Episode Spotlight: "The Long Morrow" (1/10/1964)

Season 5, Episode 15 (135 overall)

Originally aired 1/10/1964

Cayuga Production # 2624

Fifty years ago tonight, a May-May romance threatened to become a December-May romance, but instead ended up a May-December romance. Everybody with me?

“The Long Morrow,” written by Rod Serling (apparently channeling O. Henry), introduces us to Commander Douglas Stansfield, an astronaut who has just been handed a life-changing mission: he’s to make a solo trip to a neighboring galaxy, from which he won’t return for forty years. He’ll be frozen in suspended animation for the bulk of the trip, so he’ll hardly age while he’s away. He has a meet-cute with Sandra Horn, a Space Agency employee, and the two immediately fall in love. He can’t back out of the mission, so it’s doomed to be a brief affair.

After Doug blasts off, Sandra submits to the same suspended animation process. 40 years elapse and, when Doug’s ship returns, she emerges fresh and (still) young and ready to start her life with him. However, communication with Doug was lost six months after his departure and, grieving his lost love in the void of space, he forewent the freezing process for the duration of the trip. He’s now an old man and, despite Sandra’s pleas, he bitterly sends her away.

Okay, this is just horrifically cruel. This is an example of a writer that, for some unknown reason, hates his characters and designs the worst possible outcome for them. Honestly Rod, what did Doug Stansfield ever do to you? On the surface, the story appears to be a mutual tragedy, but Sandra actually gets off pretty damned easy, comparatively speaking. She’s still young and vibrant; she can pick up the pieces and move on with her life. Doug, meanwhile, is just plain fucked. He just spent most of his life alone in a space capsule, undoubtedly hanging onto his sanity by the thinnest of threads, and the girl he did it for is now half his age. I imagine he’ll be hanging himself or slitting his wrists after the credits roll. 

But hey, why couldn't Doug have himself frozen for the next forty years, to be revived when Sandra grew older? It wouldn't even have to be forty years; it could just be enough to make it not so creepy (say, twenty-five years). I’ll tell you why: because Serling would've had her marry somebody else, and Doug’s heart would get broken all over again.

Dr. Bixler indicates that suspended animation is a new technique, but evidently it’s available on demand for any employee of the project. Taking that into consideration, don’tcha think it would've occurred to Sandra to freeze herself BEFORE Doug left? In fact, the story might’ve played better if they’d talked about it, but Doug forbade her from doing it in the interest of allowing her to “live her life.” Then she’d stubbornly do it anyway after he lifted off with the intention of surprising him. I guess the end result would've been the same, but it would be a little less arbitrary.

Here’s how I would've written it: I would've had Sandra come to meet Doug upon his return, a sad and lonely old maid who couldn't bear to marry anyone else. The surprise is the same: Doug arrives as an old man, having eschewed the suspended animation. Now it’s a seemingly tragic love story with an unexpected sweet ending, a powerful statement on the lengths man will go to attain true love.

So what else is wrong with this episode? Serling’s dialogue is terrible, just god-awful. In fact, this may be the single worst collection of awkward Serlingisms in the entire series run. Wait, “The Fear” might be worse (we’ll see when we get to it later this season). Seriously, nobody talks like this, and if they do… well, these two might be perfect for one another after all.  

And dammit, we get lots of shots of Doug in his tiny li’l Speedo while he’s on ice, but we get nothing in the way of female eye candy. I would've LOVED to see Mariette Hartley in a similar state of undress...at least Star Trek was kind enough to pick up the slack a few years later.

What’s right about the episode? The prologue is wonderfully eerie, ripe with promise. We open with Doug aboard the space capsule; lying prone in suspended animation in a frosty glass box (we last saw this prop in season two’s “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” only there it was covered with dust and there were four of ‘em). Doug’s narration (that’s right, Serling shares voiceover duties with the main character; this has only happened a couple of other times in the series) fills us in on a few details, and we then get a very effective flashback scene in which he receives the deep space assignment. Act one closes with more narration from Doug, in which he rhapsodizes about Sandra while in hibernation, accompanied by an interesting shot in which her face is overlaid onto his.

There's a marvelous moody atmosphere throughout the episode, most potent in the scenes in the shadowy hallway (sci-fi noir?). And, despite the unfortunate dialogue foisted on them, both leads are quite good, particularly Mariette Hartley. I do wish Sandra would've put up more of a fight when Doug sends her away at the end, but that’s a script issue.

