June 11, 2025 • 48 mins
Jimbo and 80's review one of the most famous episodes of the the classic television show The Twilight Zone.......It's A COOKBOOK!!!!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
There's a podcast that lies between the imagination of two
simple minded Earthlings. Travel with these two longtime friends, Jimbo
and eighties E as they attempt to explore the fifth dimension.
Follow along with them as they take the key and
unlock the door to the vast space between shadow and substance.
(00:24):
This podcast is one of trivia, of insight, and of
sounds and ideas from one of the greatest television shows
ever produced. You are embarking on a timeless journey. There
is your signpost up ahead. You are entering the Tragedy
of Cinema's Twilight.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Zone, respectfully submitted for your perusal.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
A cannimate height a little over nine feet. Wait in
the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Unknown motives.
They're in hangs the tale for in just a moment,
we're going to ask you to shake hands figurative lee
with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time.
This is the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
All right, guys, welcome back to the Tragedy of Cinema podcast,
the Twilight Zone series.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I'm your host Jimbo, and I'm your co host eighty
Z Eric.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Today we will be talking about one of the, if
not one of the most famous episodes of the Toilet Zone.
To Serve Man, season three, episode twenty four. I'm sure
a lot of people are familiar with this episode, especially
the most famous line.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Definitely iconic line.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah and obviously iconic alien. Look if you will.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Right, you don't sound definitely definitely you know, we'll see
what happens. Let's jump right into it. This is the
episode entitled to Serve Man. This is the Twilight Zone
season three, episode number twenty four. We're moving quite along.
We're past halfway, right, I think we are. This one
(02:04):
comes in with a strong IMDb rating of nine point zero.
It was directed by Richard L. Bar The teleplay was
Rod Serling, and this was based on a I don't
know if it was a novel or short story. And
I got this wrong in the previous episode where we
talked about the last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank, I said
(02:27):
incorrectly that that was written by a man named Damon
and I didn't know his last name. Well, it turns
out I was wrong, and it's this episode to Serve Man.
It was actually originally written by Damon Knight was the
man's name, and has some stock featured music from Jerry
Goldsmith and some scores from Back There and The Invaders.
(02:52):
So if you remember those episodes, there's some score from
those episodes. I think that was reused. The original air
date for this episode was March the second, nineteen sixty two.
And you know, we've got some information in trivia for
March the second. This brings us to our favorite segment
in the episode, the segment that we like to call on.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
This day in history.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
All right, So for on this day, for March the second,
let's go all the way back to nineteen thirty three
and a little film called King Kong emerged and it
was directed by Marion C. Cooper and Ernest B. I'm
gonna butcher this last name, show dat show to Zach.
(03:40):
It's starring Fay Ray and premieres at Radio City Music
Hall in r r KO Roxy in NYC. So, King
Kong is born nineteen thirty three, Jimbo, King.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Of the King of your favorite right Wezilla, King Kong
is up there. So when you have honking, honking King
Kong and God's a little together in the movie, it's
just a masterpiece.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Yeah, It's unlike anything other, all right, March second, nineteen
sixty four, we have more Beatles trivia. They begin filming
the film A Hard Day's Night, which is really not
all I guess it was a film, but it was
more like the original music video right Hard Days. So
it featured George Harrison and he would meet his future
(04:29):
wife and her name was Patty Boyd. So March second,
nineteen sixty five, One year later, one of the most
popular musical films of all time, The Sound of Music.
Who all right, that's enough. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plumber.
I know you have a big crush on Julie Andrews.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Man, I'm telling you what. Marry Papa's herself.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Well, it premiered and it won an Academy Award for
Best Picture in nineteen six six, so it did a
lot of damage in the mid sixties. So that was
the premiere was March second, nineteen sixty five. Let's go.
Two years later, March second, nineteen sixty seven, the ninth
Grammy Awards and Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra.
(05:19):
It wins the Best Record and Michelle by the Beatles
Michelle my Bell Strangers in the Night. Yeah, Michelle my
Bell by the Beatles, also won at that Grammy Awards.
March second, nineteen seventy seven. Betty Davis is the first
(05:40):
woman to receive American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. So,
Betty Davis, Betty Davis eyes, Hey.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
He's got no man. This is going to turn into
a scening podcake version March second, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
We're going to back up. These are out of order,
going back a little bit, but this is a sports
trivia piece Our second, nineteen sixty two. We could not
leave this date out. Philadelphia center Wilt Chamberlain scores one
hundred points, the most ever by an NBA player in
a single game, and it was against the Warriors. The
final score was one sixty nine to one forty seven,
(06:20):
and it was in Uh sorry, it's oh, I got
that out of Philadelphia. Warriors won one sixty nine to
one forty seven over the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
So Wilt was thirty six from six for sixty three
from the field and twenty eight to thirty two from
the free throw line to get his one hundred points.
(06:43):
So that record still stands. And uh, I don't know
If it will ever be broken, it probably will be.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
The way they're shooting these days.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Probably Kobe Bryant got close. He had eighty one.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Was that before the three point line was invented?
Speaker 5 (06:55):
I think there was a three point line if I'm
not mistaken. I don't know to look that up. You
might look that up on chat GPT while I peruse
along here. March second, nineteen sixty eight. This is another
sports trivia. Pardon me. Nineteen year old Peggy Fleming wins
(07:16):
her third consecutive World Ladies Figure Skating Championship in Geneva, Switzerland.
She was an American figure skater. She turned professional and
eventually went on to broadcasting. So nineteen year old American
Peggy Fleming, she won that a particular three consecutive World
(07:40):
Ladies Figure Skating championships. March second, nineteen sixty eight. You
got an answer for.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
All right, Eric. The three point line was first introduced
some professional basketball is by the ABA in nineteen sixty seven.
The NBA didn't adopt three point line until the nineteen
seventy nine nineteen eighty season. More than a decade.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
There eighty no three point line got one hundred. Wow,
that's that's impressive. All right. Some notable birthdays March second,
nineteen seventeen. Cuban American singer Baba Loo bandleader actor from
I Love Lucy Desi Arnez mister or aka Ricky Ricardo.
(08:18):
He was born in San Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.
All right. March second, nineteen sixty two. American rock singer
and songwriter John bon Jovi. You got some John bon
Jovi on dead O. He was born Eric.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Used to work on the DME.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Still do unions, men astral He was born in Sarah. Okay,
that's enough.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
You got a hold too, what we got.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
He was born Serryville, New Jersey. He's a New Jersey
born kid. And finally, one last birthday, March second, nineteen
sixty eight. The English actor most famous for the James
Bond films, Daniel Craig. He was born in Chester, England
on this day, March second, nineteen.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Sixty Do you like Daniel Craig is James Bond Sean Connery? Yeah?
Is the best.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
He takes it every time. Back to our episode here,
let's give a few facts and figures about this episode
at hand. To serve man the total production costs came
in pretty steep, this time, sixty one one hundred nineteen
dollars and fifty nine cents. A few dates of rehearsal
(09:46):
and filming. Dates of rehearsal were two June nine and
June twelve, nineteen sixty one, three days of filming. The
third actually four excuse me, the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and
seventeenth of nineteen sixty one, so a lot of filming days.
With that being said, jimbo roll us with this cast,
serve us this cast.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
All right, I'm gonna do my best. There are some
names on here that are pretty hard to announce, so
we'll give it our best shot. So you have Lloyd
Bauckner as the lead character. I guess I feel Michael Chambers.
He was also the guy that does the narration because
this episode you kind of like go back and it's
(10:29):
very unique. Yeah, yeah, very very interesting. Then you had
Richard kill Man. How good is he? He played the
kind of mights Well, they all look alike, but you
may remember him as Jaws from some of the James
Bond films and then also more recently and Happy gi More.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Yeah, that's what I remember him from it.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I think his name was mister Larson there you got
to hit it as the ball lies right and he's
got the Dell.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
Gut through his head to Shooter McGavin.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
And then, yes, my mom was in the last episode. Well,
here is Susan Cummings, Eric Susan Cummings. Any relation?
Speaker 5 (11:10):
No, Susan's than I know of in my immedia family.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Okay, but she played Patty. You had Joseph Ruskin as
the voice of the Candimate. He's also uncredited for that.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
And he was from an episode earlier in this season
or was it season two? I don't Yeah, but when
I started listening to this, I was like, that voice
at least sounds familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint who it was.
I know when I looked at the cast lists.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, you had Hardy Albright as the Secretary General, Theodore
Marcus as Citizen Gregory. He was in a Star Trek
where he played corrob in the original series. You had
Bartlett Robinson as Colonel one. You had Carlton Young as
(11:58):
Colonel two, Ed Nelson Olmsted as the scientist Robert Tafur
signor Valdez Lomax's study as Levek and Jerry Fucha Kawa
as the Japanese delegated.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Good job, thank you, I'm glad you were on the cast.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I mean, honestly, there's a bunch of people in this
like at the United Nations and all that. There's no
way you can list all the.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of this. One's a heavy heavy
on the cast for sure. Let's talk about a plot
for this episode a little bit, all right. Michael Chambers
recounts recent events on Earth after the arrival of an
alien spacecraft. The aliens, known as Canimate, seem friendly and
assure everyone that they have nothing to be afraid of.
