I don't wish it to seem like the tone of this journal is taking a downward turn, with my grumping about Seth MacFarlane yesterday and now this, but it occurred to me that it's been a while since I stepped over the edge of what man knows to be true, and it was time to again sample
There's no doubt that the early, original version of the show contained some absolute howlers, and in a way you can understand that: this was, after all, the fifties, and science-fiction was in its infancy, so much more so on the television. But while I could pick a fistful of rotten tomatoes out of the classic series, I wanted to go a little further up the line and look at when the series was revived, almost thirty years later. Admittedly --- and somewhat to my surprise --- many of the episodes in the revival series were good, some even brilliant (the excellent “Children's zoo”, “A little peace and quiet” (even though it's something of a remake of a classic episode) and “Examination Day”, as well as the hilarious “Wish bank” spring to mind). But there were a lot that did not make the grade, and of course I'm concentrating on one of those here.
Often, when a series, especially a classic one, is attempted after the original finishes, it can be a real mess. Look at the remakes of “The Bionic Woman” and “Knight Rider” for examples of why some things should be left to rest. But occasionally they get it right. In truth, the sort of sister series to this,
The Outer Limits was also revived and generally speaking managed quite well for most of the time. But it is Serling's classic we're concerned with here, and where that fell down, when it did. Here, to be fair the first really bad episode came almost halfway through the first season of the new series, and though it's bad it's nowhere near as bad as “One for the angels”, which I featured as the first in this series. But it has some catastrophic moments.
It's even more annoying, and thrown into sharp relief by the fact that it partners one of the truly great episodes of season one, indeed the entire series, in “Examination Day”, where a young boy is found to be too clever and is sentenced to death. The “new” Twilight Zone didn't concentrate on one episode as had the classic series, but used shorter stories and put two or often three in together, so that you could have this juxtapositioning of one great story with two terrible or sub-par ones, or the other way around. I suppose at least it meant your night wasn't totally wasted: if you sat through a bad episode there might be a good one coming up after the break, so there was always hope. But sometimes these poorer episodes were so bad that they were really shown up by a good or even superb episode that either followed or preceded it. Taken on their own they might be acceptable, but when put up beside the other story they wilted like flowers in the desert.
Episode title: “A message from Charity”
Series: 1980s revival
Year: 1985
Season: One
Episode: Fifteen
Written by: Alan Brennert, from a story by Wiliam M. Lee
In this case, “A message from Charity” followed “Examination Day”, so was the comedown after that most excellent episode, and a limp ending to what could have been a really good feature. The producers would sometimes work it so that a dramatic or heavy episode would be followed by one of the lighter, more comedic ones, which helped balance things out, as in episodes 28 and 29, when the hilarious and clever “I of Newton” followed the darkly tragic Wes Craven-directed “Her pilgrim soul”. Here though, both episodes were rather heavy, neither relying on any real sort of comedy and though one was far superior to the other, they both followed a similar theme. And both featured children.
So to the story, such as it is. In seventeenth century New England, a girls lies sick, perhaps dying. As her family fuss over her, she starts to have strange visions --- odd things she has never seen before, that nobody has --- beasts of metal that roar along huge pathways ans scream like the hounds of hell. The scene changes, and we see that what she is experiencing is a sports car, flying along a highway, being shown on a television screen in the present. Another child, a boy, lies ill too, the doctors trying to treat him. His parents are told the boy has picked up a bacterial infection from stagnant water, and that there are other cases locally. His mother recalls her own mother speaking of a similar affliction in her youth, and the doctor confirms that this strain, in one form or another, has persisted around here since colonial days.
Now it's the boy, Peter's turn to see things, as he sees a woman he does not recognise leaning over him. She is dressed like a pilgrim, and even the most dull-witted among us (hey! I have an IQ any cheese sandwich would be proud of!) can figure out what's happening: the girl in the past is seeing what is her future and the boy is seeing into the past, each gazing at an unfamiliar world through the other's eyes. Under the ministrations of the doctor, Peter soon begins to recover, but the visions remain. Now he can see a young girl, who tells him (whom she cannot see, only hear) her name is Charity Payne. He asks her what year it is and she tells him 1700, though for him of course it is 1985. He rather too quickly susses that he is somehow talking to a person from the past, and that not only can she see through his eyes but taste through his lips, giving him the opportunity to expose her to the kinds of wonders of food she has never experienced before.
Of course, anyone with half a brain can see it's going to go wrong, turn sour, and so it does as Charity starts blabbering about all the things she's “seen in a dream” to her friend. Naturally, this gets back to the elders who begin to suspect --- anyone? --- that she's a witch. Peter must now work to clear her name, but in colonial America, anyone suspected of witchcraft was invariably convicted. Remember Salem? When Peter allows her to sample wine through his lips, she gets drunk and her father begins to worry. His daughter has been somewhat distant of late, and he is concerned, wondering if the fever she had been suffering from is coming back?
Too late, Peter realises he's been a selfish idiot, and that he has placed his friend from the 1700s in danger. When the Witchfinder General calls at her home, Charity is taken away and it turns out that Squire Jonas Hacker, the Witchfinder General, is using his position of power to abuse the girls who are accused of witchcraft. When she refuses to submit to his “examination for the marks of witchcraft” and runs off, he immediately denounces her as a witch and she is sent to trial.
