June 18, 2023- numbers 63, 64, 65

Spoilers

“The Mind and the Matter”

“A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft. A child of the 20th century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again, this time Act Two of his daily battle for survival, and in just a moment our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aides available only in the Twilight Zone.”

Okay.

We have a new least favorite episode. Currently, this episode will replace “Mighty Casey” on my running list of The Twilight Zone episodes. It was another comedic episode that just did not work at all. Archibald Beechcroft is able to make everybody disappear just by concentrating on them? Or he could make everybody just like him?

The episode was dull.

It was totally unbelievable.

“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”

Now this was much better.

There was a touch of comedic undertones in this episode, but it also had a mystery as well as a dark ending.

The report of a UFO crashing brought out a couple of state troopers to investigate during a snowstorm. They found a footprints leading to a local diner where a bus had stopped for a break.

When questioned, the bus driver said that he had six people on the bus, but there were seven people in the diner. He could not identify who was or was not on the bus.

Light flickered. Juke box played on its own. Strange things kept happening.

Everybody was distrustful of each other, even the married couples.

Finally the phone rang and the bridge, which had been keeping the bus driver from heading out, was reported as being fine and passable. The bus went on.

One of the passengers Ross (who was complaining about missing a meeting in Boston) returned to the diner with news that the bridge was not passable after all and the troopers and the bus had fallen through into the river and no one escaped.

Except him… the Martian (who showed off his three arms), who had been sent ahead to scout the place for a potential colony. Haley the cook at the diner told Ross that his colonizers had been intercepted by his own people… from Venus.

I enjoyed this episode and I was never sure who the alien was going to turn out to be. Jack Ely played the crazy old man and he was definitely a red herring, but a hoot to watch.

“The Obsolete Man”

Burgess Meredith returned for the third time to The Twilight Zone, this time as Romney Wordsworth, a librarian in a Fascist society that does not consider him important.

“You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind.  Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.”

A great episode to bring season two to an end. Burgess Meredith is awesome as the librarian who out smarted the state.

Convicted as obsolete and sentenced to be ‘liquidated’ Mr. Wordsworth came up with a plan. He asked to have an audience for his death and for only himself and the executioner to know how it was going to happen.

He then invited the Chancellor to come visit him a half hour before the sentence was to be carried out.

Wordsworth, pointing out the camera that had been installed, told the Chancellor that they were being broadcast as they spoke. He also revealed that he had told the executioner to set a bomb to blow up the apartment. When the Chancellor went to leave, he realized that the door was locked and that Wordsworth had trapped him too.

There was more here though. Earlier during Wordsworth’s hearing, the Chancellor stated that there was no God and Wordsworth disagreed. So as the clock ticked away before the explosion, Wordsworth read from the Bible.

With a minute remaining, the Chancellor shouted out “in God’s name” and Wordsworth agreed in God’s name, he would let him go, sparing his life form the bomb, which exploded seconds after. When the Chancellor returned to the court, he discovered he had been replaced and had been declared obsolete himself.

This episode played off the idea of a personal religion (faith in one God) vs. buying into a autonomous state government. The episode did imply that the state was bad as it referenced Hitler and Stalin.

Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver (who was the Chancellor) were fantastic in these roles and their work together in Wordsworth’s room was some of the best interplay of the season.

Tomorrow, I will be starting Season Three.