I beg the indulgence of any readers under the age of fifty.\u00a0 This episode is an homage to the age of silent films.\u00a0 And anyone under the half century mark probably has had no experience with silent films.\u00a0 So please bear with me if I seem to be doting on an episode that looks like a museum piece and lacks any point of reference for the young.<\/p>\n
Buster Keaton plays Woodrow Mulligan, a disgruntled janitor complaining about the high prices, noisiness and high-speed bicycle traffic of pre-automobile 1890 small town America.\u00a0 He works for an inventor and as he\u2019s walking to work, he is almost run over by a bicycle and falls into a horse trough and has to hang up his pants while they dry on the clothes line.\u00a0 But even in his boxer shorts he picks up a broom and proceeds to sweep the inventor\u2019s offices.\u00a0 While sweeping he hears the inventors celebrating their invention of a \u201ctime helmet\u201d which will allow its wearer to travel forward and back in time for thirty minutes.\u00a0 Hearing this, Woodrow thinks it would be a great idea to travel through time to escape the hectic, aggravating life of 1890.\u00a0 So, he puts on the helmet and heads onto the street to see the future.\u00a0 As he is preparing to leave a chicken flies into his arms and then he is transported into 1962.\u00a0 And of course, if he thought bicycle traffic was too fast imagine how aggravated rush hour automobile traffic made him?\u00a0 Stuck in the middle of the street, he loses his helmet to an accidental passerby\u2019s protruding arm.\u00a0 Then a little boy on roller skates picks it up and skates away.\u00a0 Now Woodrow commandeers a bicycle from a sidewalk rack and chases after the boy.\u00a0 Of course, the cop on the beat sees a middle-aged man without pants chasing a boy on roller skates and immediately pursues on foot.<\/p>\n
The boy turns down an alley and collides with a man named Rollo.\u00a0 The helmet falls off the boy\u2019s head and he skates off without it.\u00a0 Woodrow rounds the corner and also collides with Rollo.\u00a0 Woodrow collects his helmet but discovers that it\u2019s broken.\u00a0 Bewailing his fate, he tells his story to Rollo.\u00a0 By a coincidence Rollo is a scientist and observing Woodrow\u2019s clothing and other trappings he believes the story and agrees to help Woodrow to repair the helmet before the thirty-minute deadline passes.\u00a0 They go to an Electrical Appliance Repair Shop and spend most of the rest of the episode trying to explain what needs to be fixed and allowing Woodrow to become confused by vacuum cleaners and television sets.<\/p>\n
When the helmet is repaired Rollo steals it saying he wants to go back to the peaceful 1890s.\u00a0 Woodrow chases Rollo and at the very last second, he leaps onto Rollo and they both are transported back to 1890.\u00a0 In the next scene Woodrow shows a renewed appreciation for local conditions in 1890.\u00a0 But Rollo is miserable in the pre-electronic age he sent himself to and pines for modernity.\u00a0 Woodrow responds rapidly and plants the helmet on Rollo\u2019s head and turns the dial to 1962 and sends him back to his time.<\/p>\n
The conceit in this one is that the portions of the story that take place in 1890 are filmed as a silent film with background music and subtitle but no voices.\u00a0 The 1960s portions were just the typical Twilight Zone era television format.\u00a0 The episode is a broad comedy to honor and play to the style of the famous silent comedy star Buster Keaton.\u00a0 In effect, it might as well have been a Bugs Bunny cartoon.\u00a0 As an aside Rollo was played by Stanley Adams who appeared as Cyrano Jones in the Trouble with Tribbles episode of the original Star Trek series.\u00a0 He is the salesman who sells a Tribble to one of the Enterprise crew.<\/p>\n
So, for this episode tastes will vary greatly but I\u2019ll be (as always) conservative and give it a B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I beg the indulgence of any readers under the age of fifty.\u00a0 This episode is an homage to the age of silent films.\u00a0 And anyone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1839,1838,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-buster-keaton","tag-once-upon-a-time","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n