TZ Promo: "The Parallel" (3/14/1963)

Season 4, Episode 11 (#113 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4859

Originally aired March 14, 1963

“Something happened. I know you’re not going to believe this. I’m not absolutely certain that I believe it myself.  There’s another dimension.  I don’t know how it exists or where it exists, but there’s another world parallel to ours.  The same people, the same places, most of the same chronology of events, except now and then there’s something a little bit different…. I was there, General.  I was there for almost a week… looking at our counterparts, looking at us.  Us, as we exist in a parallel world, one that exists alongside but which we can’t see, the world I stumbled into. I don’t know how; some kind of space time continuum, some… warpage.  There’s a doorway up there somewhere into it.  It exists.  Every now and then I think it’s possible for somebody to fall through it, and I did.”

That’s Major Robert Gaines, relaying his fantastic experience during an apparent blackout during a space flight. It sounds like something from the mind of Jack Finney, whose short stories often featured time travel and parallel realities (his “The Coin Collector” would've made a great TZ episode), but unfortunately Finney didn't write this… Rod Serling did. And he kinda fucked it up.

Fifty years ago tonight, “The Parallel” found Major Robert Gaines leaving the earth, blacking out, then waking up in a military hospital with no memory of the rest of the mission, including his return trip. After his debriefing, he begins to notice subtle details in his world have changed: his house now has a white picket fence that he doesn't remember being there, his wife and daughter seem to think he’s “different somehow,” and oh! He’s magically been promoted to full Colonel. We suspect that maybe he’s some sort of brainwashed alien plant until it’s revealed that the man Gaines claims to be President is someone his superiors have never heard of, some guy by the name of John F. Kennedy.

Gaines begins to suspect that he didn't land on the same earth that he left; instead, he somehow crossed over into a parallel universe and landed on an alternate version of earth. For clarity’s sake (and my own amusement), I’m going to refer to the two realities as “Earth Prime” and “Dupe Earth.”

Serling puts forth what could have been an interesting mystery (a kind of companion piece to “And When the Sky Was Opened”), but “The Parallel” is hampered by both its overlong length and several plotting problems that can’t be ignored. The bit at the end, in which it’s revealed that Capcom established momentary telemetry with Gaines’ duplicate from Dupe Earth, does seem to validate Gaines’ theory, so I guess he wasn’t just dreaming during his six-hour blackout; however, it does nothing to assuage the lingering questions. How exactly did he land his capsule on Dupe Earth if the craft had no landing capabilities? Since he swaps places with his parallel self while in space, we can reasonably assume that the fissure between the parallel universes lies in earth’s orbit; how then does he manage to swap back without going back up into space? Gaines spent several days on Dupe Earth, yet was only out of radar contact for six hours, which is impossible:  for both earths to exist side by side, wouldn't they move at the same rate of time?

The only solution which ties up all the loose ends? After Gaines crossed over to the Dupe Earth universe, God himself plucked the capsule out of the sky and set it gently down on dry land  (suggest by Gaines’ initial explanation: “I blacked out, I simply blacked out. There was some factor up there, something which I had no control over, something which must have taken over for me.”). The Big Guy subsequently snapped His almighty fingers to undo the whole thing, which explains why Gaines snaps back into his own universe without even returning to space first. This theory also serves to obliterate most of the other plot holes, since the whole affair ultimately never happened (except that Gaines remembers it, which is an odd choice; but hey, He moves in mysterious ways). Serling of course doesn't suggest this (admittedly bogus) possibility; he just slaps together a half-assed denouement and moves on to his next script (gee, thanks Rod).  Interestingly, season one’s “And When the Sky Was Opened’ (also scripted by Serling) provided even less insight into the astronauts’ inexplicable plight, but somehow it worked there. Maybe because the hour format intrinsically demands more explanation, I dunno.

One more irreconcilable thing:  after Gaines is back in his own capsule in his own universe late in act four, the “wavy line” dissolve effect is used to skip forward to his examination in the military hospital. Up to this point, this transition signified the crossovers between the two earths.  Are we to assume, then, that Gaines has splashed down on a third earth? Of course not, it’s just an overused time passage visual (usually framing a flashback)…. but it’s completely inappropriate here.

I usually love these kinds of stories: parallel earths, alternate realities, evil twins, multiverse doppelgängers, etc; “The Parallel,” however, has gotta be the single most boring exploration of such concepts ever committed to film.  Any given episode of TV’s Sliders beats this vanilla affair hands down (and that series had more than its share of duds, despite a great concept).

