Description: Season 2, Episode 24
Air Date: April 21, 1961
Plot Summary: Thieves plan to sleep for a hundred years in order to safely spend the gold they've stolen.
Review: This yet another meh episode. While it has a few interesting ideas, the scheme that the thieves concoct is clearly mindless and destined to fail. In other words, I can't fully take the story line seriously when I can't suspend my disbelief enough. Essentially, four experts combine their skills to pull off a heist on a train en route to Fort Knox. After stealing a paltry $1 million (even by 1961, this is pittance when split 4 ways) in gold, the thieves retreat back to a hideout in the middle of the desert. Here, the thieves plan to use a kind of suspended animation chamber to put themselves to sleep for a 100 years. Uh, come the fuck on, man. How could they not see this would be a horrible idea? Try 25 or 50 years TOPS! This was the height of the Cold War to boot--what guarantee would there be that the world would still be there? Regardless of any kind of debate, the thieves go along with this plot, and, sure enough, awake 100 years later.
Using 1961 sci-fi logic, there are no real explanations of how this works, but the thieves wake up as if not a second has passed. Somewhat doubting the situation, they realize the truth when one of the flunkies is found decomposed in their chamber. With limited water and a car to drive them toward civilization, the remaining thieves pack up except one of them decides to fuck it all up; the one thief runs another flunky over and then destroys the car. Hmm, sounds intelligent. With only two thieves left, they begin marching through the desert while carrying their gold. One flunky loses his water bottle and the other thief demands gold in exchange for water. Instead of making this a plan to trick the guy into carrying all the gold and exhausting himself, the waterless thief simply beats the other flunky to death. You're killing me here, TZ! Finally, the last thief stumbles upon other humans and offers them gold before the thief dies of thirst. As it would turn out, the futuristic humans don't care about gold as they found a way to synthesize it artificially. Okay...well, that would have been a lot more dramatic, and fitting of the TZ tone, had the last thief realized that truth for himself but whatever.
They just dropped the ball too many times throughout the episode when there were opportunities to make this memorable. The final thief should have deceived the one guy into carrying the gold then laughed as he took all the gold without having to carry it. Then, being the most evil of the bunch, the thief is cocky with his triumph only to realize all the trouble was for naught. Hell, make it so he still ended up in prison for the crime or something too. There were a lot of options squandered.
I'm not fully sure why the suspended animation thing was nessessary for the sake of money, when building those animation things may've cost as much as the gold itself. Yes, I get that it was so they could wait until the law is no longer hot on their trail, but still, there were better less expensive ways around it I'm sure. And like you said, it didn't have to be anywhere close to 100 years, even 15-20 years would've done. I thought it was very stupid how they lost their van and had to walk all due to one idiot deciding to drive the van all crazy and off the cliff. Talk about losing out due to being total morons, geez! And leaving his water canteen behind being the reason for their "one bar for one drink" canteen sharing deal. And it is true that killing him wasn't nessessary, he could've just tired him out. And I agree that the lead guy should've heard about gold not being valuable anymore and gotten a reaction before dying.
ReplyDeleteI was moved by the creepy twist of one of the guys being found completely decompsed right after the guys started doubting if they even went forward in time at all, it was an eerie surprise.
The lead guy is played by the same guy that played the natzi in the TZ concentration camp episode "Death heads revisited". He was better there.
I'm not fully sure why the suspended animation thing was nessessary for the sake of money, when building those animation things may've cost as much as the gold itself. Yes, I get that it was so they could wait until the law is no longer hot on their trail, but still, there were better less expensive ways around it I'm sure. And like you said, it didn't have to be anywhere close to 100 years, even 15-20 years would've done. I thought it was very stupid how they lost their van and had to walk all due to one idiot deciding to drive the van all crazy and off the cliff. Talk about losing out due to being total morons, geez! And leaving his water canteen behind being the reason for their "one bar for one drink" canteen sharing deal. And it is true that killing him wasn't nessessary, he could've just tired him out. And I agree that the lead guy should've heard about gold not being valuable anymore and gotten a reaction before dying.
ReplyDeleteI was moved by the creepy twist of one of the guys being found completely decompsed right after the guys started doubting if they even went forward in time at all, it was an eerie surprise.
The lead guy is played by the same guy that played the natzi in the TZ concentration camp episode "Death heads revisited". He was better there.