In fact, they offer to share wonderful technology that will
(12:46):
help provide limitless energy, cure all diseases, and convert convert
deserts into lush gardens for the people of Earth. Paradise
has arrived. Chambers is an encryption specialists, and they will
try their best to decrypt Is that a word? Decrypt
a book? And the cannabis left behind the book. The
(13:10):
book's title seems benign, but it's not what they think
it is. So let's jump right into our episode here.
Let's start with Act one. We open a board, very
tiny quarters and what we the audience will discover later
is an alien spacecraft. So we open with our protagonist,
(13:33):
Michael's named Michael Chambers. Michael Chambers. And again just to
note that this is I think it's in my trivia,
but I'll just go ahead and you know, lead it
off here that there are two narrators in this episode.
Essentially you have Rod in his original narrator, which, by
the way, his narrations are becoming shorter and shorter. I
(13:54):
don't know if you've noticed that. I think they'll start
to broaden out a little bit more later, but they're
really really short and concise at this particular point in
the season. But in this episode we have two narrators.
We have the lead character, Michael Chambers, who kind of
leads us in and gives us the audience direction of
(14:17):
how this is, gives us the backdrop and everything of
how the episode is going to unfold. So one of
the first things that we see as an inciting incident,
a mysterious alien race known as Cannabis arrive on Earth,
claiming that they have come in peace to help humanity
(14:38):
and just go by way of overview, their large telepathic
and seemingly benevolent.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Let me ask you a question. Well, two things. First,
this opening scene, you see him smoking a cigarette. Knowing
what you know now about this whole episode, Why would
they let them do that?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
I don't know, but I also thought I'll throw another
one back at you. Why why did they tell him
to conserve water? Like if they have limitless like right,
all the crops and everything on Earth. They got him
to grow by adding nitrate to the ground, and you
know they're they're this superior species, Like, why would he
need to limit I mean, they basically have like limitless resources.
(15:22):
Why would they tell him to conserve the Well?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I have a theory on that, but I don't want
to spoil the ending.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Okay, I don't know about the smoking.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I mean yeah, I mean well, I was gonna make
a joke there, but it ain't gonna be funny till
after the punchline. After. But here's another thing. We see
how the world reacts from this first contact. My question
to you is, Eric, how do you think that would
play out? Would it would we just be all happy
(15:50):
like this episode where all the nations came together, or
do you think it would be something more difficult to achieve.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
Judging by what I know of human nature right now, No,
we would not be benevolent probably any you know, being paranoid.
Paranoia would reign supreme, at least in the US.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Do you think there's ever been a UFO that has
crashed to the Earth.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I would have said thirty years ago it was said
dumb way. But a lot of things that have been
discovered as of late here in the US. You know,
I'm kind of on the fence. I'm like fifty to
fifty at this point. Did we go to the Moon?
I mean, we can go down.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Here we go, I'll start that's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Well, we have lots of women astronauts now origin astronauts.
So anyway, anyway, I digress. So let's get back to
the spaceship here at hand. So this spaceship arrives at
the un right, and I think that was stock footage
from the day that the years too, right, one of them,
there's three.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Different from the day the Earth still. The other one
is from Earth versus the Flying Saucers, which if you
haven't watched Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, I kid you not.
It's really good. It's really good. Okay, I have it
if they can watch it.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
Eric so Chambers again he's narrating throughout these opening scenes,
and this is one of his quotes. He says, and
that's when it happened. That's when we first heard that
they had come. That's when we should have been prepared,
or we should have prepared ourselves for any eventuality, but
we didn't. And then right on the heels of that,
(17:26):
Rod's narration comes in, right as I think we're almost
to the point where the well, the Ambassador Chancellor of
the un is telling everyone in the gallery that one
of the flying saucers has landed a couple of blocks
away and in walks this seven foot or is he
nine foot actually? I think Rodd says he's ninety.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Cannimate walks into the United Nations, and then we get
a whip pan and then Rod gives his traditional narration
where he again describes the cannimate. And so we're at
that point now. So this is so that's sort of
the opening scenes of the first act. And then another
(18:14):
high point of action in the first act is that
they use to help telepathy excuse me, to communicate, they
offer this cannimate. He comes in and he offers to
solve world hunger, eliminate war, and to provide new energy sources. Skepticism,
(18:34):
you know, it exists at first, but their gifts start
to work, hunger and conflict decline, and then the Cannimate
is quoted as saying, we can show you, for example,
of how to add certain and very cheap nitrate to
the soil and infamine on earth for good and all.
So that happens at this initial meeting. I gotta say
(18:56):
that it's just iconic, like the big head and uh,
you know, I mean whenever you see, like you know,
a collage of photographs depicting the twilight Zone the candidates
like all.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
He's also on I believe one of the books or
one of the books I have or you have. I
think his big fat heads on one of them too.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
So one key detail here in the first act is
the Cannimates leave a book behind and it's written in
their own language. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Do you think he did it on purpose?
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Yeah, of course. So that you know Michael Chambers he
is one of those you know, decipherers, code crackers if
you will, And he's a code breaker and he works
for the US government and that begins. I think at
the end of seeing Act one they or maybe it's
(19:51):
early in Act two, they start deciphering this code. I
think we go to commercial break after the Cannibates talked
to different representatives throughout the un right. He talks to
the Russian delegation and the Japanese delegation. He's trying to
reassure all the people of Earth that.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
But why do you think he left it that bothers me?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
I don't know. I mean, if it's that bothers you
in you want to know why he left.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
It right, because knowing what we know, why would you
even give a hint or anything. Do they just think
that they weren't going to be able to crack the coach?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
Yeah? I think they just thought that they were smart,
superior race of people that they would never crack that come.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Or do you think they were just trying to gain
more trust of the people by like, oh, look they
left us here.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Yeah, it could be so they do leave the book behind,
and this is where we meet Michael Chambers. Here. The
scene shifts to like, I don't know, Guanta, not Guanta,
not there, the worst of the worst, but Pentagon maybe
somewhere like an office here the whole world.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
They've landed all over the world now and they're just
getting the trust of everybody.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Yeah, and so this is where we mean Chambers, and
he's hard at work trying to translate it. And I
think his team manages to translate the title of the
book to serve Man and the phrase is interpreted as
a sign of goodwill and proof that the candidates are
here to help. And the colonel standing around have a
(21:25):
quote from him. He says that that Cannimate or whatever
it is he calls himself, walked off and left this
book yesterday at the un And we can decipher this book.
If we can decipher this book, we can know what
they're up to. So, you know, we got to figure
out what's inside this book so that we can discover
(21:47):
what their intentions are.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
There's still a lot of people that don't trust them
at this point.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Yeah. And so one of the main developments in the
second act is the trust that was Wayne. Like you
said in the beginning, it begins to grow rapidly, the
people starting to volunteer to travel to their home planet
and it's promised to be a paradise. Right. We get
into this particular part of the episode where people's you know,
(22:19):
their apprehensions kind of turn, and one of the main
turning points is that more and more people they sign
up to leave the Earth, including Chambers himself. Once he
kind of discovers that they're sort of docile and the
candidates are really hailed as saviors at this point, you know,
(22:44):
his apprehension kind of turns. So that will take us
to act number three. We'll just move quickly along and
we'll kind of come to the climax and act three
where Chambers is boarding. This is the iconic scene, really,
Chambers is boarding the Canimate spaceship.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yeah, but before that, what has happened is a lot
of these people are going and they're like, oh, you know,
you can go up there. And my sister wrote me
and she said that they there's a shopping thing up
there and they let's just buy whatever you want.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
Take a home standing in line.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
And then another guy's like, oh, yeah, well I heard
that they've got like baseball up there, and you know,
different teams and everything, and it's just like here. So
all these they have told them all this stuff to
get them on board, to get them to their home planet,
and I think it's very interesting, as you will see
in this climatic moment.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Right, and that's the climax, of course, comes to a
head when Chambers is just about to board the ship
and his assistant runs toward him and she's screaming, and
she has completed translating more of the book because if
first they could only translate the title of the book,
(24:03):
because there were several I forget. Chambers said something like,
there's all these different tools that the cannimates used to
encrypt all of their language.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Let me ask you a question, how much time has passed?
Because if you remember when he was talking to her,
he said, yeah, he's like, I'm on the list for
like ten months or something, I think he says. And
she's like, well, me too, I'm on that list too,
so and she's like, well, there's really not much more
to decipher at that point. So what made her go
back and decipher more of it?