THE MUSIC

“The Long Morrow” is stock-scored. The “Morning” cue from Fred Steiner’s beautiful score for season three’s “The Passersby” appears three different times, and its elegiac ambiguity underscores Doug and Sandra’s doomed romance quite nicely.

FAMILIAR FACES

Commander Douglas Stansfield (young and old) is brought to life by Robert Lansing in his only TZ gig. He does have another Rod Serling connection on his resume, however:  he appeared on Serling’s short-lived Western series The Loner in 1966 (“The Trial in Paradise”). Genre fans know him best as Gary Seven from Star Trek’s “Assignment Earth” episode in 1968, but he had roles on other sci-fi/fantasy/horror series, including Thriller, One Step Beyond, and the 1988 revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The lovely Mariette Hartley is radiant as Sandra Horn in her only TZ appearance. She had a notable role as Zarabeth, the painfully lonely sole inhabitant of a planet’s ice age (pictured earlier in this entry), in Star Trek’s “All Our Yesterdays” in 1969 (so hey, I guess she kinda sorta got a dose of her own medicine). I first took notice of Hartley when she appeared in the “Married” episode of TV’s The Incredible Hulk in 1978, in which her character dies a dramatic death in The Hulk’s arms. I was 8 years old when it first aired, and I remember tearing up (this might’ve been the first time a TV show ever made me cry). Hartley is still quite lovely at 74.

Dr. Bixler is played by George MacReady in his only TZ appearance; he’d cross paths with Rod Serling again, however, in the Night Gallery pilot movie in 1969 (he appeared in the opening segment “The Cemetery”). He also did two tours on The Outer Limits (“The Invisibles” and “Production and Decay of Strange Particles”). 

General Walters is played by Edward Binns, whom we enjoyed previously as Colonel Donlin in season one’s “I Shot An Arrow Into the Air.”

“The Long Morrow” certainly provides the surprising twist that the show is so famous for, but the problem here is that it’s crushingly, painfully meaningless. I’m reminded of O. Henry’s iconic (and ironic) “The Gift of the Magi,” in which an impoverished couple gives up their most beloved possessions for one another (he sells his watch to buy her an expensive comb for her hair, while she sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch, leaving them both with nothing but one another), but in that mutual sacrifice there was a point, that possessions do not equate wealth. What’s the lesson here? Why are these characters made to suffer so profoundly? Serling’s closing narration blames “the ferocious travesty of fate,” which is an absolute cop out. Sadly, the show will continue losing its moral compass as it fades into oblivion.

Next week: Salvadore Ross's future's so bright, he's gotta wear shades.

Episode Spotlight: "You Drive" (1/03/1964)

Season 5, Episode 14 (134 overall)

Originally aired 1/03/1964

Cayuga Production # 2625

Fifty years ago tonight, Rod Serling’s “You Drive” premiered, roughly one third into the series’ fifth season. The season has thus far been something of a roller coaster, with definite high points (“In Praise of Pip,” “Living Doll”) and, um, efforts leaning in the opposite direction (“A Kind of a Stopwatch,” “Probe 7, Over and Out”). “You Drive” represents an interesting schizophrenic approach, as it features some of both. The scenes that open and close the episode are quite excellent, matching the stunning quality of the show’s first season. The twenty minutes in between, however…. Well, are more on par with season four.

The opening scene finds a distracted Oliver Pope driving home from work in the rain. He errantly hits a newspaper boy on a bicycle and, after stopping long enough to look at the boy’s twisted body, panics and flees the scene. Serling’s clipped, tense opening narration has a sense of propulsive urgency that I haven’t heard since his (atypical) mid-episode narration in season one’s “I Shot an Arrow into the Air.” The accompanying music, lifted from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for season two’s “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room,” adds to said urgency. 

The sight of the injured boy, lying in the rain at a disjointed angle, is uncomfortably realistic. And finally, Anthony Edwards’ performance is spot on: he’s an average guy whose attention lapses at a critical moment, which could happen to anyone. It’s easy to condemn his decision to flee, but honestly, who among us wouldn't at least feel tempted to run like hell?

