0:00:03: It is the middle ground between light and shadow between science and superstition and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.

0:00:14: This is time enough podcast.

0:00:40: Hello, Welcome to Time enough podcast. It's where we get into episodes of the twilight zone and beyond. This is matt here and joining me today is you know what I should have like asked you a bit more about how to do an intro because my intro is Dorian is an old friend. Mark had her email. It turned out to be the email I probably had in the first place. And uh you talk movies and we used to talk movies, lots of screwball comedies and black and white were still black and white. But if you want to elaborate on on what what you're up to and uh, the film world and why you wanted the obsolete man, you can, you can rattle that off. Okay, Okay. So yes, my name is Dorian. I've known that for some time, although it's been a long, long time.

0:01:26: 8000 years I think, and that's probably true. Um, so I'm a media archivist, a film historian and a writer. I currently work for an online magazine called video librarian. Um they review the films for collection development in academic specialty and public libraries and I also work for a film distributor. So there's a lot of films still sprinkled throughout my life and I was excited about the obsolete man because I thought it was going to be about before I saw it. I thought was going to be about obsolete media. I thought that that's what the crux of the story would be about. But actually that's not true. It's about the man being obsolete for believing in books still. So a little bit darker than I expected. But I was really excited to see this one. So the books, the books are the obsolete media in this case.

0:02:13: That's where, that's where you're getting off okay here, because you're like, it's an online magazine, it's a published magazine. You would, you would be right in the star chamber to be declared off sleep by this point. Yeah, Well, and I love how and I'm jumping ahead a little bit. They call them the narcotics you call literate.

0:02:33: So I guess they couldn't have imagined at this point in time, you know, and they also refer to the librarian as just books, which isn't really what our librarians are anymore. That's like a 60s version of just books as opposed to now where, you know, film and media is a part of what the librarian's job is. So as a librarian slash archivist. Um yeah, I was intrigued to see this one and it was much sadder than I expected it to be, but but also great.

0:03:04: I quickly went up to my list of my favorite episodes. Um I got the, it's one of the first ones that I watched when I got the Blue ray set last year. I think I was like, oh, it'll be a while until I get to the end of season two. Although I'm here now it's been a while. But uh yeah, so I watched a few and this one really stuck with me and I was like, oh, this must be like everybody's favorite and and actually I found like doing a few chats online and things that this one has some points of contention for some people which will, will get into uh first though I want to do just a smattering of trivia on the episode.

0:03:39: The original air date was June 2, 1961 and the script is by Rod Serling Elliot. Silverstein directed this along with four other episodes of the Twilight Zone. He also helmed the Academy award winning feature film, comedy Western, Cat Ballou, which I saw far too many times as an eighties child because the VHS was on my aunt's DHS rack and you know, at six years old, it's like I went to a movie with Cat in it, right? Even though it doesn't really have anything to do with that. Um Burgess MEREDITH is Romney Wordsworth and he's basically twilight zone royalty. This is beyond his Four Zone appearances. He served as the narrator and the reboot movie.

0:04:25: It is fully qualified to deathmatch Danny devito for the role of batman's penguin. Yes, I figured that in Rocky are probably the things that are most known these days when people think of burgess MEREDITH. Yeah, you give him a robot. Yeah, okay.

0:04:41: Because Rocky four is the only true rocky movie I heard recently. I don't know if this was a joke or not if this was a bit but Sylvester Stallone being like he wanted to re cut rocky for without the robot when that's not that's not correct. Don't do that. Yeah. Okay. Two votes against that, right?

0:05:00: But another thing I think about when I think about Rocky is how raspy we're just MEREDITH's voices but he didn't get raspy er with age. He really was raspy in the beginning, so it's almost the same voice that you're hearing in the sixties as you hear a little bit later. You know, he still got that distinctive sound. It's weird that I did watch the Twilight Zone movie about a year and a half ago and I felt like he was kind of like had a more singing quality than I was used to and he was doing the voice work. Like maybe he was more self conscious about his voice and tried to smooth it out for that movie or maybe I'm just remembering it wrong. I don't know.

0:05:36: Well another thing about this role since he had played someone who loved books earlier in the show, right? So there was the earlier episode. Um and now he is a librarian by profession. So it's sort of like an I mean you can't compare the two different characters but that's kind of interesting though. He starts as one and they're like, hey, let's bring him back and make him a librarian. Like it seems like they're connected behind the scenes a little bit.