Speaker 5 (24:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Remember when she says curiosity, man, Remember when she said
we've done all we can, right, because they both were
kind of casually talking about it, like how but I
know there was a waiting period because they were full, remember,
and they said we'll have to wait till they come
back in a couple of months or whatever to take
more right.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Yeah, and if you remember too, like the what does
Chambers tell of the kernels or whatever, like, hey, once
we figured this out, like we might be working ourselves
out of a job, right if they are as docile
and harmless as they seem, and they even are not
left out a big chunk here. But there's a scene
here where the cannonmate. It takes a light detectives, right,
(25:12):
because they're trying to decipher their true intentions. And like
you said, the skepticism was really wide spread at first,
but then you know, as it moves along, the people
will begin, you know, trusting them as their crops grow.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
And is this I don't remember if it was right
before this or right after this, but once the slide
detectors thing like you have like the French say that
they're getting rid of half of their like nuclear weapons. Okay,
you have like the Japanese like, hey, you know we're
we're all aboard, and you know you've got all these
different nations within the United Nations all being like hey,
(25:47):
let's go.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Yeah, so the sentiment definitely has changed. So then his assistant.
Going back to his assistant yells out the iconic line
it's a cookbook.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
It's a cookbook. Okay. So then the Chambers tries to
get Yeah, he's getting.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
Pushed into the ship at this point, and the voiceover
narration he reveals now that he's captive, living in a
cell and that's where we found him at the beginning
of the episode, and they're trying to fatten him up, right,
and then we have a final like irony scene or
statement here in despairing tone, Chambers breaks forth, he breaks
(26:28):
the fourth way, so cool, and he addresses the audience
and says, sooner or later, where all of us, we're
all on the menu, all of us or something like that, Right,
that's kind of the ending note.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
So and then he starts eating food. He must have
been starving, but so now knowing let me know, let
me ask you a question. So, when he's smoking number one,
where does he get the cigarettes? The number two? If
they want to keep him healthy and all that, I mean,
are they just saying, Hey, we want some smoked meat,
is what they're saying.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Uh, maybe the cigarettes were
just ones that he brought on. Maybe it's shortly after
he's gone on the ship and they were already like
in his pocket from being on Earth. And then I
don't know, I don't know. Then he's in those quarters
and he's just smoking the last of his stock.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
So, Eric, if you were given the opportunity to travel
on the UFO, would you do it?
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Would I do it?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
If there was no danger? Like I mean, as far
as go up in space, go around the moon or
something and come back.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Yeah, I don't know. That's a tough one. What about you? Absolutely,
you're gonna give it a go, like Fly the Navigator.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Absolutely, as long as I don't get probed, we're all good.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Well that's automatic.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Well you're the one, dude for a colon oscar. Easily
you can knock them both out of what go?
Speaker 5 (27:53):
I don't know getting up there, I don't know if
I would volunteer, would cool? Well, I'll just go on
Blue Origin like those ladies did. That's good enough for me.
I'll just go out of the atmosphere and then come
back down.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Did anybody ask him if the Earth was flat?
Speaker 5 (28:12):
I don't know. I don't know if that really even happened.
What do you think?
Speaker 4 (28:15):
I don't know, man, there's several things you see that.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Looks a little sketchy, little like mannequins in the window
and the door. Yeah, there's a lot of things floating
around on the internet. Let's talk about some trivia though.
For this episode, the only episode in this series where
someone other than Rod Sterling directs directly addresses the audience.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Actually, there was another one if you remember. I believe
it's the last episode of season one where I remember
he types all that stuff out and comes true and
Rod Star says, says ah Rod and he throws it
and he says something to the audience. You remember that.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Yeah, I don't remember the season one or two. I
think it's in the scene his image was that the
name of it? I think I know what. He's like
a writer, yeah, and he has like the woman and
all that.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
Yeah, yeah, I'll have to go back and look at
that trivia. Where did I get this trivia? This might
be IMDb, who are incorrect. Maybe you might have to
fix it. All of the nine foot tall cannimates are
played by the same actor, seven foot two inch tall
Richard Keel. This is most apparent at the end when
(29:23):
the two identical Cannimates stand near the spaceship in the
split screen effect. In the Sore story, the aliens are
short and look like Harry pigs that walk upright, So
they change that up probably because of what was the
episode with the pigs and I can't think of the
(29:44):
name of it. I had to be older, thank you,
So as you remember, those were all pig like characters
in that one. I think they changed it up a
little bit for this episode. The voiceover on the Cannimates
spaceship is Joseph Ruskin, who played the Genie in season
two and Man in the Bottle. We talked about that already.
(30:06):
Damon Knight's short story to Serve Man first appeared in
the November nineteen fifty issue of Galaxy Science Fiction and
has been reprinted a number of times, including in Frontiers
in Space nineteen fifty five, Far Out nineteen sixty one,
and The Best of Damon Knight in nineteen seventy six.
(30:27):
It was awarded the nineteen fifty one Retro Hugo Award
for the Best Short Story of two thousand and one,
So there you go. It was originally in short stories,
and it looks like it's been in several publications down
through the years, So kudos to Damon Knight. Thirty two
years later, Lloyd Backner would parody his role into Serve
(30:53):
Man in what movie you know?
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yes, it's Naked gun?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Two and a half?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Two and a half? The smell of nineteen to have
you covered that one yet? Yeah? Okay, so I think
even does he even quote the line in that movie?
I think he does.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
It's been a while, but there's also several other pop
culture TV shows and sitcoms. That's been in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons, Futurama, Madagascar.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Oh it's in Madagascar, okay.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
So, but it's also been in some musical works by
artists Nuclear Assault, Eric, tell me if any of these
are your favorites, Nuclear Assault, Cattle Decapitation, Monopuff, and LP.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Never heard of any of them.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
It's also a reference to the episode has even been
found its way on to the unofficial emblem for a
United States Air Force unit.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Really, that's interesting. So the US government's involved now?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Oh, so it is true.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
The image of the flying saucer toward the end, that's
the image of the end here we're talking about, is
from the film Earth versus the Flying Saucers fifty six,
so that image is at the end. The establishing shot
of New York City's Times Square air area is is
stock footage from nineteen forty nine, as both visible movie
(32:19):
marquees the strand in the upper left as well as
the Globe Theater mid left are showing two films, My
Dream Is Yours from nineteen forty nine and Champion from
nineteen forty nine at the aforementioned cinemas, respectively, which we're
both playing at the time. Jack Carson, whose name can
(32:39):
be seen on the strand marquee, played Harvey Huntcut in
The Whole Truth in nineteen sixty one, so there's a
lot of info in that little nugget. So mainly the
stock footage is from nineteen forty nine at the beginning
of the episode. At the beginning of the episode is
announced that the first alien landing just outside Newark, New Jersey,
(33:01):
which is the same area as the aliens landed in
orson Wells War of the World radio broadcast in nineteen
thirty eight, a program which Rod Serling would have been
very familiar with, all right. And then finally on the
trivia side here the retractable, retractable stairwell that leads up
(33:25):
into the spaceship is the exact same prop used in
Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Gray movie Area.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
Yeah, one of your guys's favorites. You covered that with
me then, Yeah, from nineteen fifty six starring as well
as the Twilight Zone season fours on Thursday, we leave
for home. So we haven't covered that one yet obviously
because it's from nineteen sixty three, but it's that prop
is reused again several goofs. I mean, there's like the
(33:57):
longest list of goofs in incoon Nut years. I guess
I'm only going to touch on a few of them here,
but it was like the longest of any episode that
we've done so far. So the first one is the
light detectors require a yes or no to function. The
Cannibate's narrative when asked what his motivation for the visit
(34:17):
would not have been. It would have registered basically right,
because he goes on a big, long explanation. When the
candidate enters the UN building, he informs the assembled diplomats
that candidates have learned their language while communicating in English.
There are literally hundreds of languages on Earth, and English
(34:38):
is the only one of a number of official languages
spoken at the UN which that one's kind of weak.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Well, I thought maybe he could preject yeah, anything he
wanted if you were Japanese. Japanese, he knew.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
That all the languages. He just chose to tell tell alepathy.
I can't say that word, so he yeah, yeah, he
could usepathic telepathically, thank you. He used English for his
yes communication. The guards at the United Nations Building are
shown to be wearing guns. You and guards are unarmed,
(35:13):
so that's a goof. And then finally, the Cannimate homeworld
is described as billions of miles away. Michael Chambers notes
that it's one hundred billion miles off into space, but
the Cannimates are from another galaxy. Traveling one hundred billion
miles wouldn't even get you to the nearest star Proxima Centauri,
(35:35):
let alone another galaxy. So galagho a long long way
to get out of the galaxy.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Oh no, that was Alpha Centauri from the Last Starfighter.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
So Jambala, you lead all the questions in the.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Did you cover about why Richard Kill didn't do the voice?
