Monday, May 25, 2020

TALES OF TOMORROW / "Past Tense" Season 2 Episode 33 - 1953

Here's Boris in a Tale Of Tomorrow! In this tale, a doctor invents a time machine and wants to go back through history and make a fortune by selling penicillin to a pharmaceutical firm.

Well, the story starts at the State Hospital, the year is 1910...

Dr. Marco (Boris) is in a hospital bed, seemingly delirious, he keeps saying the word 'penicillin' which is obviously a word no one's ever heard of. The doctor at the hospital tells a concerned person there the story the man from the future was telling before he fell ill.

The man says he's from the year 1953, he's a physician and inventor. He's married to a woman that questions his reasoning, a time machine?! It's pure comic book nonsense...

She even threatens to destroy the machine when she gets the chance, the doctor implores her not to tamper with his invention as it could be a danger to him.

So anyway, it's off we go, forward into the past!.. Pretty good effects, shades of Frankenstein!

We start cruising through the past, here's the good old atomic bomb!

The doctor stops the ride in 1923...

Dr. Marco is able to see the head of a pharmaceutical company but they do not want the vial of penicillin the doc is offering them because it's untested.

But, the man that got him the appointment with the company is also able to have the doctor test the penicillin on a sick patient. After some time though, the person dies. The truth is that it was too late for the drug to work. He gets into a peck of trouble...

So, he goes back home to his wife and tells her of his adventure. Then he drops a bomb... He's going to go back to 1910 and sell it to the same company, only this time, they'll pay dearly!.. The wife senses danger and tells him that he's not going to be coming back...

So, he goes back to 1910 and gets another chance to talk to the head of the company. Only this time, the man calls the police and has him taken away, for,,, Fraud! Also for being coo coo, how could anybody be from the future?!!

The doc is dead, he died of pneumonia in the year 1910! Moral... Hey, don't mess around with time, you'll be sorry! So like, check in on Wednesday for more new Dungeon Cargo!

4 comments:

K said...

One of the best episodes of this show, IMHO! Also, I loved hearing music from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet used in one scene! (They used a lot of classical records to back up the live shows in those days.)

K said...

The brief Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet piece is at this link, starting at 28:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coxgnE3aTs0

For my friend Randall L., this same piece was borrowed by James Horner for STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, when you see the Enterprise blazing across the sky. Truly, it is a majestic, heart-tugging, theme!

Also, the end title music for most TALES OF TOMORROW episodes comes from earlier in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.

Richard Horton said...

Kinda reminds of a sci-for-youngsters novel I read as kid, "Danger: Dinosaur!" in which a group traveled to the age of dinosaurs. However, several of the group died while they were in the past. But here's the kicker -- because they died before they ever were born, gradually, they ceased to exist altogether. They were never born! And even the memories of them gradually faded, as well. What a concept, eh? To this day, I still wonder: if it were possible to travel to the past, what would happen if we didn't survive once we were there?

K said...

The great thing about youngsters: their minds are more open to sci-fi and fantasy stories! I used to get my sci-fi novels from the Scholastic Book Club as a kid in the 1960s! :)

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