0:06:00: So I mean, I guess it's an evil printer.

0:06:03: I think he's the devil in that. So that's a natural progression. Yeah.

0:06:10: We already saw fritz weaver and third from the Sun and he plays the chancellor here.

0:06:15: Weaver would get weird for genre tv and Serling's night gallery and the non serling X files in film. He showed up in failsafe marathon man and the thomas crown affair.

0:06:28: And then I just typed g I think I might have fallen asleep on my keyboard at that point. So that means trivia over. Okay, uh during I am throwing the prologue for you. Some people do the Rod Serling. I've had people try and do like a southern madman or you could just read it in a normal voice. All of those are, all of those options are available to you. I'm gonna go as normal and as eloquent as I can. So start anytime, yep.

0:06:57: All right, you walk into this room at your own risk because it leads to the future, not a future that will be, but one that might be, this is not a new world. It is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It is pattern itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time, refinements, technological advances and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom, but like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule. Logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr Romney Wordsworth in his last 48 hours on Earth, he's a citizen of the state but will soon have to be eliminated because he's built out of the flesh and because he has a mind Mr Romney Wordsworth who will draw his last breath in the twilight zone.

0:07:51: I guess one of the things that sticks in my mind for this episode straight up is I feel like this is one of the best minimalist sets ever. Um And my notes, I compared it basically like it's this or Doctor Strange loves war room which honestly is an even better minimalist set, but this is on a tv budget so. Sure yeah and it's it's disproportionate like it makes the whole point is that the state is this overwhelming power and everyone is small in comparison. So just from the opening shot of the chancellor sitting in whatever that is sort of like a judge's throne almost to the jury, you know, quote unquote jury standing alongside like you know like a military formation, like it's just it's about making him and the doors the doors are giant.

0:08:40: Like I don't know how they got the soundstage which have been quite large to have doors open like that and it makes a great first impression.

0:08:48: I think there actually was some notable um work for those doors. Uh I I should have had the sense to go look at the twilight zone companion when I was doing my trivia and I didn't oops, I like wiki do it for me. But uh I do remember that actually being an issue for for building this set. Um I mean you still got to spend some money on, on even a minimal minimalist set. They're not just some twilight zones have just used the sound stage as this. So well, I mean the sound stages even lazier. I mean, I shouldn't say lazy. It's like the very first episode where is everybody when, when he comes out of his little MK altered chamber, it's just this is the sound stage, but it's like, okay, that seems like a military warehouse too. So it's it's fine.

0:09:33: And that episode also extensively using back lots of course. So the set that has the most going on is Romney's room with all of the books and the bookcases and that contrast between the stark area where he's judged and sent to death and versus his home, that he's made This sort of comforting thing and he's surrounded with all the things that he loves, including that Bible that he Stashes away for 20 years because it's illegal because what was it? The state has proven there is no God. So, um, so that that's a that's the company set.

0:10:09: That is the biggest point of contention, I found, um, people don't like in this episode that his striking back against the state is basically religious based, um, which in the 1919 60 61 we've hit a few times where maybe religion has taken a slightly different way. That would be now, you know, we're just coming out of the fifties where you go to church and sit next to ned flanders or whatever. Right? So, but that was in the crux of their argument for sentencing him. It was the thing about the field investigators in your sector classified just absolute because you have no function, your anachronistic and your host from another time, which is a really great compliment, but obviously not in this context.

0:10:56: And then he calls him an ugly crawling bug and delusional. So I thought the religion was sort of an afterthought, like they didn't really reveal that part about the bible until like much later in. So that's interesting that that's something that people don't like about it, because I didn't think that was the forefront of the reason he was being liquidated. I thought that was just that was yet another book that he held precious. Yeah, yeah. So they basically gave him the sentence of being a hipster.

0:11:25: It's too bad. He didn't have like the little mustache tattoo on his finger. That would be a nice touch. They can do that. They remake it.

0:11:35: He had that really random Pegasus statue when the later when the chancellor comes to visit him at his home or room or apartment or whatever that that area is. Did you remember that? I guess random Pegasus statue right on that table and a book that was like a foot tall. Like they really went out of their way to find the thickest book they could to put in the foreground of that scene where everything else was pretty normal in the background. But now that you mentioned I guess I kind of remember that statue but no, it's not something I really like consciously hit so but I was thinking like yeah the bible reading just in 2023 there are people that are rubbed the wrong way by that again for me. I yeah, it's the point is he's obviously it doesn't really matter what book he's reading from in the end but now I was like would it be like cool if he just started like reading the lyrics of black sabbath instead?