Speaker 5 (35:54):
I did not have that in trivia, but I did
read about it. Yeah, I really recorded it right.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Well, he was he was in the middle of recording
another movie called It's like ee ga ee g a
h or something like that, and I guess the producer
of that or director of that let him come over
here and do this. So he had been up all
day and everything is when after got into the makeup
chair and all that, they said that he tried it,
said it was just not good. So they're like, yeah,
we'll just let you stand there. You know, he said
(36:21):
he was kind of disappointed about it, but what are
you gonna do? He gave it his best shot.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
No, I think they made the right decision in the
end with Joseph Ruskin.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
All right, so here we go. Well, here's a question
I have. I don't know if you saw this. When
the cannimate basically forces Michael Chambers up to the top
and closes the door, he turns around with his hands
up in the air like this. Do you think why
wasn't there more of a chaos going on with all
(36:49):
the other people when she said it's a good bug
and it basically they see him shoving him up there,
or do you think it was already too late? That
there weren't that many people left on earth because all
these little pickup point it's around the earth, or you know,
they've been taking people for months and months.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Yeah, why, I mean, why wasn't there more of like
a stampede?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Right?
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I would have loved to scene just as midget of it,
you know, maybe either either pure chaos happening or just
have the campaign. Look, we have a delusional two people,
and then they take that girl and put her on
another ship or so, just to give a little bit
of closure there, because you basically just after he shuts
the thing and turns around, his hands are just in
the air, and then it just cuts away. Yeah, I
would like to see if there's some footage missing that
we could have drawn a better conclusion there. To me,
(37:32):
I love the back telling of a story through the narration.
I think that's really well done in this episode. The
twist superb. It's one of the top five of all
time and Twilight Zone probably. To me, this will probably
(37:52):
be in my top ten list of all the Twilight
Zone episodes. Okay, but I don't know yet because I
haven't seen all of them. One but it's just so
iconic that everybody knows. It's been spoofed so many times
right now, when I go back and I watch it,
it's not one of my personal favorites, but it's really good.
(38:16):
So I'm gonna give it a nine just for the
twist alone. Is it rates up there for me? With
I have the Beholder time enough at last, I mean
mirror Image. You can go on and name all these
other ones. So for me, it's a nine. If I'm
if I'm telling people, hey, you need to get into
(38:37):
twilet Zone, watch Twilight Zone, this would be one. I
would probably recommend to get people to watch the Twilight
Zone definitely. So for me it's a nine. Eric, what
are you giving it?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
All?
Speaker 5 (38:48):
Right? Well, withhold rating, I'll throw a few questions and observations.
Are you know, maybe we can discuss it a little further.
What does this episode suggest when it comes to the
dangers of blind trust in technology? Right? We're aimed exactly,
We're smack dab in the middle of AI and there's
a lot of apprehension as to you know, AI could
(39:12):
be sinister and go off the rails and we could
be a LAH terminator. Again, did you ever see I
have not seen them.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You need to watch that one they build robots and
then one of them gets a bad ship or something
turns the ball against will Smith.
Speaker 5 (39:26):
Okay, so along those theme themes, like they're they're talking about,
you know, us being the cyborgs and Elon wants to
implant this AI chip and our you know, our heads
and then we can have full recall of you know.
I mean that the possibilities are somewhat endless. But if
(39:47):
there aren't guard rails put up right for the AI,
it becomes Yeah, it could become self aware. That's I
think the greatest fear by a lot of people is
that it's going to become self aware. And if it's
learning at you know, high rates of speed. I mean
I've saw some it's been a while, but I listened
to this podcast and they were talking about the capacity
(40:08):
of which the AI can learn. It's it's astronomical and
like once it goes off the rails, like you wouldn't
be able to stop it, right, So that's a big fear.
And the dangers of blind trust, I mean they need
to be there. That needs to be regulated in some form,
and even here in the US, like we're spending billions
(40:29):
and billions of dollars for scientific AI scientific research to
research things like cancer and all those things. Though, I
mean they're spending there are a lot of companies, like
biotech companies that are going to spend billions of dollars
to invest here in the US, and those well.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
We're also bringing back dire wos that are extincted. Okay,
I mean, so, I mean, you take an AI or
you take an aliens if it comes down to war,
are you.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Taking probably probably ai ais that control aliens. I don't know.
That's it's just yeah, So again the dangers of blind trusts,
those are always going to be in the forefront of
human minds, or they at least they should be. Why
are humans so eager to believe that in the cannimate's benevolence?
(41:18):
Why are they so? I don't know. I think I
don't know. That's one thing in the episode. I think
people are a little bit more skeptics, ficious, you know,
skeptical about you know, hey this guy, you know, it's
like too good to be true type scheme. You know,
if you have at least an ounce of skepticism, you're
going to question the benevolence, especially if an alien. I
(41:41):
mean We're gonna be like, you know, I've seen this
movie play out a million times in Hollywood, Like if
it actually happened where.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Remember Independence Stay when they all those ships just came in.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Yeah, it's ominous with you.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
He goes down, just starts to destroying people.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
Right, So are humans powerless in the face of superior intelligence?
Is the rise like is the rise of Skynet? Like
is inevitable? You know this is all in the same
vein of AI and all that that can kind of
be scary for people. I would just say, just by
note of observation again, I would echo what you said.
(42:19):
This episode, of course, is iconic, like it's a Hall
of Fame ending. The twist ending is it's Hall of
Fame top ten, top five. Right. The candidates are visually imposing,
yet they are trusted immediately. That was something that stuck out.
Everybody trusts, not everybody, but they I mean there were
(42:41):
long lines. You know, people were willing to, you know,
give up a lot. It's kind of ironic, right, They're
so big and imposing, and yet they were they were trusted. Right.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
You got to think though, if you're if you're like,
we'll just throw this out there let's say Africa and
or South America, whatever, and it's somewhere that has not
been able to grow different types of crop than much
are used to growing. And all of a sudden, you're
basically curing hunger. These people are curing hunger. You're obviously
(43:15):
gonna trust him. They probably cured cancer, right, They probably
did all this stuff that they never thought would be possible.
So why wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (43:22):
They endeared themselves to vanity, right, So finally the tragic shift.
There's a tragic shift here in the person of Michael Chambers,
because he's a very confident code cracker, right, he works
with the government, he's a smart guy, he can, he's
very good at his job, and now he ends up
a helpless slave right in the end. It's very tragic
(43:44):
in that sense of the twist. So again, I'm probably
gonna rate it right around to nine. Boy, we've been right.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
We've been sinking.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Sinking. Maybe AI is like melding this podcast hey.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
To say, but Jimbo and Eric are just one person.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
That'd be funny. So yeah, a nine, I'm like you again,
Like it wouldn't be one of my favorites to go
back and Rewatch but I can't deny its place in
you know, the Twilight Zone spectrum. I can't deny it
like it's just everywhere. It's probably not one of my
favorite episodes again, but yeah, I gotta give it its
(44:26):
due props. And that's where I leave it at a nine.
I think it's uh, it's scored correctly.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
What prop are you taking? Eric?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Oh yeah, if we didn't do that in the last episode.
Oh boy, you do this to me all the time
on the spot. You know, probably the book.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
I would say that's the cheap way out. Just take
the book, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
Probably the book. What about you gotta think for a minute.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
I'll give you a I think I'll take the space. No,
I'm gonna take the robe, that kind of what wears
when he goes into the.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
Big old big silver rope, silver road. I think you're
gonna take that big kiss boots that he will with
the high.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Hey, that that counts. That's part of the outfit.
Speaker 5 (45:05):
Oh okay, so you get the whole pack, get the
big fourhead All right?
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Well, Eric, do you know offhand what the next episode
is that we will be covering.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
I do not. I have looked earlier, but I've forgotten,
do you know. I hope you do, because no, I.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Thought maybe you would pull it up there real quick
and see while we're talking down and yeah, well, if
you'd like to follow us, we are the Tragedy of
Cinema podcast on Facebook. If you want to reach out
to us, we are the Tragedy of Cinema podcast I
don't know, just the Tragedy of cinemat gmail dot com.
If you want to leave us review, Eric will read
it on the air. So we're closing down on season three.
(45:45):
I can't wait to get our Dundee's out or if
you will, the tragedies if you will, and uh, we're
gonna have special guests Jason bond On he's been following along,
so it's going to be a well of a time there.
I can guarantee you that.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
This is really slow pulling up. I apologize it looks
up on your phone faster. Season three, let's go through
our episodes. We should be number twenty five, I think
twenty five. Apologize the Fugitive. The Fugitive, which is interesting. Yeah,
(46:20):
there are a lot of interesting things dynamics with that
episode is so we'll get up to all that guy culturally,
the shifts the guy.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
That goes to that little girl and think, yeah, he's whatever,
he's an alien of sorts.
Speaker 5 (46:36):
Right, we'll preview that. Well, we won't preview. We'll talk
about that next time, next time in.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
The fifth dimension.
Speaker 5 (46:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Well, with that being said, I think this episode's coming
to a close, and that's wrap and cut.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
The recollections of when Michael Chambers with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy,
or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle
of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being
the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
It's tonight's bill of
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Fare from the Twilight Zone.
There's a podcast that lies between the imagination of two
simple minded Earthlings. Travel with these two longtime friends, Jimbo
and eighties E as they attempt to explore the fifth dimension.
