Air Date: 16 September 1966 Writer(s): William Welch Director: Harry Harris

Summary:

Fresh from the frigid North Atlantic, Doug and Tony tumble aboard a rocket just seconds before blast-off. Hearing the countdown in progress, Doug’s worried that if this is ‘one of those early Canaveral jobs, they could be done for!’ (He doesn’t seem to know that those early Canaveral jobs barely had room for monkeys much less large room compartment for wayward tumbling time travelers.)

In the terribly spacious control-room of the rocket, four astronauts, The Stalwart Commander, Doc Ostrow hiding out from Forbidden Planet, generic communication tech, and the mustachioed  Mr.Beard+10, complete the countdown and launch a stock footage Atlas rocket for Mars. Trouble pops up straight away, because the craft is some three hundred pounds overweight – Doug really should start watching his waistline – they aren’t going to make escape velocity and the commander it preparing to abort the mission. However Mustachioed Beard+10 punches the thrusters button and zoom they make escape velocity, albeit using way too much fuel.

Meanwhile back to with the Tunnel Rats, An admiral drops by for a visit, along with his pet scientist, Brandon, and the Admiral’s aide, clean-faced Ensign Beard-0, the same man who in ten years will be aboard the Mars mission.

Doug and Tony are discovered by the flight crew and a debate rages what to do with the stowaways. Doug and Tony try the ‘We’re just innocent Time Travelers’ routine, but it plays in space just as well as it played on the Titanic. The extra weight – ah hem, mass guys, it’s extra mass, oh just forget it – is endangering the mission and Bead+10 suggest that they space Doug and Tony – you gotta love the man’s commitment to the mission. He eve tries to seal stating that death by vacuum as quick and painless, this man should have been a dentist.

Back at the Tunnel everyone give Beard-0 the stink eye and he kind of wilts. Apparently, in the future, he becomes a dick.

Stalwart Commander decides to go for the fuel depots on the moon, planning to refuel the rocket and then go on to Mars, ‘cause nothing is more important that beating the Reds to the Red Planet. Because it is physically impossible for a space sci-fi movie avoid danger from meteors, a passing meteor holes the ship. Doug, Tony, and a generic tech don surplus suits from Destination Moon – an SF film, and not a Sci-Fi movie – and climb out to fix the ship.  The rocket meanwhile, tired of being a stock footage Atlas, has transformed itself in a sleek silver spaceship, proper for a trip between planets. Thanks again to generous stock footage from Destination Moon – I wonder if The Grand Master of Science Fiction shot his television the night this aired – the ship is repaired and the continues on to the moon.

Aboard the rocket Beard+10 is has computed that they have enough fuel to land safely, but the Tunnel Rats, where their computers have loads more flashing lights than any rocket’s, have computed that the fuel is too low and ship will crash. Beard+10 is not only a dick, he’s incompetent.

The Tunnel Rats have gotten a fix o Doug and Tony, but before the lovely Dr. Anne MacGregor can shift them to another local in time, hopefully a safer one, Pet Scientist  Brandon pulls from his pocket (apparently he knew that they would take away his briefcase) a charge of plastic explosive with detonator attached  sneakily fixing it to the control panel Brandon the coolest saboteur ever stands calmly by, not two meters from the panel as it explodes. Now Doug and Tony are stuck. General Kirk asks Dr. Swain if the explosion was dodgy and the brilliant scientist thinks so. but he doesn’t know. Apparent control panels explode like bombs all the freaking time.

Back in the future and on the moon Beard+10 and another Doc Ostrow walk to the deport for a can of gas. At the depot, Beard+10 reveals himself to be not incompetent but an enemy agent and pulls out Doc Ostrow’s air house from his helmet. Doomed to die in another script script, Doc Ostrow cannot affix his air house back into its socket and dies, managing a brief scream over the radio. Doug and Tony are convinced that Beard+10 is not only a dick but a traitor, but the remaining crew aren’t buying it. A Fighting Time Traveling Scientists over power the commander and Doug goes to confront Beard+10.

Ten years earlier, Security has showed up with news that ‘The Agency” knows that one of the three visitors is a spy, and in a daring move of extreme subtly announces this in front of the three visitors. Apparently Pet Scientist Brandon has spent some of his skill points on combat, knocking over the security guard, taking his grease gun, and then kills the next four security guys who conveniently run in the room in single file.  A manhunt is started and they seal off all 800 floors, because Brandon might be fast or something. Thanks to the exploding panel the tunnel rats have missed all the video showing that Beard+10 is a traitor and they didn’t have their TiVo set up either.

Doug confronts Beard+10 in a very noisy fight in vacuum, beats the man up and loads up with an armful of gas for the rocket and beef jerky for the crew. Tony, unable to raise Doug and all out of spacesuits, forces the generic tech to give him his spacesuit. In a display is sartorial skill that happens entirely off screen, Tony while holding a gun on two men, puts on the spacesuit and goes out looking for Doug.

Doug comes back with the gas and the news that Beard+10 was an enemy agent. Without a shred of evidence to back up his story that the man that they have trained with was a Red, Stalwart Commander and Generic Tech naturally believe him.  Sadly he and Tony passed each other from the depot to the rocket, the bright yellow and red suits being hard to see against the gray lunar soil. Doug hurries back because maybe Beard+10 isn’t dead and Tony is in trouble, but not before heroically ordering the crew to not miss their launch window and blast off without them if they need to.

At the tunnel complex Beard-0 has found Brandon and it turns out that Beard-0 has always been a dick and a traitor. He says he’ll cover for Brandon, cons him out of a gun, and then when the man starts to leave calls out to him just so he can have the pleasure letting Brandon know he’s going to get shot. Beard-0, having certified himself as a good guy by killing a bad guy, is accepted by the tunnel security.

Tony and Beard+10 fight, again in a very noisy, full gravity kind of way, accidentally starting a ticking timer that Beard+10 had been working on. (I just love ticking in vacuum, its wrong on so many levels.) Doug shows up, they beat Beard+10, hightail it out of there, watching the rocket launch without them. The depot explodes, trapping the on the moon with just hours to live.

The Tunnel Rats, having gotten the elusive fix, zap Doug and Tony to another time. Because spacesuits are a no-no in time travel, Doug and Tony are magically stripped to their regular clothes while standing on the freakin’ moon. Being tough hard-punching scientist, this bothers them not on bit and they vanish, only to tumble into the middle of a collapsing mine, doesn’t that damn machine ever drop someone into a picnic?

ANALYSIS

Actually this episode, snark set aside, wasn’t totally bad. The writer tried to play with the inherent non-linear nature of a time travel story, have one character appear in two different element of the story separated by a decade was pretty interesting.  He also tried to pay at least some attention to the realities of spaceflight, while unsuccessfully dodging some of the more tired Hollywood’s clichés. The only thing I would have really enjoyed seeing in the episode would be having Beard in the future acting on the knowledge he gained ten years earlier. He knew from the moment the ship lifted that there would be all this going to happen, he’s already seen it, but because of Brandon’s bomb he doesn’t know how it ends anymore than Doug and Tony. There was real SF story telling missed here, still this was a bit of fun to watch.