At the very least, “The Parallel” does offer some nice atmospheric visuals. When Gaines blacks out at the moment he crosses over into the Dupe Earth universe, we fade in to a dark hospital room. A single light hangs over his unconscious body as we drunkenly pan in towards him, conveying his disorientation as he wakes up. Later, the scenes with the capsule in the hanger offer some excellent contrast between the inky blackness and the large overhead lights (many of the shots are filmed low, looking up at the actors, adding a nice paranoid tension; however, I’m not sure why the hell they keep the hanger so goddamned dark). Oh, and speaking of nice visuals….

TZ babe alert!  This is Jacqueline Scott’s only TZ appearance, but she ventured into The Outer Limits twice (in the pilot episode “The Galaxy Being” as well as the goofy “Counterweight”). She also had a recurring role on TV’s The Fugitive as Richard Kimble’s sister Donna.

Another Outer Limits connection! The skeptical General Eaton is played by Phillip Abbott, who stopped by in season two for "Long Distance Call." He also appeared in two TOL episodes (“The Borderland” and the delightfully wacky “ZZZZZ”).

Speaking of The Outer Limits, its “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” is reminiscent of “The Parallel” in the sense that we have an astronaut returning to earth who’s just not quite himself.  However, The Outer Limits wins for two reasons: first, theirs has William Shatner; second, theirs features this hilarious alien:

If you need another TOL connection, look no further than the 31:09 mark: Gaines is asked how he’s doing.  His reply: “Me? Well, that depends. Depends on just what are the current standards for sanity, the acceptable outer limits.”

Colonel (er, Major) Robert Gaines is played by Steve Forrest, who’s a bit stiff and bland, but I guess he gets the job done (I can’t help but imagine what other TZ actors like Charles Aidman or Cliff Robertson might’ve done with the role). This is Forrest’s only TZ appearance. I should mention that Forrest is Dana Andrews’ younger brother (whom we enjoyed last week in “No Time Like the Past.”

Other familiar faces in “The Parallel” include Paul Comi as the psychiatrist (previously seen in season one’s “People Are Alike All Over” and season two’s “The Odyssey of Flight 33”) and William Sargent as The Project Manager (he’ll come back for season five’s “Ninety Years Without Slumbering”). And OMG, there’s David Armstrong again (uncredited as usual), this time manning one of the tracking consoles at Capcom. And he has a line (“We don’t have contact here either. No contact at all!”)!

Like many Twilight Zone episodes, “The Parallel” uses preexisting music from the CBS Music Library in lieu of an original score. The serene pastoral music heard as Gaines arrives at home back on Earth Prime (oops, spoiler!) is “Quiet Western Scene” by Nathan Van Cleave. Here we only hear part of it (like we did in season three’s “The Changing of the Guard”); we’ll hear the whole lovely thing in “On Thursday We Leave For Home” in May.  I should also mention that a single cue from Leonard Rosenman’s score from the aforementioned “And When the Sky Was Opened” is used here. It’s title?  “Missing Colonel,” of all things!

1999’s The Astronaut’s Wife seems to have been inspired by “The Parallel,” but there the astronaut (Johnny Depp) turns out to be an alien replacement instead of a friendly duplicate from another earth. Jeez, if you’re gonna steal ideas from The Twilight Zone, there are so many better episodes to crib from.

One more thing that bugs me: Gaines’s capsule is called “Phoebus 10” on Earth Prime, but on Dupe Earth it’s called “Astro 7.” Wouldn't you think that this discrepancy would've come up during Gaines’ debriefing on Dupe Earth? Screw all the vague “something feels different” shit; that right there is an immediate and obvious disparity between the two earths. Sigh. File “The Parallel” under “D” for Dumb and hope next week’s episode is better. Um, sorry to say… it’s kinda not.

Next week: It’s a total fake-out.  Barbara Eden is nowhere to be found, dammit.

TZ Promo: "Miniature" (2/21/1963)

Season 4, Episode 8 (#110 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4862

Originally aired February 21, 1963

We've seen this type of story before on The Twilight Zone, in which a misfit finds a supernatural means of permanent escape, be it into the past (“A Stop at Willoughby,” “Static”), an alternate reality (“A World of Difference”), or a nonspecific combination of both (“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine,” “Kick the Can,” “Young Man’s Fancy”).  Both “The Night of the Meek” and “The Fugitive” are variations on this theme as well.  Tonight we meet yet another of TZ’s unhappy loners who finds a way out of his troubled existence into something… well, else.