Follow along with them as they take the key and
unlock the door to the vast space between shadow and substance.
(00:24):
This podcast is one of trivia, of insight, and of
sounds and ideas from one of the greatest television shows
ever produced. You are embarking on a timeless journey. There
is your signpost up ahead. You are entering the Tragedy
of Cinema's Twilight.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Zone, respectfully submitted for your perusal.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
A cannimate height a little over nine feet. Wait in
the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Unknown motives.
They're in hangs the tale for in just a moment,
we're going to ask you to shake hands figurative lee
with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time.
This is the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
All right, guys, welcome back to the Tragedy of Cinema podcast,
the Twilight Zone series.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
I'm your host Jimbo, and I'm your co host eighty
Z Eric.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
Today we will be talking about one of the, if
not one of the most famous episodes of the Toilet Zone.
To Serve Man, season three, episode twenty four. I'm sure
a lot of people are familiar with this episode, especially
the most famous line.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Definitely iconic line.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah and obviously iconic alien. Look if you will.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Right, you don't sound definitely definitely you know, we'll see
what happens. Let's jump right into it. This is the
episode entitled to Serve Man. This is the Twilight Zone
season three, episode number twenty four. We're moving quite along.
We're past halfway, right, I think we are. This one
(02:04):
comes in with a strong IMDb rating of nine point zero.
It was directed by Richard L. Bar The teleplay was
Rod Serling, and this was based on a I don't
know if it was a novel or short story. And
I got this wrong in the previous episode where we
talked about the last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank, I said
(02:27):
incorrectly that that was written by a man named Damon
and I didn't know his last name. Well, it turns
out I was wrong, and it's this episode to Serve Man.
It was actually originally written by Damon Knight was the
man's name, and has some stock featured music from Jerry
Goldsmith and some scores from Back There and The Invaders.
(02:52):
So if you remember those episodes, there's some score from
those episodes. I think that was reused. The original air
date for this episode was March the second, nineteen sixty two.
And you know, we've got some information in trivia for
March the second. This brings us to our favorite segment
in the episode, the segment that we like to call on.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
This day in history.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
All right, So for on this day, for March the second,
let's go all the way back to nineteen thirty three
and a little film called King Kong emerged and it
was directed by Marion C. Cooper and Ernest B. I'm
gonna butcher this last name, show dat show to Zach.
(03:40):
It's starring Fay Ray and premieres at Radio City Music
Hall in r r KO Roxy in NYC. So, King
Kong is born nineteen thirty three, Jimbo, King.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Of the King of your favorite right Wezilla, King Kong
is up there. So when you have honking, honking King
Kong and God's a little together in the movie, it's
just a masterpiece.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Yeah, It's unlike anything other, all right, March second, nineteen
sixty four, we have more Beatles trivia. They begin filming
the film A Hard Day's Night, which is really not
all I guess it was a film, but it was
more like the original music video right Hard Days. So
it featured George Harrison and he would meet his future
(04:29):
wife and her name was Patty Boyd. So March second,
nineteen sixty five, One year later, one of the most
popular musical films of all time, The Sound of Music.
Who all right, that's enough. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plumber.
I know you have a big crush on Julie Andrews.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Man, I'm telling you what. Marry Papa's herself.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Well, it premiered and it won an Academy Award for
Best Picture in nineteen six six, so it did a
lot of damage in the mid sixties. So that was
the premiere was March second, nineteen sixty five. Let's go.
Two years later, March second, nineteen sixty seven, the ninth
Grammy Awards and Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra.
(05:19):
It wins the Best Record and Michelle by the Beatles
Michelle my Bell Strangers in the Night. Yeah, Michelle my
Bell by the Beatles, also won at that Grammy Awards.
March second, nineteen seventy seven. Betty Davis is the first
(05:40):
woman to receive American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. So,
Betty Davis, Betty Davis eyes, Hey.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
He's got no man. This is going to turn into
a scening podcake version March second, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
We're going to back up. These are out of order,
going back a little bit, but this is a sports
trivia piece Our second, nineteen sixty two. We could not
leave this date out. Philadelphia center Wilt Chamberlain scores one
hundred points, the most ever by an NBA player in
a single game, and it was against the Warriors. The
final score was one sixty nine to one forty seven,
(06:20):
and it was in Uh sorry, it's oh, I got
that out of Philadelphia. Warriors won one sixty nine to
one forty seven over the New York Knicks in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
So Wilt was thirty six from six for sixty three
from the field and twenty eight to thirty two from
the free throw line to get his one hundred points.
(06:43):
So that record still stands. And uh, I don't know
If it will ever be broken, it probably will be.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
The way they're shooting these days.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Probably Kobe Bryant got close. He had eighty one.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Was that before the three point line was invented?
Speaker 5 (06:55):
I think there was a three point line if I'm
not mistaken. I don't know to look that up. You
might look that up on chat GPT while I peruse
along here. March second, nineteen sixty eight. This is another
sports trivia. Pardon me. Nineteen year old Peggy Fleming wins
(07:16):
her third consecutive World Ladies Figure Skating Championship in Geneva, Switzerland.
She was an American figure skater. She turned professional and
eventually went on to broadcasting. So nineteen year old American
Peggy Fleming, she won that a particular three consecutive World
(07:40):
Ladies Figure Skating championships. March second, nineteen sixty eight. You
got an answer for.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
All right, Eric. The three point line was first introduced
some professional basketball is by the ABA in nineteen sixty seven.
The NBA didn't adopt three point line until the nineteen
seventy nine nineteen eighty season. More than a decade.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
There eighty no three point line got one hundred. Wow,
that's that's impressive. All right. Some notable birthdays March second,
nineteen seventeen. Cuban American singer Baba Loo bandleader actor from
I Love Lucy Desi Arnez mister or aka Ricky Ricardo.
(08:18):
He was born in San Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.
All right. March second, nineteen sixty two. American rock singer
and songwriter John bon Jovi. You got some John bon
Jovi on dead O. He was born Eric.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Used to work on the DME.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Still do unions, men astral He was born in Sarah. Okay,
that's enough.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
You got a hold too, what we got.
Speaker 5 (08:56):
He was born Serryville, New Jersey. He's a New Jersey
born kid. And finally, one last birthday, March second, nineteen
sixty eight. The English actor most famous for the James
Bond films, Daniel Craig. He was born in Chester, England
on this day, March second, nineteen.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Sixty Do you like Daniel Craig is James Bond Sean Connery? Yeah?
Is the best.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
He takes it every time. Back to our episode here,
let's give a few facts and figures about this episode
at hand. To serve man the total production costs came
in pretty steep, this time, sixty one one hundred nineteen
dollars and fifty nine cents. A few dates of rehearsal
(09:46):
and filming. Dates of rehearsal were two June nine and
June twelve, nineteen sixty one, three days of filming. The
third actually four excuse me, the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and
seventeenth of nineteen sixty one, so a lot of filming days.
With that being said, jimbo roll us with this cast,
serve us this cast.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
All right, I'm gonna do my best. There are some
names on here that are pretty hard to announce, so
we'll give it our best shot. So you have Lloyd
Bauckner as the lead character. I guess I feel Michael Chambers.
He was also the guy that does the narration because
this episode you kind of like go back and it's
(10:29):
very unique. Yeah, yeah, very very interesting. Then you had
Richard kill Man. How good is he? He played the
kind of mights Well, they all look alike, but you
may remember him as Jaws from some of the James
Bond films and then also more recently and Happy gi More.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Yeah, that's what I remember him from it.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
I think his name was mister Larson there you got
to hit it as the ball lies right and he's
got the Dell.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
Gut through his head to Shooter McGavin.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
And then, yes, my mom was in the last episode. Well,
here is Susan Cummings, Eric Susan Cummings. Any relation?
Speaker 5 (11:10):
No, Susan's than I know of in my immedia family.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Okay, but she played Patty. You had Joseph Ruskin as
the voice of the Candimate. He's also uncredited for that.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
And he was from an episode earlier in this season
or was it season two? I don't Yeah, but when
I started listening to this, I was like, that voice
at least sounds familiar, but I couldn't pinpoint who it was.
I know when I looked at the cast lists.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, you had Hardy Albright as the Secretary General, Theodore
Marcus as Citizen Gregory. He was in a Star Trek
where he played corrob in the original series. You had
Bartlett Robinson as Colonel one. You had Carlton Young as
(11:58):
Colonel two, Ed Nelson Olmsted as the scientist Robert Tafur
signor Valdez Lomax's study as Levek and Jerry Fucha Kawa
as the Japanese delegated.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Good job, thank you, I'm glad you were on the cast.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I mean, honestly, there's a bunch of people in this
like at the United Nations and all that. There's no
way you can list all the.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of this. One's a heavy heavy
on the cast for sure. Let's talk about a plot
for this episode a little bit, all right. Michael Chambers
recounts recent events on Earth after the arrival of an
alien spacecraft. The aliens, known as Canimate, seem friendly and
assure everyone that they have nothing to be afraid of.
