In today's story, a strange two-dimensional alien inadvertently causes a pile of havoc in Los Angeles. The thing is stranded in our three-dimensional world and only with the help of a mild-mannered optician and his secretary can it get back to its own dimension.
This episode stars Peter (THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T) Lind Hayes as Dr. James Stone, Joan (PANIC IN YEAR ZERO!, TOWER OF LONDON) Freeman as Elizabeth Dunn, Parley (THE BRASS BOTTLE) Baer as Dr. Bernard Stone and Douglas (KING DINOSAUR, BLACK ZOO) Henderson as Detective Lt. Runyan.
Dr. Stone is an expert in corrective lenses, he has developed lenses made of silica from a meteorite. When he puts the glasses on in his lab, he sees something from another world, and it creates a menacing electrical vortex in the room, then disappears!
While watching the news on TV, Dr. Stone notices a story about some unknown force that has cut a freakin' skyscraper in half no less!!..
After seeing the image of the creature on the tube, the doctor puts his glasses back on for another encounter with...
ECK!
Elizabeth and the doctor's brother now get to behold...
ECK!
The doctor can communicate with ECK! and learns how it was stuck in this dimension. It's a pretty nice monster once you get to know it!
Anyway, the problem has to do with its eyes not working in this dimension and it cannot locate the portal necessary to return to a 2-dimensional world. So, it gives the doc one of its eyes to try and correct.
After a news report on the TV about ECK! comes on, it goes berserk and leaves the lab, only to cause more havoc to Earthlings.
The doc does his bestest to correct the lens, but doesn't have time to fix the other three.
But, the one lens works and ECK! is able to return to his dimension, making for a happy ending for a change... What about that skyscraper though?.. Here we go with another week, at, The Dungeon!!
A fascinating, upbeat, imaginative episode from the "sci-fi over horror/sci-fi" second season, one of several that not only has an optimistic ending, but an interesting, unusual being not out to kill/eat people or vaporize/obliterate our planet. As much as I like some of the first season episodes, the second season is more science fiction than "boogeyman" monsters, or whatever Ellison called them. (I could easily keep only the Leslie Stevens-written episodes of the first season and let go of all the bleak, dark, Stefano-scripted ones, if the DVD and Blu-ray sets contained only the more hopeful episodes you like, while dumping the ones you don't!)
ReplyDelete