Charles Beaumont’s “Miniature” introduces us to Charley Parkes, a thirty-something bachelor who lives with his mother, has no friends, and who has just lost his job because he simply “ doesn't fit in” (I’m pretty sure he could sue for wrongful termination these days).  He can’t be bothered to look for another job, however, as he’s too busy visiting a local museum every day, gazing longingly at one particular item on display.

It’s a fairly average dollhouse, silent and inert, complete with a tiny wooden girl sitting at the tiny wooden piano.  When Charley looks at it, however, it comes to glorious life in a charming miniature pantomime:  the girl (Alice) plays the piano, a tiny maid attends to her every whim, and a tiny gentleman caller comes a’calling.

Charley falls desperately in love with the Alice doll, indulging in an ongoing one-sided conversation with her through the glass shield protecting the dollhouse.  Things seem harmless enough until the tiny gentleman caller shows up drunk, clubs the maid into unconsciousness and attempts to deflower Alice by force.  Charley panics and smashes the glass wall, and subsequently winds up in a psych ward.

   

Without giving away more of the plot (though I’ve pretty much spoiled it at this point anyway), it’s safe to say that Charley eventually manages to get himself released, return to the dollhouse and, through unspecified magic, vanishes forever from human existence, only to reappear as the doll’s tiny new companion inside the dollhouse.

Now, maybe I’m overthinking this, but what exactly happened here?  Okay, on a prosaic level, Charley transmogrified into a miniature wooden figure, just like Alice (up till then, it appeared that he was operating under a very complex delusion).  Going forward, in what capacity will these two wooden lovebirds exist?  Are the dolls actually miniature people (like Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, recently made into a lovely animated film by Japan’s Studio Ghibli called The Secret World of Arriety), masquerading as inanimate objects during the day and doing their living at night, in secret (oh shit, is this a precursor to Night in the Museum?).  Or is the dollhouse some sort of inter-dimensional portal to some other universe, a cosmic way station in which our reality bleeds into the other, only visible to a select few?

The setup for “Miniature” feels very much like a Jack Finney story:  a guy falls in love with a girl from the past; however, in Finney’s hands, Charley would've sought the real Alice Summers (or at least her grave) out.  At no time in Beaumont’s story does this seem to occur to Charley; rather, he simply falls in love with an action figure-sized woman, which is completely impractical on a number of levels.  But maybe this makes sense, given Charley’s introverted and apparently sexless nature: see how disastrously he interacts with a normal-sized woman on a blind date:

The humor in “Miniature” is gentle and quirky, mirroring Charley’s personality, except for one scene that, truth be told, kinda bugs me.  At the end of act one, the gentleman caller arrives at the dollhouse to take Alice out (to take in the nearby African tribal exhibit, perhaps?).  As Charley watches intently and presumably jealously, this happens:

Anybody got some Windex?

I would've preferred a furrowed brow here, maybe an uneasy knuckle nibble.  The smooshed-nose-against-the-glass routine is just plain childish; it worked in “The Night of the Meek” because excited kids were doing it.  It’s out of character for Charley, it violates the tone of the piece, and it’s just dumb.

Oscar-winner Robert Duvall did a lot of TV in his younger days, and genre fans will recall his two stints on The Outer Limits (“The Chameleon” and “The Inheritors”).  Here he shines as the awkward and shy Charley; however, he was much more awkward and shy as the enigmatic  Boo Radley in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mrs. Parkes, who is probably largely to blame for Charley’s social awkwardness, is well essayed by Pert Kelton. Kelton was the original Alice Kramden, back when The Honeymooners was a recurring sketch, performed live on TV’s Cavalcade of Stars. I kinda wish Charley had given her the old “Pow! Right in the kisser!” right before he disappeared forever.

William Windom returns to The Twilight Zone as Charley’s psychiatrist, Dr. Wallman. He’s just as humorless here as he was last time we saw him, playing the army major in season three’s “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.”

John McLiam is great as the sympathetic museum guard who ultimately spots the vanished Charley inside the dollhouse (but keeps it to himself). McLiam appears in bit roles in three other TZ episodes (“The Shelter,” "The Midnight Sun,” and season five’s “Uncle Simon”).