One minor quibble: Serling opening narration describes Pope as a “businessman-turned-killer” immediately after he flees the scene of the accident. It’s a bit of a spoiler, since the kid doesn’t actually die until act two.

As the police attempt to apprehend the driver, Pope’s car begins exhibiting odd behaviors, honking its horn and flashing its headlights seemingly of its own accord. A co-worker of his (whom he dislikes) is inexplicably identified by a witness to the accident, and it seems that Pope might just be off the hook. But that car in the garage has other ideas….

The bulk of the episode is pretty by-the-numbers. As soon as the car starts acting up, it’s all too obvious that things will escalate, and Pope will be ultimately driven (heh heh) to some measure of justice. This isn’t necessarily a criticism; it just feels like a waiting game till the climax arrives. It’s not boring, exactly, but…

Said climax involves Pope avoiding the car altogether and setting out for work on foot. Before his wife’s incredulous eyes, the car pulls out of the garage of its own volition and follows him… and we’re back to the propulsive excitement of the prologue. 

So the obvious question is: what’s powering the car? It could be the ghost of the dead child, except that the car starts acting up before he dies. So maybe it’s an astral projection kinda deal, which graduates to a full-on automotive haunting after he dies?  Nothing in the episode supports this, however, so we’re left with no explanation whatsoever. Bartlett Finchley met a gruesome end at the hands (well, wheels) of his car in season two’s “A Thing About Machines,” but there we had a general uprising of All Things Mechanical to revenge Finchley’s abuse of them, so it was easier to buy. “You Drive” isn’t really a man vs. machine story in that respect.

I suppose it’s possible that we’re seeing Pope’s abject guilt manifesting in a physical way, in the form of his car acting seemingly of its own accord. We've certainly seen guilt do some pretty powerful things on the show already (“King Nine Will Not Return,” “The Arrival,” “The Thirty Fathom Grave”). I was also pondering the possibility of the whole thing being a guilt-fueled hallucination, and that Pope was imagining the car’s antics as his subconscious mind was preparing to make him confess… but then I realized that his wife can also see and hear said antics, so never mind. Speaking of guilt, I’m often guilty of over-analyzing the machinations underlying the magical events that occur in The Twilight Zone, and this week is clearly no exception. The how isn’t nearly as important as the why, and since cosmic justice has once again been served, maybe it’s best not to ask too many questions.

FAMILIAR FACES

Oliver Pope is well-played by Edward Andrews in his second TZ appearance (he was the slimy Government narc Carlin in season one’s “Third from the Sun”). If you grew up in the 80’s like me, you probably know him as Molly Ringwald’s grandfather in Sixteen Candles (the one hosting foreign exchange student Long Duck Dong).

Pope’s office nemesis Pete Radcliff is played by Kevin Hagen, who previously visited The Twilight Zone in season one’s “Elegy” (he played Captain Webber). If you grew up in the 80’ like me, you probably know him as Doc Baker on TV’s long-running Little House on the Prairie.

“You Drive” is directed by John Brahm, his eleventh of a total twelve episodes he’d helm (he’ll be back a bit later in the season with “Queen of the Nile”). He also directed two episodes of The Outer Limits (“The Bellero Shield” and “ZZZZZ”), as well as multiple stints on Thriller, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Ultimately, “You Drive” doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its prologue, but it tries damn hard to redeem itself in the final three minutes. It’s kinda like a sandwich: the filler’s decent, but that bread holding it together is damned tasty. Hmmm, is anybody else hungry?

7 days from now: 
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone... 

SyFy New Year’s Marathon 2013

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, kids, and you know what that means.... yet another TZ marathon on the SyFy Channel. Here's the lineup:

Dec 31, 2013

8:00 AM  One For The Angels
8:30 AM  The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
9:00 AM  Escape Clause
9:30 AM  Perchance To Dream
10:00 AM  And When The Sky Was Opened
10:30 AM  What You Need
11:00 AM  I Shot An Arrow Into The Air
11:30 AM  The Fever
12:00 PM  Long Live Walter Jameson
12:30 PM  A World Of His Own
1:00 PM  Mr. Denton On Doomsday
1:30 PM  Third From The Sun
2:00 PM  People Are Alike All Over
2:30 PM  A Nice Place To Visit
3:00 PM  King Nine Will Not Return
3:30 PM  Nick Of Time
4:00 PM  A Most Unusual Camera
4:30 PM  The Night Of The Meek
5:00 PM  A Penny For Your Thoughts
5:30 PM  The Odyssey Of Flight 33
6:00 PM  A Hundred Yards Over The Rim
6:30 PM  The Shelter
7:00 PM  Where Is Everybody?
7:30 PM  Time Enough At Last
8:00 PM  The Hitch-hiker
8:30 PM  The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
9:00 PM  A Stop At Willoughby
9:30 PM  The Howling Man
10:00 PM  Eye Of The Beholder
10:30 PM  The Invaders
11:00 PM  Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?
11:30 PM  The Obsolete Man