In fact, they offer to share wonderful technology that will
(12:46):
help provide limitless energy, cure all diseases, and convert convert
deserts into lush gardens for the people of Earth. Paradise
has arrived. Chambers is an encryption specialists, and they will
try their best to decrypt Is that a word? Decrypt
a book? And the cannabis left behind the book. The
(13:10):
book's title seems benign, but it's not what they think
it is. So let's jump right into our episode here.
Let's start with Act one. We open a board, very
tiny quarters and what we the audience will discover later
is an alien spacecraft. So we open with our protagonist,
(13:33):
Michael's named Michael Chambers. Michael Chambers. And again just to
note that this is I think it's in my trivia,
but I'll just go ahead and you know, lead it
off here that there are two narrators in this episode.
Essentially you have Rod in his original narrator, which, by
the way, his narrations are becoming shorter and shorter. I
(13:54):
don't know if you've noticed that. I think they'll start
to broaden out a little bit more later, but they're
really really short and concise at this particular point in
the season. But in this episode we have two narrators.
We have the lead character, Michael Chambers, who kind of
leads us in and gives us the audience direction of
(14:17):
how this is, gives us the backdrop and everything of
how the episode is going to unfold. So one of
the first things that we see as an inciting incident,
a mysterious alien race known as Cannabis arrive on Earth,
claiming that they have come in peace to help humanity
(14:38):
and just go by way of overview, their large telepathic
and seemingly benevolent.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Let me ask you a question. Well, two things. First,
this opening scene, you see him smoking a cigarette. Knowing
what you know now about this whole episode, Why would
they let them do that?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
I don't know, but I also thought I'll throw another
one back at you. Why why did they tell him
to conserve water? Like if they have limitless like right,
all the crops and everything on Earth. They got him
to grow by adding nitrate to the ground, and you
know they're they're this superior species, Like, why would he
need to limit I mean, they basically have like limitless resources.
(15:22):
Why would they tell him to conserve the Well?
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I have a theory on that, but I don't want
to spoil the ending.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Okay, I don't know about the smoking.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I mean yeah, I mean well, I was gonna make
a joke there, but it ain't gonna be funny till
after the punchline. After. But here's another thing. We see
how the world reacts from this first contact. My question
to you is, Eric, how do you think that would
play out? Would it would we just be all happy
(15:50):
like this episode where all the nations came together, or
do you think it would be something more difficult to achieve.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
Judging by what I know of human nature right now, No,
we would not be benevolent probably any you know, being paranoid.
Paranoia would reign supreme, at least in the US.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Do you think there's ever been a UFO that has
crashed to the Earth.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I would have said thirty years ago it was said
dumb way. But a lot of things that have been
discovered as of late here in the US. You know,
I'm kind of on the fence. I'm like fifty to
fifty at this point. Did we go to the Moon?
I mean, we can go down.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Here we go, I'll start that's a whole nother podcast.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Well, we have lots of women astronauts now origin astronauts.
So anyway, anyway, I digress. So let's get back to
the spaceship here at hand. So this spaceship arrives at
the un right, and I think that was stock footage
from the day that the years too, right, one of them,
there's three.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Different from the day the Earth still. The other one
is from Earth versus the Flying Saucers, which if you
haven't watched Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, I kid you not.
It's really good. It's really good. Okay, I have it
if they can watch it.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
Eric so Chambers again he's narrating throughout these opening scenes,
and this is one of his quotes. He says, and
that's when it happened. That's when we first heard that
they had come. That's when we should have been prepared,
or we should have prepared ourselves for any eventuality, but
we didn't. And then right on the heels of that,
(17:26):
Rod's narration comes in, right as I think we're almost
to the point where the well, the Ambassador Chancellor of
the un is telling everyone in the gallery that one
of the flying saucers has landed a couple of blocks
away and in walks this seven foot or is he
nine foot actually? I think Rodd says he's ninety.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
Cannimate walks into the United Nations, and then we get
a whip pan and then Rod gives his traditional narration
where he again describes the cannimate. And so we're at
that point now. So this is so that's sort of
the opening scenes of the first act. And then another
(18:14):
high point of action in the first act is that
they use to help telepathy excuse me, to communicate, they
offer this cannimate. He comes in and he offers to
solve world hunger, eliminate war, and to provide new energy sources. Skepticism,
(18:34):
you know, it exists at first, but their gifts start
to work, hunger and conflict decline, and then the Cannimate
is quoted as saying, we can show you, for example,
of how to add certain and very cheap nitrate to
the soil and infamine on earth for good and all.
So that happens at this initial meeting. I gotta say
(18:56):
that it's just iconic, like the big head and uh,
you know, I mean whenever you see, like you know,
a collage of photographs depicting the twilight Zone the candidates
like all.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
He's also on I believe one of the books or
one of the books I have or you have. I
think his big fat heads on one of them too.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
So one key detail here in the first act is
the Cannimates leave a book behind and it's written in
their own language. Right.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
Do you think he did it on purpose?
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Yeah, of course. So that you know Michael Chambers he
is one of those you know, decipherers, code crackers if
you will, And he's a code breaker and he works
for the US government and that begins. I think at
the end of seeing Act one they or maybe it's
(19:51):
early in Act two, they start deciphering this code. I
think we go to commercial break after the Cannibates talked
to different representatives throughout the un right. He talks to
the Russian delegation and the Japanese delegation. He's trying to
reassure all the people of Earth that.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
But why do you think he left it that bothers me?
Speaker 5 (20:11):
I don't know. I mean, if it's that bothers you
in you want to know why he left.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
It right, because knowing what we know, why would you
even give a hint or anything. Do they just think
that they weren't going to be able to crack the coach?
Speaker 5 (20:26):
Yeah? I think they just thought that they were smart,
superior race of people that they would never crack that come.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Or do you think they were just trying to gain
more trust of the people by like, oh, look they
left us here.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Yeah, it could be so they do leave the book behind,
and this is where we meet Michael Chambers. Here. The
scene shifts to like, I don't know, Guanta, not Guanta,
not there, the worst of the worst, but Pentagon maybe
somewhere like an office here the whole world.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
They've landed all over the world now and they're just
getting the trust of everybody.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
Yeah, and so this is where we mean Chambers, and
he's hard at work trying to translate it. And I
think his team manages to translate the title of the
book to serve Man and the phrase is interpreted as
a sign of goodwill and proof that the candidates are
here to help. And the colonel standing around have a
(21:25):
quote from him. He says that that Cannimate or whatever
it is he calls himself, walked off and left this
book yesterday at the un And we can decipher this book.
If we can decipher this book, we can know what
they're up to. So, you know, we got to figure
out what's inside this book so that we can discover
(21:47):
what their intentions are.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
There's still a lot of people that don't trust them
at this point.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Yeah. And so one of the main developments in the
second act is the trust that was Wayne. Like you
said in the beginning, it begins to grow rapidly, the
people starting to volunteer to travel to their home planet
and it's promised to be a paradise. Right. We get
into this particular part of the episode where people's you know,
(22:19):
their apprehensions kind of turn, and one of the main
turning points is that more and more people they sign
up to leave the Earth, including Chambers himself. Once he
kind of discovers that they're sort of docile and the
candidates are really hailed as saviors at this point, you know,
(22:44):
his apprehension kind of turns. So that will take us
to act number three. We'll just move quickly along and
we'll kind of come to the climax and act three
where Chambers is boarding. This is the iconic scene, really,
Chambers is boarding the Canimate spaceship.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yeah, but before that, what has happened is a lot
of these people are going and they're like, oh, you know,
you can go up there. And my sister wrote me
and she said that they there's a shopping thing up
there and they let's just buy whatever you want.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
Take a home standing in line.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
And then another guy's like, oh, yeah, well I heard
that they've got like baseball up there, and you know,
different teams and everything, and it's just like here. So
all these they have told them all this stuff to
get them on board, to get them to their home planet,
and I think it's very interesting, as you will see
in this climatic moment.
Speaker 5 (23:42):
Right, and that's the climax, of course, comes to a
head when Chambers is just about to board the ship
and his assistant runs toward him and she's screaming, and
she has completed translating more of the book because if
first they could only translate the title of the book,
(24:03):
because there were several I forget. Chambers said something like,
there's all these different tools that the cannimates used to
encrypt all of their language.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Let me ask you a question, how much time has passed?
Because if you remember when he was talking to her,
he said, yeah, he's like, I'm on the list for
like ten months or something, I think he says. And
she's like, well, me too, I'm on that list too,
so and she's like, well, there's really not much more
to decipher at that point. So what made her go
back and decipher more of it?