0:12:29: You know have a very have a very metal kind of death. That would be cool.

0:12:34: I mean I don't know, I think that that was sort of the biggest insult right? He said that was his most prized possession because that was the thing that was the most against the state. So I think it all makes a lot of sense. I mean this is a solitary in dystopian place. So like that just seems like the greatest symbol that could be used. So I don't know I think it makes perfect sense. I like I like It's like a triple metaphor, forbidden fruit or something I guess. That's kind of cool. So but yeah, yeah. His room. I mean there's only two sets in this. I guess we could count the staircase outside the third set, but that's not really a set. They can just go use the staircase probably. So I'm not sure what they would do in 1960s. There might be union things like no, they gotta build you a staircase or something.

0:13:20: But yeah, but we got three sets at most basically. So it is That's what I like this episode. It feels pretty epic, but it's quite small scale.

0:13:32: Like the ideas are like pretty epic I suppose. Um I don't know what would you read to the commandant in this case if you're going to amuse him for 20 minutes before we all blow up.

0:13:47: I don't know. I mean I also thought that one of the reasons he did that was because you know the whole way that that scene ends is in the name of God. So I mean maybe that is just the most robust thing that you can can read to a soulless nervous chancellor, you know, in in moments before his presumed death. So I don't know, that's it's hard to, it's hard to beat that one paper books anymore. I'm looking at my bookshelf mostly filled with disk which in its own way makes me my own hoops, makes me my own obsolete man having just a ton of you know Dvds and stuff. Right? I've been wondering about your collection if it had waned over the years or if you're like holding strong at your like tens of thousands, there's there's quite, I mean I came on a laptop, I can't turn the camera but there I have insane amounts, you know, tower Records actually still in Japan, we still have them but about 2019 or so they finally became a ghost their former self.

0:14:50: I'm like well I my my room is now a tower records so I guess we're good but that's something I was just like I found like in a car like I've gotten obsolete um for many for a long time I was using, you know playing Mp three S or whatever but as people wanted to charge their phones I kind of went back just playing C.D. S most of the time my last rental car did not have a cD player, the one before it but then that was that was eliminated so that could be like a cleaner line on the dashboard but back to DVds like that's something that I see in my job, you know their transition especially because of the pandemic. The transition from being very common to send physical screeners to reviewers or to release things on DVD has just completely been shattered by the streaming market and all these different platforms.

0:15:44: And actually I was gonna ask you was, how did you watch this episode? Because I watched it on my advertising video on demand channel, Pluto, that was where it was most available. So that's a whole other conversation. But you know just how we are consuming media and how much it's changed as a really interesting part of this, this continuation.

0:16:06: I love it. I love it.

0:16:09: Yeah. Um weirdly though, sometimes not so much for the twilight zone but um I do podcasts on movies and stuff and sometimes I'll have the the D.V.D. Like you know like a meter away here that I could grab but it's just easier to download it and watch it on my laptop and do my notes and all that sort of stuff. So um I am horribly lazy about that sometimes. But it's a it's a it's the way of the world like the DVD is dying. The blu ray is dying just like every other media format before it. So it's it's hard as a media archivist that's pretty hard to see, you know, and and there are also lots of complications to streaming and rights and you know availability and you know purchasing something that's an intangible thing and then they take it off your platform and then you you lose the possession that you had.

0:17:02: It's it's a big mess. It's it's an interesting, it's an interesting evolution and it's, it's going to get more and more complicated. Yeah, I mean if you made this episode now you'd have what like john cusack's character from High Fidelity or something as the, as the absolute man that oh, here we go. I I put what I was trying to look at my bookshelf. Like what would I read uh while we're waiting midnight? And I actually made a note, the books not in here, it's at my parents house in America. But uh I would go with the 1992 Rolling Stone album Guide as the thing you're reading the bad reviews. But for good bands, maybe that's why I talk about Black Sabbath because I remember that that album guide rips Black sabbath a new one. So it would be fun to read those reviews that you would like torment the Chancellor as opposed to try to convert him in the last like few moments.

0:17:54: You would just, you know, needle him.