TZ alumn Barney Phillips, as Charley’s boss Mr. Diemel, is less likable here than in his previous appearances (“The Purple Testament,” “A Thing About Machines,” and “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”).  Fear not, he’s not sporting a third eye this time around.

And hey --- TZ babe alert!  Pity this is Claire Griswold’s only TZ appearance.  She may be made of wood, but she’s crazy hot, and I wouldn't mind… (insert inappropriate wood-related innuendo here).

A gentle tale like this demands (okay, nicely asks for) gentle music.  Fred Steiner’s score incorporates several different classical works (most notably Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A Major, the tune that the Alice doll plays), and the result is quite lovely.  Given the melodramatic nature of the pantomime scenes inside the dollhouse, classical music just feels appropriate.  Steiner’s score has never been released on any music format (vinyl, cassette, CD or digital), but you’ll find it in isolated form on both DVD releases and the more recent Blu-ray edition of season four.

“Miniature” is the first of five TZ episodes that were omitted from the original syndication package (“The Lost Five”) for various reasons.  In the case of “Miniature,” a pending plagiarism lawsuit kept the episode off limits when the series was prepared for syndication in 1964.  It aired only once, 50 years ago tonight, and remained buried until 1984.

In 1984, three of the “lost five” episodes were collected in a television special celebrating the series’ 25^th anniversary, one of which was “Miniature.”  As a “bonus” (note the sarcastic quotes), the scenes inside the dollhouse in “Miniature” were colorized.  The colorization thankfully did NOT carry over into the various home video releases of the episode (which are four in number: Columbia House VHS collection, DVD volume 31, the season four Definitive Edition DVD set, and the season four blu-ray set). The colorized scenes were included as a bonus on the Definitive Edition DVD set, but omitted for the more recent blu-ray release (presumably because they realized what an abomination it was).  Let’s allow this unfortunate chapter in the episode’s unique history to fade into oblivion.

Next week: Burgess Meredith returns to The Twilight Zone.  Speak of the devil!

TZ Promo: “A Most Unusual Camera” (12/16/1960)

“A Most Unusual Camera”

Season Two, Episode 10 (#46 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3606

I have a simple rating system when it comes to The Twilight Zone: good-to-excellent, mediocre, or lousy. Fifty years ago tonight, an episode of the third, least-desirable variety premiered.

Written by Rod Serling and directed by John Rich, “A Most Unusual Camera” starts off with a pretty cool concept: an instant camera whose pictures depict events five minutes in the future. A trio of quarrelsome thieves comes into possession of the camera as part of their latest heist and, once they discover its unique properties, they form a plan to use it for their own financial gain. Well, of course they do. That’s not really the problem. The problem is that there’s never really any tension, particularly when the thieves become greedy (okay, greedier) and start turning on one another (a similar group-disintegration will occur later this season, much more effectively, in “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”).


The cast is comprised of the three thieves and a nosy hotel employee, and all four of them are gratingly unpleasant, particularly Jean Carson in the female lead. Again, the whole thing is just lousy. It’s not “Mr. Bevis” lousy, but it’s… just damned lame. Worse, the whole thing is played as a comedy, and like so many other Serling attempts at comedy, it just ain’t funny.

Ugh. What else can I say? There’s nothing redeeming to be found here. The idea of a camera that captures images from the future is immediate and promising, and it’s completely squandered. I can only wonder what Jack Finney would’ve done with such an idea.

On the subject of Finney: many of his short stories from the 50’s and 60’s (collected in The Third Level and I Love Galesburg in the Springtime, both out of print and well worth tracking down; I have worn copies of both and cherish them) would’ve made ideal The Twilight Zone episodes; however, none of them were ever adapted for the series. Much attention has been paid over the years to the fact that only one script by science fiction luminary Ray Bradbury was produced on the series but, for my money, The Finney Shutout (as I’ve come to call it) is even more shocking. “Of Missing Persons,” “Where the Cluetts Are,” “The Coin Collector,” “Lunch Hour Magic”... that’s four, right off the top of my head, and there are many more. It’s a damned, depressing shame that Finney and The Twilight Zone never crossed paths.

Next week: Just in time for Christmas! Art Carney stars as the original Bad Santa. A holiday perennial, and a great one at that. Don your stocking cap and mittens and tune in.