Speaker 5 (24:30):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Remember when she says curiosity, man, Remember when she said
we've done all we can, right, because they both were
kind of casually talking about it, like how but I
know there was a waiting period because they were full, remember,
and they said we'll have to wait till they come
back in a couple of months or whatever to take
more right.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
Yeah, and if you remember too, like the what does
Chambers tell of the kernels or whatever, like, hey, once
we figured this out, like we might be working ourselves
out of a job, right if they are as docile
and harmless as they seem, and they even are not
left out a big chunk here. But there's a scene
here where the cannonmate. It takes a light detectives, right,
(25:12):
because they're trying to decipher their true intentions. And like
you said, the skepticism was really wide spread at first,
but then you know, as it moves along, the people
will begin, you know, trusting them as their crops grow.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
And is this I don't remember if it was right
before this or right after this, but once the slide
detectors thing like you have like the French say that
they're getting rid of half of their like nuclear weapons. Okay,
you have like the Japanese like, hey, you know we're
we're all aboard, and you know you've got all these
different nations within the United Nations all being like hey,
(25:47):
let's go.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Yeah, so the sentiment definitely has changed. So then his assistant.
Going back to his assistant yells out the iconic line
it's a cookbook.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
It's a cookbook. Okay. So then the Chambers tries to
get Yeah, he's getting.
Speaker 5 (26:05):
Pushed into the ship at this point, and the voiceover
narration he reveals now that he's captive, living in a
cell and that's where we found him at the beginning
of the episode, and they're trying to fatten him up, right,
and then we have a final like irony scene or
statement here in despairing tone, Chambers breaks forth, he breaks
(26:28):
the fourth way, so cool, and he addresses the audience
and says, sooner or later, where all of us, we're
all on the menu, all of us or something like that, Right,
that's kind of the ending note.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
So and then he starts eating food. He must have
been starving, but so now knowing let me know, let
me ask you a question. So, when he's smoking number one,
where does he get the cigarettes? The number two? If
they want to keep him healthy and all that, I mean,
are they just saying, Hey, we want some smoked meat,
is what they're saying.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Uh, maybe the cigarettes were
just ones that he brought on. Maybe it's shortly after
he's gone on the ship and they were already like
in his pocket from being on Earth. And then I
don't know, I don't know. Then he's in those quarters
and he's just smoking the last of his stock.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
So, Eric, if you were given the opportunity to travel
on the UFO, would you do it?
Speaker 5 (27:28):
Would I do it?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
If there was no danger? Like I mean, as far
as go up in space, go around the moon or
something and come back.
Speaker 5 (27:37):
Yeah, I don't know. That's a tough one. What about you? Absolutely,
you're gonna give it a go, like Fly the Navigator.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Absolutely, as long as I don't get probed, we're all good.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
Well that's automatic.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Well you're the one, dude for a colon oscar. Easily
you can knock them both out of what go?
Speaker 5 (27:53):
I don't know getting up there, I don't know if
I would volunteer, would cool? Well, I'll just go on
Blue Origin like those ladies did. That's good enough for me.
I'll just go out of the atmosphere and then come
back down.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Did anybody ask him if the Earth was flat?
Speaker 5 (28:12):
I don't know. I don't know if that really even happened.
What do you think?
Speaker 4 (28:15):
I don't know, man, there's several things you see that.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
Looks a little sketchy, little like mannequins in the window
and the door. Yeah, there's a lot of things floating
around on the internet. Let's talk about some trivia though.
For this episode, the only episode in this series where
someone other than Rod Sterling directs directly addresses the audience.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Actually, there was another one if you remember. I believe
it's the last episode of season one where I remember
he types all that stuff out and comes true and
Rod Star says, says ah Rod and he throws it
and he says something to the audience. You remember that.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Yeah, I don't remember the season one or two. I
think it's in the scene his image was that the
name of it? I think I know what. He's like
a writer, yeah, and he has like the woman and
all that.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:03):
Yeah, yeah, I'll have to go back and look at
that trivia. Where did I get this trivia? This might
be IMDb, who are incorrect. Maybe you might have to
fix it. All of the nine foot tall cannimates are
played by the same actor, seven foot two inch tall
Richard Keel. This is most apparent at the end when
(29:23):
the two identical Cannimates stand near the spaceship in the
split screen effect. In the Sore story, the aliens are
short and look like Harry pigs that walk upright, So
they change that up probably because of what was the
episode with the pigs and I can't think of the
(29:44):
name of it. I had to be older, thank you,
So as you remember, those were all pig like characters
in that one. I think they changed it up a
little bit for this episode. The voiceover on the Cannimates
spaceship is Joseph Ruskin, who played the Genie in season
two and Man in the Bottle. We talked about that already.
(30:06):
Damon Knight's short story to Serve Man first appeared in
the November nineteen fifty issue of Galaxy Science Fiction and
has been reprinted a number of times, including in Frontiers
in Space nineteen fifty five, Far Out nineteen sixty one,
and The Best of Damon Knight in nineteen seventy six.
(30:27):
It was awarded the nineteen fifty one Retro Hugo Award
for the Best Short Story of two thousand and one,
So there you go. It was originally in short stories,
and it looks like it's been in several publications down
through the years, So kudos to Damon Knight. Thirty two
years later, Lloyd Backner would parody his role into Serve
(30:53):
Man in what movie you know?
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yes, it's Naked gun?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Is it?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Two and a half?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Two and a half? The smell of nineteen to have
you covered that one yet? Yeah? Okay, so I think
even does he even quote the line in that movie?
I think he does.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
It's been a while, but there's also several other pop
culture TV shows and sitcoms. That's been in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, The Simpsons, Futurama, Madagascar.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Oh it's in Madagascar, okay.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
So, but it's also been in some musical works by
artists Nuclear Assault, Eric, tell me if any of these
are your favorites, Nuclear Assault, Cattle Decapitation, Monopuff, and LP.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Never heard of any of them.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
It's also a reference to the episode has even been
found its way on to the unofficial emblem for a
United States Air Force unit.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Really, that's interesting. So the US government's involved now?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Oh, so it is true.
Speaker 5 (31:55):
The image of the flying saucer toward the end, that's
the image of the end here we're talking about, is
from the film Earth versus the Flying Saucers fifty six,
so that image is at the end. The establishing shot
of New York City's Times Square air area is is
stock footage from nineteen forty nine, as both visible movie
(32:19):
marquees the strand in the upper left as well as
the Globe Theater mid left are showing two films, My
Dream Is Yours from nineteen forty nine and Champion from
nineteen forty nine at the aforementioned cinemas, respectively, which we're
both playing at the time. Jack Carson, whose name can
(32:39):
be seen on the strand marquee, played Harvey Huntcut in
The Whole Truth in nineteen sixty one, so there's a
lot of info in that little nugget. So mainly the
stock footage is from nineteen forty nine at the beginning
of the episode. At the beginning of the episode is
announced that the first alien landing just outside Newark, New Jersey,
(33:01):
which is the same area as the aliens landed in
orson Wells War of the World radio broadcast in nineteen
thirty eight, a program which Rod Serling would have been
very familiar with, all right. And then finally on the
trivia side here the retractable, retractable stairwell that leads up
(33:25):
into the spaceship is the exact same prop used in
Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Gray movie Area.
Speaker 5 (33:32):
Yeah, one of your guys's favorites. You covered that with
me then, Yeah, from nineteen fifty six starring as well
as the Twilight Zone season fours on Thursday, we leave
for home. So we haven't covered that one yet obviously
because it's from nineteen sixty three, but it's that prop
is reused again several goofs. I mean, there's like the
(33:57):
longest list of goofs in incoon Nut years. I guess
I'm only going to touch on a few of them here,
but it was like the longest of any episode that
we've done so far. So the first one is the
light detectors require a yes or no to function. The
Cannibate's narrative when asked what his motivation for the visit
(34:17):
would not have been. It would have registered basically right,
because he goes on a big, long explanation. When the
candidate enters the UN building, he informs the assembled diplomats
that candidates have learned their language while communicating in English.
There are literally hundreds of languages on Earth, and English
(34:38):
is the only one of a number of official languages
spoken at the UN which that one's kind of weak.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Well, I thought maybe he could preject yeah, anything he
wanted if you were Japanese. Japanese, he knew.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
That all the languages. He just chose to tell tell alepathy.
I can't say that word, so he yeah, yeah, he
could usepathic telepathically, thank you. He used English for his
yes communication. The guards at the United Nations Building are
shown to be wearing guns. You and guards are unarmed,
(35:13):
so that's a goof. And then finally, the Cannimate homeworld
is described as billions of miles away. Michael Chambers notes
that it's one hundred billion miles off into space, but
the Cannimates are from another galaxy. Traveling one hundred billion
miles wouldn't even get you to the nearest star Proxima Centauri,
(35:35):
let alone another galaxy. So galagho a long long way
to get out of the galaxy.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Oh no, that was Alpha Centauri from the Last Starfighter.
Speaker 5 (35:45):
So Jambala, you lead all the questions in the.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Did you cover about why Richard Kill didn't do the voice?