0:17:56: Yeah, I would be the Eid read the reviews for the Black sabbath Records which were unjustly um maligned in that book. Uh and then, and then I and then the review for Tacos putting on the Ritz album, which I think they gave a half star too and that, that one kind of deserves it. But yeah, I don't know, that's still a pretty legendary song.

0:18:16: Oh no, I had, I got a weird obsession with that for no reason about three weeks ago. The, the video, which is highly bizarre. So um, and, and apparently if you find its original version also highly offensive, but they did re edit it a bit.

0:18:29: Oh they had like tap dancing and blackface originally or something. Oh my God, no, they changed it. That's not in there. I did not on the official Taco website. You will not see that version. So no, I would think not by now, geez, excuse me, official Taco Youtube channel, if you are looking for it, which I believe also includes modern Taco reaction videos. So I don't remember he's reacting to, but it's, it's something um you said you had a ton of notes so I throw the ball in your court.

0:19:03: Yeah, I was thinking the next thing that was interesting because you know, he was given the choice to be liquid. Well he was not giving the choice. He was going to be liquidated, but the Chancellor was like, hey, you can choose when and how. So he had 48 hours to do it. And the first three things that the Chancellor mentioned is you can do pills, you can do gas or you can do electrocution and then you know of course MEREDITH gets this twinkle and he's like, oh let me ask first some special conditions here, what if I meet my assassin and but it's just a secret between us, like how it's gonna go. And the Chancellor was like yeah sure, like no suspicion, it seems, you know, seems a little strange. And so then of course what his method is is he requests to be blown up so by a very small bond by the way, like by the time that that actually goes off and the Chancellor is safely in the in the in the staircase that seems like that would not have killed a person who just would have like horribly named them.

0:20:01: Is that just my impression or if nobody comes in and given medical attention then it will still probably you know, work out in the end. You're right, I didn't think about that. I was thinking is this like does he live in like a probably government but the public apartment because they just have to blow up one unit of an apartment then right? Which would be and he said that it would be difficult and also it seems like it's a part of a greater thing, but he mentioned how he's isolated and that's how that like ruse of getting Chancellor to visit him and locking him in the room works because he's like, oh well you know, you can't cry for help because there's no one around because you've isolated me, like you said you would so I don't know if that's like the condemned person, no it can't be, it's not the condemned person's place because it had all this stuff there.

0:20:49: So that's kind of hazy, I'm unclear like how that could be his home, but also he could be completely isolated or maybe they evacuated everyone else. They said he was under review for a year. So it could just be that's kind of like a halfway house or a you know, home arrest prison sort of thing because I mean it's certainly nicer in a prison cell, but that makes sense and I would kind of explain why his, I just thought he was messy, but maybe it was because he had to condense all of these things into that one room and that's how it was just overflowing with the things he cared about. You know, the Pegasus statue, that's that's burgess MEREDITH man gave, you know right exactly, or the uncertainly named Wordsworth, if we're going with the character's name. Super subtle.

0:21:35: Yeah um oh you know, it's just you know, I was okay, so I'm looking at all my random notes and you know, he the chancellor really relish when I was saying that he didn't seem very suspicious that that MEREDITH had a Wordsworth had a different plan in mind, but really he was just so like relishing his power to say yes, I can approve that request for you like that. It seemed like he was caught up in his own ego and that maybe was why he didn't occur to him that there could be something tricky behind that and you know of course later. Um it's when MEREDITH says you underestimated me and that's a good moment, like I mean I guess we can assume and and from the end where they all just start growling and stuff, I mean we can assume that these people are basically stupid.

0:22:21: They don't read books, they're probably speaking like a language that's like missing half of the words by this point, you know, So they don't have the means to think that growling noise was super eerie and they moved like zombies. Like I mean that was very deliberate to have this animalistic thing and you don't really know what happens to the chancellor at the end because they cut right over the rod, you know, in his cigarettes. But you know that it looked like he was they were going to consume him almost. Which is not how it went for MEREDITH. So I don't know is it because he was one of their own or he was supposed to be fatter than that, but like they literally dragged him down.