Jan 1, 2014

12:00 AM  The Midnight Sun
12:30 AM  Walking Distance
1:00 AM  The Lonely
1:30 AM  Judgment Night
2:00 AM  The Four Of Us Are Dying
2:30 AM  The Last Flight
3:00 AM  The Purple Testament
3:30 AM  Nightmare As A Child
4:00 AM  Mr. Bevis
4:30 AM  The After Hours

(paid programming)

8:00 AM  A Thing About Machines
8:30 AM  The Prime Mover
9:00 AM  The Silence
9:30 AM  The Arrival
10:00 AM  Deaths-Head Revisited
10:30 AM  A Piano In The House
11:00 AM  The Last Rights Of Jeff Myrtlebank
11:30 AM  Hocus-Pocus And Frisby
12:00 PM  In Praise Of Pip
12:30 PM  Uncle Simon
1:00 PM  It's A Good Life
1:30 PM  Five Characters In Search Of An Exit
2:00 PM  The Hunt
2:30 PM  Little Girl Lost
3:00 PM  The Little People
3:30 PM  A Kind Of a Stopwatch
4:00 PM  Probe 7 Over And Out
4:30 PM  The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms
5:00 PM  Number Twelve Looks Just Like You
5:30 PM  Black Leather Jackets
6:00 PM  What's In The Box
6:30 PM  Caesar And Me
7:00 PM  A Game Of Pool
7:30 PM  Dead Man's Shoes
8:00 PM  Kick The Can
8:30 PM  To Serve Man
9:00 PM  The Dummy
9:30 PM  I Sing The Body Electric
10:00 PM  Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
10:30 PM  Living Doll
11:00 PM  The Masks
11:30 PM  The Bewitchin' Pool
12:00 PM  I Am The Night - Color Me Black
12:30 AM  Mr. Dingle, The Strong
1:00 AM  Long Distance Call
1:30 AM  The Rip Van Winkle Caper
2:00 AM  Two
2:30 AM  The Grave
3:00 AM  The Old Man In The Cave
3:30 AM  Night Call
4:00 AM  Ring-a-ding Girl
4:30 AM  Stopover In A Quiet Town
8:00 AM  A Quality Of Mercy
8:30 AM  Nothing In The Dark

Episode Spotlight: "Ring-a-Ding Girl" (12/27/1963)

Season 5, Episode 13 (133 overall)

Originally aired 12/27/1963

Cayuga Production # 2623

Fifty years ago, a self-absorbed movie star redeemed herself through the offices of One Step Be---- oops, I mean The Twilight Zone.

Bunny Blake, Hollywood’s “Ring-a-Ding Girl” (whatever that means), is about to depart for a movie shoot in Rome when her personal assistant hands her a package. Bunny, who is very clearly a spoiled celebrity, tears it open immediately. It’s a ring from her fan club, located in her hometown of Howardville (I almost typed “Indiana,” but they never say what state it’s in). Bunny, who is shallow and is easily captivated by shiny objects, places the ring on her finger, and is immediately confronted with images of her friends and family, urgently imploring her to come home.

Bunny arrives unannounced in Howardville to her sister and nephew’s delight, but things take an odd turn when she insists on inviting the entire town to forgo their annual Founder’s Day picnic and watch her perform a one-woman show in the high school auditorium instead. At this point we’re on the same page as the disgusted high school superintendent, said page reading “Wow, what a conceited bitch!” As it turns out, however, Bunny knows something the rest of them don’t, and has a rather altruistic plan in mind to save them (or as many of them as possible) from an imminent catastrophe.

