Classic Horrors Club

Writer | Theodore Sturgeon
Director | Leonard Valenta

As the episode opens, we land smack dab in the middle of a trial where, the announcer tells us, a man is fighting for his life. We know it’s the middle because the judge orders that there be no more interruptions. The bully prosecutor (William Lally) argues that Gordon Kent (Lon McCallister) stole a $5,000 fortune from Professor Adrian Sykes (Martin Brandt), then killed him.

When the jury leaves to deliberate, we see what really happened. Kent created a super-powered torch that Sykes paid him to use to open a steel door in the side of a mountain. Their short adventure inside left Sykes dead, and Kent raving like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956.) 

SPOILER ALERT! What the two men found inside the cave was some type of recording device that predicts disasters and, adjacent to that, a transmitter reporting that information to what Kent believes is an alien race. He quickly forms the hypothesis that…

Somewhere in the universe they’ve been watching us for a million years. They knew we’d be a threat when we discovered the H bomb. They’re coming! They don’t want that; they’re going to stop us.

Following the verdict, Kent rants in the courtroom that he’s not guilty, and follows it with the frantic dialogue above. No spoilers for the very end, but it makes an impact. With the first episode of Tales of Tomorrow, we learn that its stories are not afraid of dark endings. There’s no moral or lesson, though, unless you take it as a sign to keep an open mind when you’re summoned for jury duty.

Writer | Charles O’Neil
Based on a play by | Philip Wylie
Director | Leonard Valenta

The episode opens with an introductory lecture at a planetarium where the speaker says scientists believe the end of the world will arrive by natural causes, nothing man-made. In essence, it will end with a whimper, not a bang. The title of the episode leads us to believe the story itself will be about some kind of mistake, but in retrospect, perhaps the speaker is making a blunder himself.

As the story truly begins “somewhere in the Arctic,” we meet Carl Everson (Robert Allen) and his wife, Jane (Ann Loring.) At 9:00 PM, he’s going to perform an impossible experiment: “the fission of an element they said could never be split.” Isolated as they are, they’re oblivious to multiple efforts to contact them by other scientists who have learned the experiment will set off a deadly chain reaction.

Carl is impatient, yes, and he’s aware of prior reservations about the experiment, but we never get the feeling he’s proceeding because of fame or glory. He seems to believe that the cheap source of power it will produce will truly change the world. However, Jane has concerns that she shares with him, to which he responds:

At 9:00 we’ll know. There’s not one chance in 100 things could go wrong. There’s a remote possibility of touching off oxygen.

Jane then states the obvious: “But oxygen is everywhere. The whole world could become a gigantic atom bomb.” Steadfast, Carl continues:

There’s a time for study, and a time for action. We’ve come to the time for action.

For the 1950’s, this is scary dialogue, none more chilling than this exchange when Jane asks:

What about the children? What happens to the children of the world?

…and Carl responds:

If it does go wrong, and that’s a big “if,” they won’t have time to suffer. 

This is a race-against-time episode with the possibility of catastrophic results. It’s the second episode in a row involving the threat of a bomb and/or the end of the world. There’s no moral or lesson in this one either, unless it’s to always stay in touch when you’re working remotely, and/or, while a kiss might be a sweet way to end an argument, it won’t necessarily save the planet.