0:22:59: Well maybe things are like worse than this fascist society. Three days later, there's been some laws passed. So the procedure is now different and the whole thing about it being recorded that was the other part of his request was that um television camera be set up, which is was on the wall and it was three different lenses. So I'm not quite sure how that worked, but and at first I thought that that was not real. I thought that that was part of the joke that he pretended that it was being televised so that you know, he but that the chancellor would truly be stuck, but it seems like it was because when the chancellor gets back then everyone knows what's happened. So that really was a live hookup was a televised event. Like he said, like the Chancellor mentioned the mass executions that happened earlier and he was bragging how they killed 1300 people in less than six hours and what a great televised event that had been.

0:23:53: So it I think it's not just that they're doing these things, but they're you know, there's this, what was that sort of behavior that people had when they went to executions for fun or beheadings and guillotine and things like that. It's tapping into that sort of like vicious human nature of wanting to see the demise of these people deemed as less than so that was an extra chilling element to it.

0:24:18: Yeah, they, they didn't have Richard Bachman yet to come up with a running man idea that that could work. You just put burgess MEREDITH in one of those uh uh sparkly suits and throw them into the running man pit, see what happens.

0:24:31: He would look great in glitter. I mean, you know, we're just marathon glitter. Yeah, I can go for that. Um Also I have a note about how when the countdown was happening, they're really building that suspense with superimposed clocks or like flying by in front as the chancellor got more and more nervous and you know that that was the only effect that was in the episode was that the clocks and the clock faces that were like zooming in and out to heighten that suspense of the countdown, that's the credit sequence for twilight Zone two. I don't remember if it's that first season to or not. Well um uh just if any yeah I guess knowing how the sausage is made usually when the credits are rolling, I'm like bringing up my word processor to and typing the title of the episode to start my notes.

0:25:22: So um yeah I I should maybe I should pay more attention to the title sequences and I say hey now that we're at the end of the season two, I'm just going to say it. I think I liked the first season Twilight zone theme better.

0:25:37: Yeah. Yeah, come on, I'm shooting I'm taking a shot for Bernard Herrmann there. I mean come on we should we should take a shot of the twilight zone for replacing a Bernard Herrmann theme but yeah, I guess it's not quite as radio catchy for sure. So yeah, that's probably it and how many more, how many more seasons are? There was five total. Yeah, So we got three more including the bizarre season four of 50 minute episodes that are apparently mostly, you know, 20 minutes too long. So so do you also you have the prologue? Did you also have the epilogue or I wrote that down? Would you like me to read them?

0:26:18: Okay. So as the Chancellor's being, you know, presumably eaten but at very least attacked and dragged down. He says any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man. That state is obsolete, so much shorter. That's why you want the epilogue in the first place? Yeah, it is shorter. And then after that he says a case to be filed under M for mankind in the twilight zone. And then we got an Oasis cigarette commercial. I didn't see that coming I guess so. I've never even heard of Oasis, but you know, that's clever to end your season by giving a nod to your sponsor because it wasn't too bleeding. I've heard I've heard a lot about Oasis cigarettes because I've now gotten through two seasons of of the Twilight zone.

0:27:04: So and then Gunsmoke. I got I got a bumper for Gunsmoke right after that. Yeah, so Oasis was the sponsor for the whole time or at least for the first two seasons. Um, Oasis in the first one. I think there's occasionally something else. So although I have noted you don't see him actually smoking it on camera much. He just holds it holds it and the smoke sort of watts by. So yeah, it's a subtle but ever present component, but yeah, that was the crutch, you know, because he was nervous on camera at least at first I guess he probably still was later on. So I got my cigarette, I'm good, you know, I didn't realize that I didn't know that, that I thought that was a tie in to the sponsor, but you're saying it was actually like a mechanism that he used for performance.

0:27:53: Yeah, yeah, I kind of just to chill out a little bit. I mean, you know, probably looks cool, right? So, um, I mean in the end of the man probably shouldn't have smoked all the cigarettes he did, but he was not doing on camera, he was just holding it on camera most of the time. So I mean think about, can you imagine Rod Serling actually taking a puff off my cigarette, like you can't really visualize that much.

0:28:14: Yeah, and looking sternly at you. I mean there really is, there's a very, you know, serious somber, you know, intriguing way that he introduces thing and, and swoops back in and you know, you can tell that his writing, he enjoys His writing, that maybe that doesn't sound right, but he has a great job of writing and he does a great job of speaking the words that he's written, it's a powerful part of the whole series. Yeah, I mean he wrote 97 of 156 episodes of this thing, so there's a few potboilers, you know, there's a few where you definitely see him just by the pool with a gin tonic, like talking to a dictaphone, you know and that being the episode that this one has some thought, you know uh I don't feel like this is by the pool dictaphone episode if it was that's great too.

