Season 4, Episode 3 (#105 overall)
Cayuga Production # 4861
Originally aired January 17, 1963
Before we get started, look at the title card above. Look odd?
Something… missing, maybe? There aren't any fucking quotation marks! It seems to
be a simple mistake… until the title is shown again during the end credits, where it
happens again!
This is exactly the kind of minutiae that keeps obsessive fans like me
awake nights, trying to decode the mystery behind what appears to be a
typographical error that nobody else seems to have ever noticed, but may also
be some bizarre and very subtle plot to screw with obsessive-compulsive minds like mine.
Ahem.
Fifty years ago tonight, a man stumbled across the best-kept secret in
human history in Charles Beaumont’s “Valley of the Shadow” (with quotes,
goddammit!). We find reporter Philip
Redfield snooping around Peaceful Valley, his curiosity piqued by a glimpse of
impossible technology, not to mention the townsfolk’s determined resolve to get
him to leave town ASAP.
The town elders, realizing there’s no getting rid of him, relent and relay to him the fantastic tale of a stranger who visited their town a century ago. This visitor, who may have come from another
planet or another time (or both), bestowed upon the town the means to construct
machines that, among other things, can rearrange matter into anything (including
a ham sandwich with mustard, just the way I like ‘em), and generate
impenetrable force fields (hey, this sounds really familiar; was the visitor in
fact a Kanamit, an advance scout who didn't eat the locals because he was a
vegetarian?) The town elders were charged
with protecting the technology until the day that humanity finally achieves
world peace and, now that Redfield knows the secret, he can never be allowed to
leave.
Redfield is given a house to live in once he (facetiously) agrees to cooperate, but quickly discovers that he’s trapped on the premises by an invisible force field. We’re reminded of season one’s
“People Are Alike All Over,” in which marooned astronaut Sam Conrad (Roddy McDowell) is given a similar house by seemingly friendly Martians, only to discover that it’s actually a cage in their interstellar zoo.
Cue the escape plan, which consists of the following:
1.
Seduce a comely local girl. Yeah, that one'll do nicely.
2.
Use the matter-rearranging console to create a loaded pistol
(why would the machine even allow this...?).
3.
Turn off the force field that prevents you from leaving town
(maybe breaking off the handle would have been smart).
4.
Steal the town's Book of Secrets
(which is kept in an unlocked safe, fer chrissakes!).
5.
Shoot everybody who tries to stop you.
As interesting as this all sounds (particularly that first part), it’s unfortunately a pretty vanilla
affair. I wouldn't call it boring,
necessarily (nothing like last week’s snoozefest), but there’s a blandness
throughout that’s hard to deny. Maybe pedestrian is the word I'm looking for. There’s
no sense of atmosphere or style and, since every single scene takes place in
broad daylight, there’s a total lack of shadows and contrast. Despite the fantastic elements of the story
and the vast potential therein (a cool flashback showing the town's fateful meeting with the visitor would have been most welcome), there’s never really any tension to speak of, not
even when our hero’s very life appears to be in mortal jeopardy at the
climactic moment when….
...when...
…when…
…um, when nothing actually happens.
And I mean nothing. You’ll see.
Even the assorted gadgets are pretty boring to look at, despite their amazing
functions. The worst is The Glass Bowl
of Doom, shown above, which we’re led to believe will terminate Redfield’s
life…. but doesn't.
I’m thinking Gene Roddenberry saw this episode and immediately created
Star Trek. The matter replication machine appears to be
a 20th century version of Trek’s
replicator technology (perhaps the “visitor” was a rogue time traveler from the
future…? Somebody call the Temporal Integrity Commission!). Meanwhile, the handheld device that teleports
Redfield from place to place manages the same function as Trek’s famous transporter (but without the cool visual effects). I'm not saying Roddenberry was a thieving hack, but.... well, maybe I am saying it.
Of course there’s always the possibility that the visitor was in fact a Time
Lord (the BBC's
Doctor Who debuted in 1963, after all). But I’ll be damned if I’m going
there (so suck it, Logan!*).
That stupid how-many-people-can-we-fit-into-a-phone-booth fad? Yeah, it started right here.
Philip Redfield is played by Ed Nelson, who, if his IMDB listing is
accurate, appeared on just about every television series throughout the sixties
and seventies. He’s probably best known
for his work as Michael Rossi on TV’s
Peyton
Place (1964-1969), but genre fans will recall his appearance in the
“Nightmare” episode of
The Outer Limits,
which aired a little less than one year after this, his sole
Twilight Zone stint.
Interestingly, writer Charles Beaumont sold a (very) similar script
called “An Ordinary Town” to
The Outer
Limits a year later, which was heavily revised and filmed as “The Guests.”
Smart House™, 1964 model.
Oh, and speaking of Roddy McDowell, the deliciously busty Ellen Marshall
is played by Natalie Trundy (
TZ babe
alert!) who is probably much more recognizable to genre fans as McDowell’s
simian mate Lisa in the final two
Planet
of the Apes films. She also appeared
in the second and third
Apes films as
a mutant and a human scientist, respectively, but her connection to the
Apes saga is much deeper: she was
married to producer Arthur P. Jacobs, and she took over his APJAC Productions
when he passed away in 1973. Trundy is
still with us as of this writing (she’s 72 today, which would make her 22 here). I should note that McDowell and Trundy are
the only two actors to appear in four out of the five
Apes films.
Oh, and speaking of
Star Trek, we're treated to an appearance by James Doohan, who famously portrayed
Trek's resourceful (and very Scottish) engineer Montgomery Scott. Maybe Roddenberry saw him here and like him enough to use him... you know, when he was "coming up with" his "totally original" new TV series "idea."
I do like "Valley of the Shadow," but it’s a bit frustrating to realize that it
had the potential to be so much more. It
calls to mind those vintage sci-fi comic books like
Weird Science and
Incredible Science Fiction, which frequently featured tales like
this one, in which lone heroes stumble upon shocking secrets or alien plots and
must somehow save the day. There’s one
in particular that’s been stuck in my head forever, about a guy who stumbles
upon a secret passageway which leads to the center of the earth, where the
earth’s orbit is controlled by a machine, which is somehow damaged and he has
to fix it to save mankind (I think I've got a reprint my storage unit someplace… maybe
I’ll dig it out and come back to this).
Redfield doesn't save the earth, by the way. In fact, he doesn't end up doing a goddamned
thing. You’ll see.
*Logan, my 19 year-old stepson, is a Doctor Who fanatic. I've never seen a single episode, so he tried repeatedly over Christmas break to make me watch it. He was unsuccessful.
Next week: Mein Gott!
