me.

3. The naming of the “angel” is a ham-fist move too far. Even if he had said something like “Oh just think of me as … someone who looks after people.” And Klugman had said “Like… like a guardian angel you mean?” and then Gabriel had shrugged and vanished. This is too damn obvious, despite the usage of Gabe, which he then ruins by saying “short for Gabriel”, as if nobody knew that or could work it out for themselves.

4. I don’t like the way the final resolution is worked. What are you supposed to think? You see him looking at himself stepping out in front of the truck. Is he supposed to be looking at the past? And if so, does he then vanish, his time line null and invalid now, when the “past” Joey goes to buy his trumpet back? And how has he made this transformation? Shouldn’t it be him, and not the other Joey who… ah, ferget it. I would have had the whole scene freeze as he walks out, run backwards to where he’s handing over his trumpet, have him think it over, change his mind, and move on. But that’s just me.

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Trollheart

Title: “Mr. Bevis”
Original transmission date: June 3 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: William Asher
Starring: Orson Bean
Henry Jones
Charles Lane
Florence MacMichael
William Schallert
Vito Scotti
Horace McMahon


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Second chances, time travel (?), angels
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A-

Serling's opening monologue

In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James B. W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombuberated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner...Should it not be obvious by now, James B. W. Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him. James B. W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, just one block away from The Twilight Zone.

James Bevis, a local eccentric and somewhat of the breed of the good-hearted innocent, is fired from his job and then his day really starts to turn sour. His car moves off by itself from where he had parked it and crashes, overturning in the street, then when he gets home his landlady is in the process of evicting him. As he drowns his sorrows that night he sees a man in the mirror over the bar waving to him, but when he turns to acknowledge him, nobody is there. The bartender can’t see him either, but then the man speaks to him and Bevis goes to sit at the table at which he appears to be. A moment later he literally appears out of thin air. He tells Bevis he is his guardian angel, that centuries ago one of his ancestors earned the right to have one of his kind assigned to the family, and this angel, J. Hartley Hampstead is his. He says he can re-run this day, and change the outcome to a much happier one.

And proceeds to do so.

However, much changes, as it has to. First of all, Bevis has to wear a more respectable suit (“I look like an undertaker!”) and the kids don’t want to play hand-egg, sorry football - sod it: AMERICAN football with him, as they did when he had exited the building that morning originally. He’s also resisted the temptation to do what he did earlier, pick up a little dog on the stairs and slide down the banister. That, Hampstead tells him, is the old Bevis, and he is the new one. His landlady however is delighted, having been paid, apparently, three months in advance, so at least he won’t be getting evicted any time soon. People who were friendly to him when he was the old Bevis though, have no interest in him and some are openly hostile to him. He has a new car, a sports number, his old rickety jalopy having been deemed by the angel not suitable for his new image.

At the office, his desk is neat and tidy, where before it was covered with knick-knacks, stuffed animals (not cuddly ones; real, taxidermy stuff) and clocks, and far from firing him, his boss gives him a raise. But in order to get all these things, Bevis realises he has had to literally become a new man: he has had to leave behind all the things he loved, all the things he enjoyed, all the things that made him what he was. His ancient car. His relationship with the kids, with his co-workers. His easy camaraderie with the street sellers. He decides his new life is not what he wants, and asks for the old one back. He gets it, and things go back to the way they were, but he’s much happier now.

Serling's closing monologue

Mr. James B. W. Bevis, who believes in a magic all his own. The magic of a child's smile, the magic of liking and being liked, the strange and wondrous mysticism that is the simple act of living. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, species of twentieth-century male, who has his own private and special Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Pretty poor really. Everything goes back to how it was and he realises his life isn’t so bad. As if.

The Moral

Appreciate what you have? Don’t try to change?

Themes

Bad luck would seem to dog Mr. Bevis’s footsteps, and runs through the episode like a bad smell. Losing his car, his job, his flat, all in the one day. Then we have the theme of guardian angels. Again. The idea of giving up something, sacrificing something for what might seem to be better, but then turns out not to be.

And isn't that...?

Orson Bean (1928 - 2020)
Well known on game shows, Bean was known for appearing on the panel of I’ve Got a Secret, What’s My Line, To Tell the Truth, Super Password and Match Game. He played Loren Bray on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman for six years and also guested on many other shows, including Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother and The Closer. He was a regular on Desperate Housewives and was also a stand-up comedian and magician.

Charles Lane (1905 - 2007)
This man has done so much film and TV work Wiki has to sort it into decades! His biggest claim to fame though seems to have been as Judge Petrillo in the American spoof soap, um, Soap. he also appeared in - among so many other programmes - Little House on the Prairie, The Odd Couple (series), The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Dark Shadows and was the voice of Georges in Disney’s The Aristocats.

Florence MacMichael (1919 - 1999)
Best known for her TV appearances on the show Mister Ed.

William Schallert (1922 - 2016)
Another man with a stack of credits behind him, including both the original Star Trek and later Deep Space 9, also The Waltons, Desperate Housewives, Bewitched, Land of the Giants, Get Smart, The Partridge Family, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Little House on the Prairie, Lou Grant, Highway to Heaven, Matlock, My Name is Earl, How I Met Your Mother and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Also appeared in the Twilight Zone movie and Innerspace, among others.

Vito Scotti (1918 - 1996)
Character actor who appeared in both The Addams Family and its rival The Munsters, as well as Lassie, Dr . Kildare, My Favourite Martian, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, Happy Days, Charlie’s Angels, Who’s the Boss?, The Golden Girls, Columbo and tons more. Also in two Herbie movies and, interestingly, provided the voice for one of the Italian cats in, you guessed it, The Aristocats.


Questions, and sometimes, Answers

A few. When in his new persona, and having just got a raise, Bevis declares his intention to go play with the kids in the street. He’s just arrived in work; where does he think he is? Does he believe that now he can do as he likes?

If Hampstead was watching over Bevis, why did he allow all the bad luck? Why not just subtly change things - at least organise the payment of his rent and ensure his car didn’t get towed away? Why wait until he appeared to his protectee, as it were?


Ten or less things I hate about you

1. The title. Come on! Couldn’t he come up with something more inspired than the guy’s fucking name??

Personal Notes

It may not be the same, but it’s close - James Bevis’s name is just one letter removed from Henry Bemis, who was the main character in “Time Enough at Last”. I know that was from an already-written story, but did Serling have to mirror the name so closely?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018