0:29:07: But you know, he was enjoying himself while writing a dystopia. That that's cool too. Um I guess I'll start asking my questions for this episode. Uh first the first of which who in this episode goes into the twilight zone, I'm gonna say fritz weaver does because the tables are turned on him more than anyone else. Like Burgess MEREDITH walks in knowing what his fate is. But fritz weaver absolutely does not expect anything that's happening to him and you know, is is has the most dramatic turnabout. Not not the chance for himself, the Chancellor.

0:29:50: Yeah, I mean that that was my take too because um Wordsworth is very much like on top of the situation, he's already accepted his fate like before the episode starts. So if anything he is, he's from the twilight zone, he's the instigator, you know? Um So you agree that burgess MEREDITH had sort of knew what was going on the whole time. Well he made the situation happened, didn't he? This is his fiendish plan if you want to call it, I mean I guess in terms of the society, it's a fiendish plan for us, it's a great plan. You know, our main concern was simply that um some people don't like that, the religious angle, but again, I'll give him that because why not? At this point, that's fine, It's not like he's going fire and brimstone, he's reading stuff, so he was very defiant the whole time.

0:30:41: I mean, you know, when there are a lot of times when he was being yelled at by the Chancellor and he was just, you know, he wasn't really looking at him, he was just sort of looking down and listening and absorbing sort of the hatred that was being thrown at him. And so, you know, I thought he did his whole character from start to finish, maintained that dignity, He maintained the pride in his profession, he maintained the fact that he was right and that, you know, he was seeing the demise of the state and you know, seeing how these people behaved, but he seemed true to himself and confident that that he was on the right side of history.

0:31:17: I mean, it's it's an anthology show, but it just gives burgess MEREDITH character is such a weird arc that he's he's kind of pitiful as in we're going to pity him and timing up to last, he's an imbecile and mr Dingle the Dingle, they call him that and and here, but he's still being pressed upon. You know he's still being like oppressed as he is. Uh to a certain degree in other ones. But here he comes out as you know relatively noble while still stammering. Like burgess MEREDITH most of the time. So stammering not as a vocal tic but as just the um well his style of speaking.

0:31:52: Um But let's let's go ahead and keep the Chancellor and Wordsworth in mind for the second question. Oh all those people growling at the end there there in the twilight zone. Yeah they're not like normal people anymore but they're behaving according to what the state has created. So in that world that is sort of normal but I see what you're saying. I mean this world is a twilight zone I guess we get into the dystopias here and there. So once you walk into the door as you're already there I guess that is exactly what the prologue says. Right?

0:32:26: So we're gonna focus this on Wordsworth and the Chancellor um Chancellor first because the question works better with him. Did he deserve his trip into the twilight zone?

0:32:40: Um It's hard to say no. I mean it's hard to say no in this one. I ask this every episode sometimes it's a snap answer you know it's like yes he does.

0:32:52: Maybe did he deserve to blow up with the Wordsworth.

0:32:57: That was that was an interesting turn about like his last that the MEREDITH's last words were last act was to free him because he summoned the name of God. That was interesting and he didn't have a whole lot of extra time by the way he he got out there and that was the dramatic moment of it excluding as he was getting down the stairs. So so and you know, it seemed like that perhaps had made an impact on him, but then we don't really know what he was going to do next. We don't know if that changed how he was going to approach things when he gets back to his, you know that first room gets back to back to business as usual and by that point though, everyone is already turned on him. So it's you know, it could have been that there was redemption there, but it was too late in the eyes of the state for any alternative actually, you know, maybe it's not Flipping that, I was like oh they just made new laws and that's why it works at the end because um wordsworth just um found some serious loopholes so maybe now they just straight up eat you and you don't get 48 hours and choose when your your your method of demise.

0:34:00: Now you're just eaten by the zombies. Yeah and they all seem to know what to do, They all like group, think their way through that, you know, they split them down the table like that whole long table was there primarily for that slide at the end, right between MEREDITH when he was being sentenced but to use that again to have him, you know rush up and then be drawn back. I was very dramatic. I mean by any logical stretch of the mind, a stupid ending, but it just works so well to play so well.