“Ring-a-Ding Girl” was written by Earl Hamner Jr. (“Jess-Belle”), and I can’t help but wonder if he originally wrote this for Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond, discovered that the show was cancelled two years earlier, and submitted it here instead. It’s practically dripping with that show’s unique ethos, right down to the astral projection/doppelgänger theme and the eerie Theramin riffs punctuating Bunny’s periodic gazes into her magical ring (which sound like Harry Lubin composed them; they’re actually by Rene Garriguenc). It’s not the first time TZ has stepped on John Newland’s toes (see season two’s “Twenty Two”).

I have a couple of issues with “Ring-a-Ding Girl.” First and foremost, Bunny Blake is annoying as hell, and not just because of her lame “ring-a-ding!” catchphrase (I can’t decide if it’s the character or the actress that I object to; perhaps it’s both). We don’t see much of Howardville, but its “golly gee whiz small town USA” character still comes through loud and clear (thanks particularly to the Budd character). Both the characters and the locations are clichéd caricatures.

And the ring itself is maddeningly enigmatic. Is it some kind of interspatial conduit, through which people are communicating with Bunny? Are they calling to Bunny from an alternate timeline and beyond the grave, attempting to save their other selves? Is the ring some kind of focusing element for Bunny’s body and/or soul, which appears to be stretched across two different realities?  Hildy sent the ring to Bunny, so is she aware of its apparent powers? And, perhaps more importantly, is she also aware of the tragedy soon to unfold, and is attempting to intervene (her shocked reaction at the end would indicate not)? I know, I know: this is The Twilight Zone. Why the hell am I asking so many questions?

Despite my misgivings, there are a few things I like about the episode.  Bunny’s grating antics stop dead every time she looks at her ring and, for those few seconds, she’s suddenly a real, troubled person.  And I like the optical effect used for the ring shots too (see above).  And Bunny’s final exit, in which she steps outside into the pouring rain and vanishes, is well-executed and hauntingly effective. The episode certainly ends on a better note than it begins. But is it enough to redeem the whole thing? I dunno.

FAMILIAR FACES

While the actors in the lead roles aren't repeat TZ visitors, almost the entire supporting cast has repeatedly intersected the fifth dimension.

Bing Russell plays Ben Braden, the local TV personality who facilitates Bunny’s on-air invitation to her one-woman show. Russell crossed over into The Twilight Zone previously in season three’s “The Arrival.”  He was well-known here in my neck of the woods as the owner of minor league baseball’s Portland Mavericks (1973-1977). Oh, and genre fans are undoubtedly familiar with his son Kurt (Escape from New York, The Thing, Stargate), who played on his dad’s team in ‘73 and ‘77 (the team’s first and last years in existence, interestingly enough).

Hank Patterson is sufficiently gruff as the crotchety high school superintendent Mr. Gentry.  He last appeared on TZ as Mr. Freitag, one of the Sunnyvale Rest Home residents, in season three’s “Kick the Can”; we’ll see him again later this season in “Come Wander with Me.”

The State Trooper who telephones Hildy with news of the plane crash (and Bunny’s death) is played by none other than Vic Perrin, the famed Control Voice on ABC’s The Outer Limits.  Here in The Twilight Zone, Perrin played a Martian in season one’s “People Are Alike All Over” and, more recently, provided the voice of the robot in “Uncle Simon.”

George Mitchell (Dr. Floyd) turns in his fourth and final TZ appearance: he played the cranky gas station proprietor in “The Hitch-hiker” and the bitter father at Joe Caswell’s hanging in “Execution” (both in season one); more recently he played Elly Glover’s father in season four’s “Jess-belle.”

Bill Hickman plays the briefly-glimpsed pilot of Bunny Blake’s ill-fated airplane in his only TZ appearance. He also popped up as a guard in the Outer Limits episode “The Mice.”

Before my recent viewing, I hadn't seen “Ring-a-Ding Girl” in well over twenty-five years. I can honestly say that, having seen it through older eyes, I don’t dislike it nearly as much as I thought I did, but I can’t say that I necessarily love it either. Like many season five offerings, there’s some potential in the core idea but the execution is somewhat lacking. In his Twilight Zone Companion, Zicree breezes past it with a single line: “(It’s) much like the stone in the ring Bunny Blake receives: interesting, but no gem.” I get no pleasure out of agreeing with Zicree, but… yeah, he totally nailed it here.

Next week:

You know what's worse than a backseat driver? No driver at all.