But Peter, while researching to see how the trial turned out, though he is unable to find a record of same, does stumble across evidence of a murder perpetrated by the Squire, and when Charity, using the information Peter has given her, tells Hacker about it he backs down and she is free to go, one of the very few not to burn as a witch. In order to protect his own dark secret, the Squire, who knew anyway that Charity is no witch, takes back his accusation, in order to forestall the girl's continuing with the very specific details of the murder he committed.
Having had too close a call, Charity decides that Peter and she should no longer talk, or “see” each other, and they part. A year later, however, he is briefly contacted by the girl, to tell him she has left him a message --- a message from Charity --- at Bear Rock, where he finds a heart carved with their initials.
Why do I hate this episode?
It's an exercise in pure stupidity. Look at the facts: this guy from the twentieth century suddenly finds he can talk to a girl who lived nearly three hundred years ago, and not only does he accept this too quickly and easily, he then blithely tells her all this future history, never once getting that she is in colonial times, when such ramblings would be seen as at best madness or lies, and at worst, yeah, witchcraft. I mean, how fu
cking stupid is this kid? He's going to college: he should be able to work this out in an instant. Has he never watched
Star Trek or
Doctor Who? You never, ever tell someone their future, much less when they're living in a superstitious time like 1700s America! Not only that, he goes on to tell her about the American War of Independence and Revolution, words that, if uttered back then, would be seen as high treason! Has he no sense?
When she almost jokingly suggests how much fun it would be to tell her friend of the things she has seen, anyone with a brain would say do not under any circumstances tell anyone! Peter though, not only approves and eggs her on, as if this is some sort of game, he suggests to her things she might bait her friend with, including men walking on the moon and flying through the sky! Surely this other girl must fear for her soul, talking to a demon incarnate!
Then, not satisfied with nearly getting her burned as a witch, he wants to continue the liaison! “We'll just be more careful”, he says. Is this guy candidate for idiot of the year or something? As for Charity: first she can only hear Peter, then suddenly she can see him, see through his eyes and taste through his lips. And how is this controlled? How is it turned off, or is it ever? Does she taste everything he tastes, at the same time? What about if he pukes? Does she? And if so, would her father not worry, ask why she is getting sick? What about when he goes to the toilet? Is there a way to limit or turn off this phenomenon? And how did it get started anyway? Never explained; like much in
The Twilight Zone, it just happens and you're expected to accept it.
What about the tainted water? When I watched this first, I thought Peter, hearing Charity speak of it, was going to research why the water was bad, tell her and maybe cure it. But though it's mentioned, it's not expanded on and it's relegated to the position of a very shaky plot device used to tie the two people, three centuries apart, together. And then there's the title. It makes no sense until the very last scene, when Charity reappears briefly in Peter's mind, to tell him about the message she has carved at Bear Rock. But what's the point? Yes it's romantic, and yes it reminds him of her and proves the whole thing was real, but it's very much incidental to the main storyline. If they had called it “A message from Peter” or “A message to Charity”, that would have made much more sense.
Basically, I hate this because it teeters on the very flimsy possibility that a teenage boy would be thick enough to let slip details about her future to a girl who could not possibly know such things, could not prove them and could not account for how she knew of them. I'm not sure I know anyone that stupid, and the fact that we're asked to believe this about Peter Woods annoys me immensely.
Saving graces?
Yeah, not much really, if any at all. The resolution which saves Charity from the stake is patchy and ill-thought-out. I mean, are we really supposed to believe that such detailed information exists on a man who lived, almost 300 years ago, a minor functionary in a small town in a small part of America? They had all the details? Why? They might have mentioned he was found to have murdered someone, but to have the location, the directions to the murder spot, all the data on it? Surely not. And yet without that, there is no way Charity would have been spared. I find it hard to credit that this is the device the author uses to effect the girl's salvation. Very poor.
Other than that, nothing much. As I say, the “tainted water” strand of the plot, dangled before us enticingly, is never explored or used to any great degree. The ending is clumsy and pointless, and exists really only to justify the title and to give a “happy ending” to the tale. No, I can see nothing really to praise or to save this story. The fact that it's from an actual short story makes it all the worse: if it were the concoction of some TV hack then maybe it wouldn't sting as it does, but this was actually published by an author? Oh dear God, is all I can say.
And isn't that...?
Two stars here, amid the garbage, one of whom stands out above the other. James Cromwell is understatedly powerful as Charity's father, while Star Trek Voyager's Robert Duncan McNeil --- here going under the name Duncan McNeil --- is clumsy and stumbling in his part, and comes across as egotistical, naive and arrogant: qualities that would later serve him well when he took on the role of Tom Paris.
Interesting asides
It is mildly interesting that there is a
Star Trek link here, as in addition to McNeil playing Tom Paris in
Voyager, Cromwell did a star turn as inventor and pioneer of space travel Zefram Cochrane in the eighth
Star Trek movie, “First Contact”.
A simpler time?
Certainly the times were simpler in colonial America, and if I can grab even one decent line from this episode, it's when a shocked Peter asks “They'll hunt you down with dogs? You live in a savage time, Charity!” and she, having seen his world through his eyes, snipes back “Yes, thank God we don't have the bomb!” Touche.