Speaker 5 (35:54):
I did not have that in trivia, but I did
read about it. Yeah, I really recorded it right.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Well, he was he was in the middle of recording
another movie called It's like ee ga ee g a
h or something like that, and I guess the producer
of that or director of that let him come over
here and do this. So he had been up all
day and everything is when after got into the makeup
chair and all that, they said that he tried it,
said it was just not good. So they're like, yeah,
we'll just let you stand there. You know, he said
(36:21):
he was kind of disappointed about it, but what are
you gonna do? He gave it his best shot.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
No, I think they made the right decision in the
end with Joseph Ruskin.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
All right, so here we go. Well, here's a question
I have. I don't know if you saw this. When
the cannimate basically forces Michael Chambers up to the top
and closes the door, he turns around with his hands
up in the air like this. Do you think why
wasn't there more of a chaos going on with all
(36:49):
the other people when she said it's a good bug
and it basically they see him shoving him up there,
or do you think it was already too late? That
there weren't that many people left on earth because all
these little pickup point it's around the earth, or you know,
they've been taking people for months and months.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Yeah, why, I mean, why wasn't there more of like
a stampede?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Right?
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I would have loved to scene just as midget of it,
you know, maybe either either pure chaos happening or just
have the campaign. Look, we have a delusional two people,
and then they take that girl and put her on
another ship or so, just to give a little bit
of closure there, because you basically just after he shuts
the thing and turns around, his hands are just in
the air, and then it just cuts away. Yeah, I
would like to see if there's some footage missing that
we could have drawn a better conclusion there. To me,
(37:32):
I love the back telling of a story through the narration.
I think that's really well done in this episode. The
twist superb. It's one of the top five of all
time and Twilight Zone probably. To me, this will probably
(37:52):
be in my top ten list of all the Twilight
Zone episodes. Okay, but I don't know yet because I
haven't seen all of them. One but it's just so
iconic that everybody knows. It's been spoofed so many times
right now, when I go back and I watch it,
it's not one of my personal favorites, but it's really good.
(38:16):
So I'm gonna give it a nine just for the
twist alone. Is it rates up there for me? With
I have the Beholder time enough at last, I mean
mirror Image. You can go on and name all these
other ones. So for me, it's a nine. If I'm
if I'm telling people, hey, you need to get into
(38:37):
twilet Zone, watch Twilight Zone, this would be one. I
would probably recommend to get people to watch the Twilight
Zone definitely. So for me it's a nine. Eric, what
are you giving it?
Speaker 1 (38:48):
All?
Speaker 5 (38:48):
Right? Well, withhold rating, I'll throw a few questions and observations.
Are you know, maybe we can discuss it a little further.
What does this episode suggest when it comes to the
dangers of blind trust in technology? Right? We're aimed exactly,
We're smack dab in the middle of AI and there's
a lot of apprehension as to you know, AI could
(39:12):
be sinister and go off the rails and we could
be a LAH terminator. Again, did you ever see I
have not seen them.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You need to watch that one they build robots and
then one of them gets a bad ship or something
turns the ball against will Smith.
Speaker 5 (39:26):
Okay, so along those theme themes, like they're they're talking about,
you know, us being the cyborgs and Elon wants to
implant this AI chip and our you know, our heads
and then we can have full recall of you know.
I mean that the possibilities are somewhat endless. But if
(39:47):
there aren't guard rails put up right for the AI,
it becomes Yeah, it could become self aware. That's I
think the greatest fear by a lot of people is
that it's going to become self aware. And if it's
learning at you know, high rates of speed. I mean
I've saw some it's been a while, but I listened
to this podcast and they were talking about the capacity
(40:08):
of which the AI can learn. It's it's astronomical and
like once it goes off the rails, like you wouldn't
be able to stop it, right, So that's a big fear.
And the dangers of blind trust, I mean they need
to be there. That needs to be regulated in some form,
and even here in the US, like we're spending billions
(40:29):
and billions of dollars for scientific AI scientific research to
research things like cancer and all those things. Though, I
mean they're spending there are a lot of companies, like
biotech companies that are going to spend billions of dollars
to invest here in the US, and those well.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
We're also bringing back dire wos that are extincted. Okay,
I mean, so, I mean, you take an AI or
you take an aliens if it comes down to war,
are you.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Taking probably probably ai ais that control aliens. I don't know.
That's it's just yeah, So again the dangers of blind trusts,
those are always going to be in the forefront of
human minds, or they at least they should be. Why
are humans so eager to believe that in the cannimate's benevolence?
(41:18):
Why are they so? I don't know. I think I
don't know. That's one thing in the episode. I think
people are a little bit more skeptics, ficious, you know,
skeptical about you know, hey this guy, you know, it's
like too good to be true type scheme. You know,
if you have at least an ounce of skepticism, you're
going to question the benevolence, especially if an alien. I
(41:41):
mean We're gonna be like, you know, I've seen this
movie play out a million times in Hollywood, Like if
it actually happened where.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Remember Independence Stay when they all those ships just came in.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Yeah, it's ominous with you.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
He goes down, just starts to destroying people.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
Right, So are humans powerless in the face of superior intelligence?
Is the rise like is the rise of Skynet? Like
is inevitable? You know this is all in the same
vein of AI and all that that can kind of
be scary for people. I would just say, just by
note of observation again, I would echo what you said.
(42:19):
This episode, of course, is iconic, like it's a Hall
of Fame ending. The twist ending is it's Hall of
Fame top ten, top five. Right. The candidates are visually imposing,
yet they are trusted immediately. That was something that stuck out.
Everybody trusts, not everybody, but they I mean there were
(42:41):
long lines. You know, people were willing to, you know,
give up a lot. It's kind of ironic, right, They're
so big and imposing, and yet they were they were trusted. Right.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
You got to think though, if you're if you're like,
we'll just throw this out there let's say Africa and
or South America, whatever, and it's somewhere that has not
been able to grow different types of crop than much
are used to growing. And all of a sudden, you're
basically curing hunger. These people are curing hunger. You're obviously
(43:15):
gonna trust him. They probably cured cancer, right, They probably
did all this stuff that they never thought would be possible.
So why wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (43:22):
They endeared themselves to vanity, right, So finally the tragic shift.
There's a tragic shift here in the person of Michael Chambers,
because he's a very confident code cracker, right, he works
with the government, he's a smart guy, he can, he's
very good at his job, and now he ends up
a helpless slave right in the end. It's very tragic
(43:44):
in that sense of the twist. So again, I'm probably
gonna rate it right around to nine. Boy, we've been right.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
We've been sinking.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Sinking. Maybe AI is like melding this podcast hey.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
To say, but Jimbo and Eric are just one person.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
That'd be funny. So yeah, a nine, I'm like you again,
Like it wouldn't be one of my favorites to go
back and Rewatch but I can't deny its place in
you know, the Twilight Zone spectrum. I can't deny it
like it's just everywhere. It's probably not one of my
favorite episodes again, but yeah, I gotta give it its
(44:26):
due props. And that's where I leave it at a nine.
I think it's uh, it's scored correctly.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
What prop are you taking? Eric?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Oh yeah, if we didn't do that in the last episode.
Oh boy, you do this to me all the time
on the spot. You know, probably the book.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
I would say that's the cheap way out. Just take
the book, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (44:46):
Probably the book. What about you gotta think for a minute.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
I'll give you a I think I'll take the space. No,
I'm gonna take the robe, that kind of what wears
when he goes into the.
Speaker 5 (44:56):
Big old big silver rope, silver road. I think you're
gonna take that big kiss boots that he will with
the high.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Hey, that that counts. That's part of the outfit.
Speaker 5 (45:05):
Oh okay, so you get the whole pack, get the
big fourhead All right?
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Well, Eric, do you know offhand what the next episode
is that we will be covering.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
I do not. I have looked earlier, but I've forgotten,
do you know. I hope you do, because no, I.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
Thought maybe you would pull it up there real quick
and see while we're talking down and yeah, well, if
you'd like to follow us, we are the Tragedy of
Cinema podcast on Facebook. If you want to reach out
to us, we are the Tragedy of Cinema podcast I
don't know, just the Tragedy of cinemat gmail dot com.
If you want to leave us review, Eric will read
it on the air. So we're closing down on season three.
(45:45):
I can't wait to get our Dundee's out or if
you will, the tragedies if you will, and uh, we're
gonna have special guests Jason bond On he's been following along,
so it's going to be a well of a time there.
I can guarantee you that.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
This is really slow pulling up. I apologize it looks
up on your phone faster. Season three, let's go through
our episodes. We should be number twenty five, I think
twenty five. Apologize the Fugitive. The Fugitive, which is interesting. Yeah,
(46:20):
there are a lot of interesting things dynamics with that
episode is so we'll get up to all that guy culturally,
the shifts the guy.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
That goes to that little girl and think, yeah, he's whatever,
he's an alien of sorts.
Speaker 5 (46:36):
Right, we'll preview that. Well, we won't preview. We'll talk
about that next time, next time in.
Speaker 4 (46:42):
The fifth dimension.
Speaker 5 (46:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
Well, with that being said, I think this episode's coming
to a close, and that's wrap and cut.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
The recollections of when Michael Chambers with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy,
or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle
of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being
the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone's soup.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
It's tonight's bill of
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Fare from the Twilight Zone.
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