0:34:34: But when you talk about it, yeah, it sounds stupid. They start, you know these people in brown shirts, I assume their brown shirts but start growling and seem to eat a dude. It's weird. It's scary though. It sounds silly but it's much more sinister when you see it unfold, right.

0:34:51: Uh So I don't think Wordsworth went into the twilight zone. If anything, he's manipulating the twilight zone. But does he deserve his fate? He is except so here is a more interesting question. He seems accepting of his fate. So does he deserve his fate?

0:35:07: No, I don't think so. I think that he handles it as well as he possibly could. But you know, I think the point is that the audience is on the side of being very much against the fact that he deserves it.

0:35:22: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's kind of the crux of the episode in the end that uh you know, it's a horrible fate and he does the best with it and doesn't even kill another dude in the end to do it. So well I guess we'll again um if the guy didn't flip out, I guess maybe he wouldn't have uh been uh, not sentenced himself. Right? Yeah, that's, that's a good point too. I mean just like we don't know what the Chancellor would do after that incident sort of seemed to change his demeanor. We don't know if he hadn't evoked the name of God, if, if MEREDITH would have just, you know, taken him along with him because it was moments, it was moments away from that explosion and you know, he got out just in time, but if he hadn't said that would have just sat there and then then his last act would be killing someone else and taking someone else down with him, which is much different.

0:36:15: Yeah, that, that would, would be having a very different conversation. If he did not let him out at the very last second, you know, then we would probably say maybe he did deserve it because he, you know, took that his last act was vengeful, right? So here is more, just was still kind of vengeful. I mean, he probably knew that the guy was gonna get maybe literally eaten alive. So I think that's where he took out his anger, He took out his anger at the Chancellor more than, and well he was the symbol of the state. So it was his last attempt at trying to show the chancellor like that he was following the wrong path.

0:36:57: Now my last question uh for these episodes is to put this on the triple meter zero being not trippy at all. Five being very trippy, accept decimal decimal. Sometimes people just give me weird sounds. So do you have an example of a zero and five or this is all relative? Do you know the episode The Silence, which aired a few weeks before this one where the guy has to take a bet to stay silent for a year.

0:37:26: Mm hmm. Who's in it? Um oh jeez. Um dr smith from Lost in Space has a small role in it. That's why I remember at the moment anyway, um, we simultaneously gave that a zero or a five on the triple meter. I'm gonna say that this is a mm I think it's low. I'm trying, I'm trying to assign a number to it, but I think it's low because there aren't really a lot of, there aren't any supernatural elements to it. So to me trickiness and supernatural go hand in hand and this is, you know, futuristic and dystopian, but there's nothing, you know, there's nothing super trippy. So I'm gonna say 0.26. That's my okay, Sure why not. Um yeah, I wonder if the set should count for points because it's just such a stark trippy set.

0:38:17: Anyway though, I'm going to take a page from luke this week and give this one a girl.

0:38:23: I, I feel like that is the correct score for this particular episode. I agree. Well done. Okay, we'll wrap a bow on this one I guess then unless you had a major point you want to throw out there? No, I think we threw it all out. We can descend into growls ourselves if you like. And that could be our ending. That's it, that's it. Wouldn't be the first episode. Um I guess I'll ask if you have anything to quote unquote plug mm yeah, the next episode two, which will be covering next. Okay then I'll have to rephrase the question. Okay, anyway, as for this, it is time enough podcast on twitter and facebook, you can find us and other podcast on patreon under podcast, audio podcast where we talk about sci fi films at matt luke, sci fi sanctuary.

0:39:18: Disney films and a caught Disney the prisoner and imprisoned in prison and you can get some video games, stuff like luke. Loves Pokemon, the monster the monster mash, the monster mash, which talks about monster hunter and the game game show, which involves uh for british guys, hurling insults at each other, not necessarily screaming, but but hurling hurling the insults okay, I guess I will declare this podcast obsolete.

0:39:49: Wake up ringing the gong it message, you're getting old.

0:40:00: Just what's inside my head.

0:40:05: Mhm mhm What did you find dream chips of the city as forever.

0:40:29: Are they clicked?

0:40:35: Man, still watch mm catch this glory.

0:40:57: That's broken. Other chains the boat, don't need to catch what I hope awake away.

0:41:36: No way.

0:42:02: Everything is really real.

0:42:05: If you remember, it's just.